Fic: The Third Day - Part I (Constantine)
At long, long, loooong last, the much anticipated, much belabored Constantine fic.
Title: The Third Day
Author: Ivy
Fandom: Constantine (movie)
Rating: R (for bad words)
Summary:
"The point is," Chas said reverently, "you have an honest-to-god founder of the church in your living room."
John crouched next to him, grinning. "It’s a great angle. I’ll get a much better price for him."
"You’re going to sell him?" Chas exclaimed incredulously. "You can’t - it’s St. Wilfrid!"
John grinned at him. "What did you think I was going to do with him? Consecrate communion wafers?"
A/N: I’ve never been to LA. If there are errors in the geography, mea culpa.
Thanks to gryphonrose for the demonic, insidious helpful plot suggestions. Thanks to trinityvixen, feiran and jethrien for the beta, and special thanks to darkling1 for making me take all of that insipid emo out. Thanks to Alexandra for explaining the Catholic church to me.
This started as a Christmas fic for trinityvixen. She gave me the prompts: Constantine, the First, and checkers. Well… she got one. Four months later.
Part I
"So," Chas said as he bounded into John’s apartment, "what have we got?"
John was moving his table away from the door, clearing a space. He’d called Chas over to help with an "urgent exorcism" - it didn’t matter how many times he pulled this crap, Chas always fell for it. The kid was just too easy.
John didn’t look around at Chas. "‘We’ve’ got a delivery coming. Why don’t you wait on the curb for a truck marked Transport Delivery Co."
"Wait - what am I, your doorman?" Chas’s enthusiasm turned immediately to annoyance, but he didn’t seem surprised. "Don’t tell me - you’ve decided to redecorate and you’re just waiting for the new furniture from Ikea. A dining room table, a sectional sofa, a few of those white Billy bookcases and some floor length mirrors for the interior walls to give the illusion of space."
John glanced up to see Chas holding up his hands, thumb and forefinger extended to frame the new room he was picturing. "Just go down to the corner."
"Fine! Fine! I’m just saying - if you have a hard time assembling the shelves with that stupid little Allen wrench they give you, I’m going to stand over here and laugh."
Chas left the door open; John could hear him stomping down the stairs to the front of the bowling alley. John rolled his eyes.
*
John was just finishing his fifth cigarette, leaning against the repositioned kitchen table, when he heard the truck pull up in front of the bowling alley. He went down to the curb to meet it, just in time to see Chas trying to tuck a book on demonology into the waistband of his pants. The book was over 800 pages long - it wasn’t going so well.
"You John Constantine?" a tall, skinny man wearing flannel and a salt-and-pepper moustache asked as he walked towards him with a clipboard.
"Yeah. You want me to sign?" John said, flicking the butt of his cigarette into the gutter.
"And have a record of this highly illegal interaction? No. I want a tip." The man rested the clipboard against his hip and extended his hand expectantly.
John pulled his wallet out of his back pocket. "Fifty now, fifty more if you help carry it up to my apartment."
John didn’t miss Chas’s gaping. "Fifty - you must be - you’ve never tipped me fifty cents!" Chas spluttered indignantly.
"That’s because I compensate you with my charming wit. Now help the nice extortionist with the crate."
The driver was unlocking the back of his truck. He swung open the doors, letting a blast of refrigerated air wash over John and Chas. Chas craned his neck to peer around the driver. John also noted the rows of shelves holding secured black bags. "Are those," Chas swallowed, "bodies?"
"Now I know why you chose a rewarding career in exorcism instead of med school. They’re for students," John replied and waved at Chas to help the driver, who was pushing a pine crate John had last seen on a buying trip to New York towards the back of the truck.
"I’ll be glad to be rid of this thing," the driver said, shoving the ungainly crate into Chas’s unsteady grip. "Damn thing makes my truck smell like a pot pourri factory." Indeed, as Chas just missed dropping his end onto the pavement, John caught a whiff of flowers from the box. It was just as well - this way he knew he didn’t have to check to see if his contact had swindled him. It meant the contents were the genuine article.
Chas and the driver wrestled the crate up the narrow back stairs to John’s apartment ("what did you order, John, lead-plated rocks?") without taking too much paint off the wall. Well, not so much anyone would notice, anyway.
When the driver had left, with his extra fifty dollars that Chas had stared at meaningfully, Chas turned to John. "Well?"
"Well what?" John said, wandering over to the shelves he used as a liquor cabinet to pour himself a shot of Jack. He could already feel an almost-pleasant tingling in the tips of his fingers and toes and thought he’d rather have the familiar tingling of alcohol than the strange influence from the crate.
Chas was hovering between John and the crate, swaying a little one way, then the other, as if undecided about which was more interesting. "What’s in it?"
John swirled the whisky in his glass. "I already know what’s in it - wouldn’t have shipped it here if I didn’t. Thanks for your help, Chas, really. I don’t think I’ll be heading out again today, so -"
"Oh, no no no no no. You do not drag me out here, force me into manual labor then not even let me know what’s worth a hundred dollar tip."
John hid a smile behind his glass and shrugged toward a crow bar he’d left leaning in the corner of his apartment for just this moment.
Chas tackled the lid of the crate, saving John from another menial task he wasn’t looking forward to. Chas threw off the lid, causing a small explosion of pink peanuts to skitter across the floor and cling to Chas’s trousers.
"You didn’t. Oh, you didn’t!" Chas squeaked like a sixteen-year-old who’d just gotten a Ferrari for Christmas. "Oh my God! It’s a - It really - How did you?"
John leaned past Chas to look inside the crate. Lying surrounded by pink styrofoam peanuts was a perfectly preserved corpse, with no signs of decay or rigor mortis. With the lid off, the floral smell was unmistakable. The man reposed with hands clasped loosely over his chest, a beatific smile on his face. The body was dressed in a plain-spun brown robe, tied around the waist with a rope. His bare, callused feet jutted into the air, one pink peanut clinging perniciously to the underside of a pinky toe. He was bald, with trailing white beard that obscured his neck and part of his chest. The wrinkles creasing his forehead and mouth made him look like a thin Santa Claus. For all John knew this could be a hobo that had kicked it in an alleyway ten minutes ago. If it weren’t for the pleasant aroma.
"Yes," John interrupted, "I did." He didn’t even try to hide his smug grin. "A real, genuine, one-hundred-percent blessed saint."
"This is - oh, wow." Chas beamed at John then turned back to the crate. John watched with amusement as Chas tried to clear away the styrofoam as quickly as possible without brushing the corpse. It was a like watching a combination of an archaeologist and the Big Bad Wolf. Chas leaned in to examine the face. He pulled back, looking at John in awe. "Do you know who this is?"
"No," John said, still resting nonchalantly against the table.
"No," Chas said, biting his lip, "I think this is -" and then he dashed out of John’s apartment, taking the stairs so fast John was amazed he didn’t just slide down the banister.
John chuckled to himself and looked at his acquisition. If Chas had looked at him with hero worship before, now it looked like he was about to start painting icons and lighting candles at his own personal John Constantine shrine.
He’d barely finished the thought when Chas banged back into the apartment, clutching one of the books John recognized as a usual resident of Chas’s dashboard. Chas flipped through the book, stared intently at a page, then at the corpse, back and forth until he was practically bouncing on his feet.
"This is St. Wilfrid!" he crowed. Chas pushed the book towards John, and John had to admit that the wood carving printed on the page bore an uncanny resemblance to the corpse in his apartment.
"He was the Bishop of York - born 634, died 709," Chas said from memory, still holding the book towards John. "He was responsible for solidifying the power of the Holy See in England. So really, you can blame Henry VIII and the Anglican church on this guy. If not for him, English kings might never have been Catholic in the first place."
Chas shook himself, closing the book, "Anyway, this guy preached like a motherfucker." He looked down at the saint reverently. "People say that when he spoke, the Holy Spirit would come down and touch the people in the church. Real tongues of fire Pentecostal stuff." Chas looked back at John in awe.
John had to admit, he was impressed. "Knew I kept you around for a reason. The seller thought he was some lower clergy member, fifteenth century."
"Pfft," Chas grimaced skeptically. "Please. Who’d you get it from - a little Chinese lady on the corner? Fifteenth century, my ass."
Chas crouched down next to the crate and reached out a hand, not quite brushing the forehead of the body. He pulled it back and quickly crossed himself. "The point is," Chas said reverently, "you have an honest-to-god founder of the church in your living room."
John crouched next to him, grinning. "It’s a great angle. I’ll get a much better price for him."
"You’re going to sell him?" Chas exclaimed incredulously. "You can’t - it’s St. Wilfrid!"
John grinned at him. "What did you think I was going to do with him? Consecrate communion wafers?"
*
After Chas left - reluctantly, with many longing glances at the dead saint - John smoked half a pack staring at the crate.
John was just an intermediary - he’d earn a commission on whatever price he could get for the whole saint - but anything he could squeeze out in addition to that would be gravy. His mind immediately leapt to relics - there weren’t too many places a private collector could go to get one, ever since the overzealous Catholic Church had emptied every catacomb that could possibly hold Christian martyrs a few centuries ago to supply their churches with holy objects.
John did a little mental math - each finger could be sold intact or divided up into three separate relics. Price would vary on the size of the piece, of course, but he could expect anywhere from fifty dollars to a couple thousand per knuckle. And if he sold an entire hand - well. Not to mention the toes.
He might even keep a finger for himself.
Of course, he’d have to be careful. His contacts had probably heard that there was an intact saint on offer, so one without any digits would arouse suspicion. If word got around that he’d skimmed, no reputable dealer would touch him. But as long as he was careful, no one but his bank account needed to know.
John toyed with the idea of enlisting Beeman to construct decorative receptacles for the fingers; 90% of the value of a reliquary was presentation. Only a very few would be able to sense directly the power of the saint, and for everybody else, a severed finger didn’t command nearly as much respect as a hand-crafted bronze container concealing the artifact.
John crouched by the body to inspect the hands. He could feel the power trapped within it. A skilled mage could harness that power and focus it like a weapon, but toying with God’s chosen was not a good way to earn his favor. John wasn’t that reckless, or that stupid.
He blew out another puff and closed his eyes. Might as well get to it.
John rummaged through his kitchen drawer until he found an old rusted pair of curved pruning shears. True, he didn’t have any hedges to trim, but in his line of work, pruners were surprisingly useful. Like now, for instance.
He knelt beside the body and pulled the left hand so that it draped out of the crate. The limb moved supply, as if attached to a living being. Touching it, he felt a buzzing sensation radiate up his arm to his shoulder, just short of being uncomfortable. When he let go, he found himself unconsciously rubbing his hand against his thigh, as if the pins and needles sensation had been caused by his arm falling asleep.
He gingerly placed the shears around the base of the finger, then rocked back on his heels so he could grip the ends of the handles for the best leverage. He turned his head away and squeezed. The shears came together with a crunch like a turkey’s wishbone being snapped, then there was a soft thud as the pinky hit the floor. He set down the shears to pick up the finger, then had to juggle it like a hot potato until he could drop it on the table. Direct contact with that sort of power was sending all sorts of unpleasant thrills through him. It was pulling at him, demanding surrender, but the feeling was invasive and unwanted. By the time he set it down, he found himself struggling to catch his breath.
Oh, that would definitely be worth at least a few thousand, he thought, possibly more if he could find the right buyer.
John looked back at the body, with one hand trailing over the side, fingertips brushing the floor - well, three fingertips anyway. He picked up the shears, but the thought of cutting off another finger made him feel a little queasy. Might as well price out the market a little before getting ahead of himself with the chopping, he thought.
He smoked another cigarette before he felt normal enough to handle the finger again, and this time he grabbed a washcloth from his bathroom before picking it up. He wrapped the finger in the towel. Neither the finger nor the hand bled where they’d been severed, which was unsettling. John chided himself for expecting anything else from a thousand-year-old corpse. He dropped both the shears and the finger into his kitchen drawer, pushing the bundle towards the back.
Grabbing an oven mitt, he went back over to the saint and moved the arm back to cross over the chest. He placed the right hand over the mutilated one so that without close examination, both hands looked intact.
John covered the crate before turning in. Power like that would call to others. He hoped the wards on his apartment would mute its pull, but it wouldn’t be long before word got around that he had an extra guest.
John stretched out on the sheets, sure that he was sleeping safer now than he had in years.
*
John’s limbs felt warm and heavy. He curled onto his side, away from the morning light. He hoped the movement hadn’t woken Kit - she was such a light sleeper.
Fragments of dreams clung to him, and he tried to recapture them. They’d been happy, and peaceful. He could remember an open space, light. Something about wings and being led like a member of the flock by its shepherd.
He smiled and nuzzled into the pillow. Kit’s fingers tickled at the nape of his neck. He rolled, reaching out for her hand.
He came fully awake sharply and looked across his empty bedspread to the brown mesh beyond it. Kit had left him more than a year ago, after he’d come home from one too many close calls. She’d told him she loved him, and she couldn’t watch him destroy himself. Then she’d walked out. He hadn’t dreamt of her in months.
He sat up, pushing the sheets back, trying to mentally push back the cloying comfort of his sleep. He knew why he expected Kit to be beside him. Lying in the pre-dawn dark, he’d felt God’s grace wrap around him like a lover’s arms.
Now he just felt sick.
He stumbled into the bathroom, the yellow lights casting a pallor on his stubbled cheeks. It was a rookie mistake. He should have known better. But he’d let his guard down because the power was of Divine origin. He’d gone to sleep, no less, in the presence of a powerful magical object. It had pushed into his subconscious, giving a false glow of acceptance. The feeling was nothing more than a trick, caused only by the saint.
John threw on yesterday’s clothes and banged out of the apartment, needing some distance to clear his head.
*
John returned to his apartment midmorning, with two bottles of Jack and a fresh pack of Silk Cuts. He had to step over a bum at the base of his stairs. As he passed, the man grabbed for his pant leg, mumbling something about "the calling" and "the hand of God."
One in three homeless in the U.S. was insane, John thought. Why they all had to hang around the bowling alley, he didn’t know.
He entered his apartment and turned to drop the brown paper bag on the table. His toe kicked something, and it skittered across the floor, wedging itself under the edge of one of the jars of holy water that lined the wall.
He crossed the room and crouched to pick it up. It was a St. Christopher’s medallion. He turned it over, inspecting the weathered metal. It was his medallion - but he’d thought he’d lost it during an exorcism in West Hollywood last fall. He stood and humphed to himself, still toying with the medallion. It must have caught in his coat, he thought, and fallen out on his floor later.
John froze suddenly and turned to look at the crate sitting innocuously in the middle of the floor. He couldn’t see St. Wilfrid’s face, but even through the wood he felt like the old guy was winking at him. He dropped the medallion on the table next to the bag and crossed to the coffin. He kicked off the cover and looked down into the face, serene and still.
The door to his apartment opened and banged against the wall. "John!" Chas called, waving something in his hand.
John turned from the crate to see his apprentice’s ebullient face. "Look what I found! I was vacuuming the back of the cab, and I found this stuffed in between the seat cushions!" Chas pressed his prize into John’s hand: a folded hundred dollar bill.
"One of my fares must have dropped it," he said, gleefully snatching it back. He snapped the bill, holding it triumphantly in the air. "Oooo," he crowed, "somebody’s getting lucky tonight! That’s right, ladies, the drinks are on the Chas-man."
John shook his head ruefully and retrieved the medallion from the table. "I found this this morning."
He dropped the medallion into Chas’s palm. "Mine’s better," Chas said automatically, and then looked at it more closely. "Hey - didn’t you lose this at…" He looked up and John nodded, hoping the kid would be bright enough to connect the dots.
John could see the epiphany on Chas’s face, and he turned towards St. Wilfrid’s reposing body. "This is an actual miracle, isn’t it," he said in quiet awe.
"Yes, the miracle of Chas trying to get laid. Right up there with the loaves and the fishes." Chas smacked him in the shoulder, and then turned back to the body.
"People often experience miracles in the presence of the bodies of saints," he spoke, more to himself than to John. "Finding lost items, healing, speaking in tongues, communing with animals, all that sort of stuff. I always believed it, but I didn’t believe it, you know?" Chas removed his cap and stared at the crate in abject wonder. "The hand of God, right here. Acting on the life of Chas Kramer. Amazing."
Chas knelt next to the body, then froze and leaned in closer. He moved the untouched right hand over, apparently unaffected by the power that had overwhelmed John the previous day. "John…" he said, his voice low and threatening. "Where’s his finger?"
John tried for surprise. "Is it missing?"
"Of course it’s - John! Did you cut off his finger?" Chas was standing now, glaring at him. "You did, didn’t you?"
John gave up trying to look innocent. He shrugged. "I can make more if I sell him in pieces than if I sell him whole. It’s business."
Chas looked scandalized. Chas might have an attitude and a foul mouth, but at heart he was still a good little Catholic. He never came around Sunday mornings, and even though John never asked and Chas never offered, John had a fair guess where he was. If you were in this line of work, it was either because you had a lot of faith or none at all.
"John, this is a fucking saint here!" Chas pointed to the crate, as if John could have forgotten. "This is one of His Chosen. This body was blessed. And you - you - mutilated it!"
"This from the kid who’s going to use ‘the Hand of God’ to buy some bimbo a few drinks," John knew he was being petty, but didn’t care. "Obviously God feels a great personal connection to you, which is why He’s buying your faith with a hundred bucks. That makes you cheaper than my last date."
"This is not about me, John," Chas said. John didn’t think he’d ever seen him so mad.
John rolled his eyes. "Come on, Chas. Don’t be so naïve. The Catholic Church does the exact same thing. They took the bodies of the martyrs and cut them up into hundreds of little pieces so all their little churches could have one."
"It’s not your place, John," Chas snarled.
"Not my place?" John knew his place - God had chosen it for him at birth. His place was haunted by visions he couldn’t control or understand. God cursed him then abandoned him. God let him be damned. John had never explained all this to Chas - if pressed he’d say it never came up. John’s life was his trump card, his proof that God was a vicious son of a bitch. In truth, John didn’t know if Chas would agree with him and lose his faith, or keep his faith and condemn John. He didn’t like to picture either outcome. "After the crap He pulls, God has no right to tell me my place. And you certainly don’t."
"Maybe not, John, but somebody has to."
John felt like he was having an entirely different argument than Chas. "Right. And it falls to you because you’re such a faithful believer."
In other circumstances, Chas might have seen that description as a compliment, but John could see Chas had clearly understood it as he’d meant it - as an insult. "Just because I don’t need to see God raise the dead or walk on fucking water doesn’t mean I don’t understand," Chas said coldly. "I have faith, John. You should try it sometime. Maybe if you did you wouldn’t be such an asshole."
"Fine. You want to hang out here and commune with his Holiness, be my guest. Just make sure to lock the door when you leave." John stormed off in what he knew was a childish huff.
He hated Chas for having more in common with St. Wilfrid than he ever would. It was like the two of them were ganging up on him. After all, what he felt when he touched the body would be a preview of coming attractions to Chas, but it was just a fucking tease to him.
He could hear Chas call after him, but the kid didn’t follow.
Which suited John just fine.
*
"Cow with a halo," John said, pushing past the bouncer into Midnite’s club almost before he’d gotten a nod.
It may have been 11AM, but the club was crowded with half-breeds. Angels and demons didn’t worry too much about propriety when they sought out temptation, John figured. He quickly scanned the floor, looking for a familiar innocent-seeming brunette, but didn’t spot her. John crossed to the bar, sure that she’d show if he hung around long enough.
His argument with Chas rattled in his head, but he refused to feel bad about it. Sometimes the kid was so blind to the truth behind all this religious ceremony, John wondered why he ever thought taking him on as an apprentice was a good idea.
John felt the sanctity of the saint clinging to him like cobwebs. Right now he just wanted to wipe away the reminder of his own damnation. The best way he knew how to do that was with his favorite half-demon, Ellie, and far too much alcohol.
He’d barely given his order to the bartender when he heard the tap of an expensive cane next to his bar stool. "Hello, Midnite," he said charmingly.
Midnite stood at a slight cant, like a model showing off the latest line of pinstripe suits. The smile he gave John from under his fedora belonged on a shark, his white teeth a gash across his dark face. John was reminded again of why this man was one of the most respected - and powerful - in the occult circles.
"May I have a word?" he asked in the exotic Caribbean accent he had never tried to lose.
"Join me for a drink," John said turning to the bar. He knew what Midnite wanted. Didn’t mean he’d make it easy for him.
Midnite leaned in, that shark’s grin still shining in the dim light. "In private."
John nodded to the bartender, and then followed Papa Midnite through two sets of padded doors to Midnite’s sanctum. John always felt like he was walking into a bank vault - John wouldn’t be surprised if the room was airtight. Midnite was paranoid (careful, John corrected himself) enough to make such arrangements. Granted, most bank vaults weren’t appointed like bordellos, but that was just Midnite all over. John felt the tingle of the wards Midnite surrounded himself with, the only thing that had made it possible for him to have remained safely neutral so long.
Which was exactly why John knew Midnite would be interested.
"I hear you have a new roommate," Midnite said, sitting comfortably behind the table that served as his desk.
"Well, you know how the housing market is nowadays," John said, sitting across from him. "Things are always cheaper with a roomie."
Midnite grinned and cocked his eyebrow. "From what I hear about this roommate, ‘cheap’ isn’t the first word that springs to mind."
"Oh?" John replied coyly.
"I’m sure I’d be able to make a substantial contribution to your … rent … in exchange for this roommate."
"Who says I’m looking for another arrangement? I quite like his company. But if you’d like another body around the place, I’m sure Chas would be more than happy to crash on your couch."
Midnite narrowed his eyes, dropping the playful pretense. "You’re not keeping him, John. You can’t afford your own personal guardian angel."
"I think you just insulted me," he cracked.
"I know you’re looking to sell."
John hummed noncommittally.
"I just want to make sure you understand what will happen to you if I hear you’ve sold it to someone else. And I will hear." Midnite almost growled that last part, leaning his hands on the table menacingly. John had known Midnite far too long to be intimidated by his tactics.
"If there’s one thing I never doubt, it’s your resourcefulness," John replied, unfazed.
"And it had better be untouched, John," Midnite added. "Not nearly as valuable otherwise."
John hid his nervous swallow, though it seemed to him that Midnite must have been following his train of thought. For all he knew, Midnite already knew about what he’d been up to that afternoon. "I have a lot to consider before I’m willing to take offers," John said, standing. "Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some drinking I need to catch up on."
Midnite curled his lip and sat back down. Only someone who knew him as well as John did would recognize the gesture for the sulk it was. Midnite put up a good show, but at heart he was still a five-year-old who didn’t understand why he couldn’t get everything he asked for.
"I’ll expect to hear back from you," Midnite said, as John approached the exit.
"Oh, you will - I’ve come across some lovely twelfth century crucifixes you’d be interested in."
Midnite actually snarled at that. John laughed and crossed back into the club.
*
John sat back down at the bar and waved to the bartender to bring over a glass of the cheap beer. It looked and tasted like piss, but after four or five, he didn’t mind.
He didn’t know how many he’d had when he felt a warm hand trail along the nape of his neck, making him goose-pimple all over. "Hello, John," a sultry voice breathed, the warm air puffing into his ear.
"Hello, Ellie," John said, turning to look at her. She left her arm around his shoulder and leaned so far into his personal space he couldn’t focus on both her eyes at the same time. Or maybe that was just the beer. He leaned back until he could see her face clearly; she grinned and a red gleam flashed momentarily in her eyes.
"I hear you’ve been looking for me," she said, nuzzling her nose against his cheek. John just tilted his head invitingly and looked back at his empty glass. Ellie stopped suddenly and drew back.
"Something’s different about you, John," she said, intrigued. "I can smell it."
"New cologne," John said, swirling the glass.
"No," Ellie drew out the syllable and leaned in again. She ran her tongue from just under his collar up to his earlobe, tasting him. "It’s not that," she said, wrapping her arm around his neck to stroke his cheek. "Something else." She mouthed along his jaw line, then drew back.
"You’ve been to see Gabriel, haven’t you? What have you been doing with the Snob? I thought you only played with me," she pouted. She pulled back again, and John felt chills run down his spine. "I can taste Him all over you." Her eyes flicked upwards on Him, and John didn’t need to ask who she meant.
John tried to look innocent, but was too drunk to know if he was pulling it off. He turned to the bartender instead. "Can I get a blowjob for the lady?" The bartender pulled out a shot glass. "Better make that a double," John added.
"Oh, John," Ellie said, sitting on the stool next to him. "You say the sweetest things."
Later, when Ellie pulled him out of the club, John was surprised to find that it was dark.
*
The bar of light falling across John’s face felt like a letter opener digging into his eyes. He rolled away from it, but the motion set the headache off anyway. He tried to crawl back into some semblance of unconsciousness, but it was useless. The pressure in his bladder was reaching critical levels. It was move now or face the consequences.
He sat up, squinting his eyes, trying to determine where the bathroom was. He hadn’t looked last night when they’d checked into this pay-by-the-hour motel. Ellie had been distracting him far too much by the time they got to the room.
Ellie was long gone, but he’d never expected her to stay. She wasn’t much of a cuddler.
John rocked to a standing position and the sheet came off the bed with him, sticking in unpleasant places. He peeled it off and threw it on the floor. He stumbled to the window and drew the blinds, more for his eyes than for his modesty. Definitely too late for that now.
The inside of his mouth felt like he’d licked the rail bed of the New York subway. He hoped that didn’t mean he’d fallen asleep with a cigarette in his mouth. He’d done that before, and it wasn’t at all pleasant.
After he relieved himself, he stuck his head under the faucet and rinsed his mouth, trying not to think of what else might have been in this sink since the last time a maid came through here.
He found his clothes crumpled in a corner next to a dried pool of vomit. It might have been his. He inspected them as he pulled them on and was happy to find they had no stains. That was something at least.
He sat on the edge of the bed, as far from the yellowed stains as possible, and lit a cigarette. He dragged on it, trying to wait out his headache. Eventually it was the thought of Advil that got him on his feet again.
All in all, it was the complete opposite of the previous morning, but far more of his mornings were like this. John felt absurdly proud of that. He felt like shit, but it was only his fault. He had complete control of his destiny - he maintained the absolute ability to make himself feel like crap any time he wanted. He thought about laughing, but figured it would hurt too much anyway. It wasn’t much, but it was all the control he had.
*
When John pushed open the side door in the alley that led up to his lone apartment, he wasn’t surprised to see the bum from yesterday huddled in the dim light. The enclosed space was starting to reek of him.
John was surprised to find three more people sitting, singing hymns, in front of his doorway at the top of the stairs: there was a young couple that looked like they’d missed their true calling as hippies and a middle-aged man in business attire, all well-groomed, all clearly not bums.
"What the fuck are you doing in front of my apartment," he whispered harshly, unable to work himself up to more volume.
The girl looked at him with eyes too wide and innocent. "We had to come," she said, and that looked like that was all the explanation he’d get out of her.
John looked at the business man, who shrugged. "I just felt like I was supposed to be here," he said.
"What is this, Close Encounters of the Third Kind? Do I look like Richard fucking Dreyfuss? Get the fuck out of my hallway!" John grated, trying to yell without raising his voice.
The three looked at him a little piteously and John knew that he must stink as badly as the hobo on the first floor. "Go!" he barked, kicking the doorframe for emphasis, then winced as his big toe started throbbing along with his head.
They looked wary, but reluctantly filed down the hallway and down the stairs, leaving John to regret both the shouting and the kicking.
John threw open his door and looked hard at the crate. "Fuck you," he said quietly.
A note fluttered to the floor, loosed from where it had been stuck between the door and the jamb. He bent down to pick it up, moving slowly so as not to jostle his head. It read simply:
Go fuck yourself, you self-righteous prick. - CK
He walked over to the trash can by his sink to throw it out and stopped. Sitting on top of the empty beer bottles and cellophane cigarette wrappers in the trash were a half a dozen similar pieces of paper, crumpled up. John didn’t know which was funnier: that Chas had written "Go fuck yourself, you self-righteous prick" and stuck it on his door, or that he’d gone through several drafts before landing on that particular epithet. John decided the most amusing bit was that Chas had signed it - as if anyone else would be sticking abusive notes in his door.
John looked around his apartment and found Chas had replaced the cover on the crate. He probably hadn’t stayed too long after John barged off; John didn’t often acknowledge it, but the kid did have a day job. Chas had probably just stuck around long enough to short-sheet his bed and saran wrap his toilet.
John swallowed as many Advil as he thought he reasonably could without causing acute liver failure. He sank into the hot water filling his porcelain tub and made a mental note to wheedle Chas into going to Home Depot to get a shower attachment. Once Chas stopped telling him to fuck himself, of course. It wasn’t worth entertaining the thought that John might actually manage to drive him off, like he had Kit. Chas was tougher than that; he’d come back.
John’s muscles started to relax, but the headache remained, just sharp enough to make it impossible to think about anything else. He considered drowning himself, but was fairly certain that would land him somewhere a lot worse than a hangover.
When he couldn’t reasonably pretend the water was warm anymore, he climbed out. Now that the edge was off the hangover, he could feel the warm glow of the saint seeping into him again. He dressed perfunctorily, keeping an eye on the crate as if worried it would move if he looked away.
Thanks to Chas he had a coffee-maker and a supply of quality coffee beans, an un-asked for Christmas present that hadn’t been reciprocated. He chugged the first cup, then poured another.
He swung a chair around so that it was facing the crate, and after a thoughtful moment, removed the lid. He sat staring at the beatific face for a few minutes, sipping from his coffee.
"So," he spoke into the silence of his apartment. "How’s it hanging, Bill? Had any divine revelations lately?"
John set the coffee cup on the table behind him and massaged his temple with one hand. "I bet you never had a hangover. Bet you never woke up with your mouth tasting like an ash tray. Of course you didn’t. You didn’t even know what tobacco was, did you?" John leaned forward, resting his forearms on his knees. "And I’m sure you never slept with a half demon to try to... Never fucked anyone at all, probably. Between the two of us, you really missed out. The things half-breeds can do with their tails, I’m telling you. Whatever He’s offering can’t be worth it."
John leaned back in his chair again, feeling smug, as if he’d won something. But as the silence stretched out, the lack of retort angered him. Warmth spread over him, drawing from the saint’s body. The comfort felt insidious, unwanted. The perfect passive aggressive rejoinder to his antagonism. "Is this what it felt like to be you? All the time? That would make it pretty damn easy, don’t you think? I mean, what makes you so special? Anyone could be a saint if they felt His presence like you did. You know what that makes you? Lucky. Not righteous. He gave you a gift - you didn’t do a goddamn thing to deserve it. So why do you get to lie there looking so pleased about it?"
John walked over to the crate and knelt next to it, leaning in so close to St. Wilfrid’s face he could see the pores on his nose. "You’re an intercessor, huh, Bill? The Big Guy listens to you, right? Well, the next time you see him, make sure to tell him this from John Constantine." John extended his middle finger emphatically at the corpse, instantly regretting it.
He could know - know for a fact - that he was going to Hell when he died; he could know that God was a vindictive bastard who’d curse somebody at birth, then screw them over just for breaking rules they didn’t know were there, and still John felt like a kid who’d just flicked off the teacher. He still wanted to deserve that grace he felt seeping out of the saint into the air of his apartment.
John shook his head. He was no better than Chas.
*
In the late afternoon, he got a call from a Jesuit priest out in Pico-Union. Seems the man, whose voice quavered over the phone, had heard John was someone who could handle certain ‘situations.’ John had five guesses as to who had been whispering his name in the priestly brotherhood, and he didn’t need four of them.
Chas hadn’t been by at all yet. The kid must still be pissed, especially since John knew he must be itching to spend more time studying St. Wilfrid.
He’d get over it.
John called his cell phone, knowing that Chas always picked up, even in traffic. "Chas Kramer," the voice came through his phone after the second ring, cheerful.
"Hey Chas," he said.
"Oh," Chas said, his intonation flattening out. "It’s you."
"Yeah, Chas - look," he paused, wondering if he should apologize, then figured he shouldn’t have to - he’d been completely justified. "I’ve got an exorcism. I could use a lift."
There was silence on the other end of the line, and John wondered for a moment if Chas would tell him to fuck off.
"Whatever," Chas eventually said and hung up.
John figured that meant he was coming.
*
Chas burst into his apartment just when John was beginning to wonder if he’d misinterpreted the ‘whatever.’
"Why are there hippies chanting in the hall?" Chas said, grumpily.
Chas left the door open, not moving too far into John’s space. Behind him, John caught the flickering light of candles and heard the low murmuring of prayer.
John jerked his head to the crate by way of explanation.
"You charging admission now too?" Chas asked testily.
"Don’t be asinine," John replied. "Just drive me to Pico Boulevard."
"Fine," Chas said and turned around to leave.
Before John followed, he hesitated, then impulsively grabbed the washcloth-wrapped bundle out of his kitchen drawer and stuck it in the inside pocket of his coat.
The people in the hallway looked up as Chas picked his way around them. John noticed that the three from that morning were back, and they’d brought friends. He could only guess that the bum was still curled at the bottom of the stairs.
"All right, you credulous sheep. This is private property, and I will call the police if you don’t leave right now," John said, mustering all of his considerable hard-assed menace, even though both he and Chas knew it was a bluff. "And if you don’t move your asses in the next five seconds, I will go downstairs, bring back a few bowling balls and treat you all like my own personal set of pins."
Now they looked a little frightened - probably less because they believed John would do it, and more because they thought he was a raving lunatic and bound to do something unpleasant. "Get the fuck out!" John yelled, and they finally scattered, though they stopped long enough to gather the candles and Kabbalah books lying in the hallway.
By the time they’d all dribbled out into the alley again, John was pissed and tired. Chas looked like John had kicked his puppy. Great, John thought. Fucking great. Because this was, of course, the perfect frame of mind for doing a nerve-grating, teeth-jarring exorcism.
Chas stamped down the stairs without saying a word, and John followed him to the cab. The entire trip to Pico was silent. When they pulled up in front of the address the priest had given him, Chas popped the cab into park and grabbed a book from the dashboard - it was the same one Chas had been reading two days ago. Chas furiously flipped it open and didn’t look at John. He didn’t even ask John if he could tag along, which was about when John realized he was going to have to fix this or risk finding alternate means of transportation on the way home.
But first he just needed to get through the damn exorcism.
*
The possessed girl looked about five years old. She was tied to her cot with wire; from the welts around her wrists, she’d probably been there for days. She lay limply on the bed, not moving when John entered the room.
The priest he had spoken to was consoling the parents in the part of the room that served as the living room - the girl’s bedroom was partitioned off with a sheet strung across a corner with a clothesline. They didn’t speak any English, but from John’s limited understanding of Spanish he pieced together that they had tried to banish the demon themselves first before going to a priest. When John drew closer, he could see the bruises and burn marks that were the evidence of amateur attempts at exorcism.
If your car stopped running, you’d take it to a mechanic. Why people thought that when their child was possessed they could handle it themselves, he didn’t know.
The exorcism itself was easy, possibly the most straight-forward expulsion he’d ever done. Too bad Chas was being pissy in the car - this would have been a perfect case for him.
John barely had to touch the girl’s forehead with the sign of the cross for him to feel the demon detach itself and slip away. When he stepped back from the bed, he realized that he had kept his right hand tucked into his inside jacket pocket the whole time, clutching the bundle there.
*
John headed back to the cab, unsurprised when neither the family of the afflicted nor the priest offered anything more concrete than heartfelt thanks in payment.
Easy or not, he felt the edgy hunger that always attended exorcisms gnawing at his stomach. That, combined with the slightly queasy sensation he felt from the pull of the relic in his pocket, made him decide he’d better eat something soon.
As he walked to the curb, his hand continued to drift towards his pocket. He had to consciously force his arm to stay at his side.
Chas didn’t look up when he reached the cab. John pulled on the door handle, only to find it locked. Chas never locked the rear doors of his cab: he couldn’t without crawling all over the inside of his cab to reach the locks. This wasn’t accidental, no matter how hard Chas pretended it was. Now who was being petty?
John rapped on the window, and Chas held up an index finger, his eyes never leaving the book. John waited for a moment, and when Chas didn’t move, turned his back on the cab. He’d just started to wonder if he could get through a whole cigarette before Chas unlocked the door when he heard the lock pop.
John climbed into the cab. "Sorry about that," Chas said with the same cool tone he’d used all afternoon. "Just had to finish the chapter. Didn’t want to lose my place."
Chas was baiting him, and John could feel the gall rising. He took a deep breath and tried to catch Chas’s eye in the rearview mirror. The sun was just beginning to set, casting the interior of the cab in orange as the light refracted through LA’s infamous smog.
"Hey," he said evenly. "I’m starving. Feel like Chinese?" It wasn’t much of a peace offering, but that was the best anyone would expect from John Constantine.
Chas finally looked at him in the mirror. "Chung King?" Chas inquired suspiciously.
Chung King was Chas’s favorite. John preferred Yangtze. "Sure," John said.
Chas smiled back at him, and John felt the anger that had been radiating off of Chas all afternoon disappear. Things were normal again - well, as normal as they could be while John had the sensation of ants crawling along his skin. He’d tried the drug thing when he was younger, and being near this relic was reminding him of some of his worse trips.
Chas pulled up across the street from Chung King just as the streetlights were flickering on. He jumped out of the car and jogged across the intersection towards the neon-lit storefront.
John leaned his head back against the headrest, trying to uncoil the tension that was building in him the longer he kept the relic so close to his skin. He thought about tossing it into the glove compartment, but caution won out over personal discomfort. Besides, he didn’t want to start up this whole fracas with Chas again, and finding the amputated pinky lying around his cab certainly would.
John checked his watch. After five minutes he decided he needed a smoke. Out of respect for Chas’s other patrons, he climbed out of the cab. While he tapped out a cigarette, his stomach clenched and he knew he was about to lose his battle with the nausea.
There was a narrow alley on the other side of the sidewalk, and John just managed to make it into the relative solitude before puking. He rested one hand on his knee and the other hand on a slatted crate that had been dumped next to the trash bags as he tried to fight down another heave. He hung his head and spat, taking a moment to regain his equilibrium. He was thankful that the twilight would make it impossible for Chas to notice his ashen complexion - there were few things worse than Chas being a mother hen.
He straightened up and pressed his forehead against the brick wall, taking a few deep breaths. As the pounding in his ears lessened, he heard the grinding of grit against pavement deeper in the alley. He twisted his head, and could just make out the silhouettes of two men, huddled conspiratorially together.
They were looking at him.
One of them, holding a bottle in a brown bag, leaned towards the other and whispered something in his ear. Bottle-less chuckled and lurched towards John. He looked about as steady as John felt.
John straightened up and stepped away from the wall. He thought briefly about stepping out into the pools of light on the boulevard, but didn’t like the idea of turning his back on this guy. As he came closer, John could see that he was Hispanic - dark-skinned with a moustache, wearing a wifebeater. A tattoo darkened one shoulder, but John couldn’t make it out.
"You want something?" John asked, raising an eyebrow.
The man replied in Spanish - from what John could tell, he was being mugged. Fuck that. John didn’t move, wondering if he should pretend he didn’t understand.
Wifebeater shouted the same request and shoved him.
Before he thought too much about it, John snapped back with a punch, but the shove had thrown him off balance and his arm pin-wheeled out, clipping the guy across the brow, probably causing more damage to his knuckles than the guy’s face.
John’s attacker snarled and punched John hard in the stomach. John felt his breath leave in a rush. The thug drew back, but John couldn’t draw his breath back in. His knees felt watery and he wondered what the hell was going on. John had been punched a lot of times in a lot of different places; it’d always hurt, but it had never left him feeling this weak.
The mugger stepped back, and John glanced down at his still-fisted hand. He was holding a knife, crimson against his dark skin.
Part II
Read entire fic on AO3.
Title: The Third Day
Author: Ivy
Fandom: Constantine (movie)
Rating: R (for bad words)
Summary:
"The point is," Chas said reverently, "you have an honest-to-god founder of the church in your living room."
John crouched next to him, grinning. "It’s a great angle. I’ll get a much better price for him."
"You’re going to sell him?" Chas exclaimed incredulously. "You can’t - it’s St. Wilfrid!"
John grinned at him. "What did you think I was going to do with him? Consecrate communion wafers?"
A/N: I’ve never been to LA. If there are errors in the geography, mea culpa.
Thanks to gryphonrose for the demonic, insidious helpful plot suggestions. Thanks to trinityvixen, feiran and jethrien for the beta, and special thanks to darkling1 for making me take all of that insipid emo out. Thanks to Alexandra for explaining the Catholic church to me.
This started as a Christmas fic for trinityvixen. She gave me the prompts: Constantine, the First, and checkers. Well… she got one. Four months later.
Part I
"So," Chas said as he bounded into John’s apartment, "what have we got?"
John was moving his table away from the door, clearing a space. He’d called Chas over to help with an "urgent exorcism" - it didn’t matter how many times he pulled this crap, Chas always fell for it. The kid was just too easy.
John didn’t look around at Chas. "‘We’ve’ got a delivery coming. Why don’t you wait on the curb for a truck marked Transport Delivery Co."
"Wait - what am I, your doorman?" Chas’s enthusiasm turned immediately to annoyance, but he didn’t seem surprised. "Don’t tell me - you’ve decided to redecorate and you’re just waiting for the new furniture from Ikea. A dining room table, a sectional sofa, a few of those white Billy bookcases and some floor length mirrors for the interior walls to give the illusion of space."
John glanced up to see Chas holding up his hands, thumb and forefinger extended to frame the new room he was picturing. "Just go down to the corner."
"Fine! Fine! I’m just saying - if you have a hard time assembling the shelves with that stupid little Allen wrench they give you, I’m going to stand over here and laugh."
Chas left the door open; John could hear him stomping down the stairs to the front of the bowling alley. John rolled his eyes.
*
John was just finishing his fifth cigarette, leaning against the repositioned kitchen table, when he heard the truck pull up in front of the bowling alley. He went down to the curb to meet it, just in time to see Chas trying to tuck a book on demonology into the waistband of his pants. The book was over 800 pages long - it wasn’t going so well.
"You John Constantine?" a tall, skinny man wearing flannel and a salt-and-pepper moustache asked as he walked towards him with a clipboard.
"Yeah. You want me to sign?" John said, flicking the butt of his cigarette into the gutter.
"And have a record of this highly illegal interaction? No. I want a tip." The man rested the clipboard against his hip and extended his hand expectantly.
John pulled his wallet out of his back pocket. "Fifty now, fifty more if you help carry it up to my apartment."
John didn’t miss Chas’s gaping. "Fifty - you must be - you’ve never tipped me fifty cents!" Chas spluttered indignantly.
"That’s because I compensate you with my charming wit. Now help the nice extortionist with the crate."
The driver was unlocking the back of his truck. He swung open the doors, letting a blast of refrigerated air wash over John and Chas. Chas craned his neck to peer around the driver. John also noted the rows of shelves holding secured black bags. "Are those," Chas swallowed, "bodies?"
"Now I know why you chose a rewarding career in exorcism instead of med school. They’re for students," John replied and waved at Chas to help the driver, who was pushing a pine crate John had last seen on a buying trip to New York towards the back of the truck.
"I’ll be glad to be rid of this thing," the driver said, shoving the ungainly crate into Chas’s unsteady grip. "Damn thing makes my truck smell like a pot pourri factory." Indeed, as Chas just missed dropping his end onto the pavement, John caught a whiff of flowers from the box. It was just as well - this way he knew he didn’t have to check to see if his contact had swindled him. It meant the contents were the genuine article.
Chas and the driver wrestled the crate up the narrow back stairs to John’s apartment ("what did you order, John, lead-plated rocks?") without taking too much paint off the wall. Well, not so much anyone would notice, anyway.
When the driver had left, with his extra fifty dollars that Chas had stared at meaningfully, Chas turned to John. "Well?"
"Well what?" John said, wandering over to the shelves he used as a liquor cabinet to pour himself a shot of Jack. He could already feel an almost-pleasant tingling in the tips of his fingers and toes and thought he’d rather have the familiar tingling of alcohol than the strange influence from the crate.
Chas was hovering between John and the crate, swaying a little one way, then the other, as if undecided about which was more interesting. "What’s in it?"
John swirled the whisky in his glass. "I already know what’s in it - wouldn’t have shipped it here if I didn’t. Thanks for your help, Chas, really. I don’t think I’ll be heading out again today, so -"
"Oh, no no no no no. You do not drag me out here, force me into manual labor then not even let me know what’s worth a hundred dollar tip."
John hid a smile behind his glass and shrugged toward a crow bar he’d left leaning in the corner of his apartment for just this moment.
Chas tackled the lid of the crate, saving John from another menial task he wasn’t looking forward to. Chas threw off the lid, causing a small explosion of pink peanuts to skitter across the floor and cling to Chas’s trousers.
"You didn’t. Oh, you didn’t!" Chas squeaked like a sixteen-year-old who’d just gotten a Ferrari for Christmas. "Oh my God! It’s a - It really - How did you?"
John leaned past Chas to look inside the crate. Lying surrounded by pink styrofoam peanuts was a perfectly preserved corpse, with no signs of decay or rigor mortis. With the lid off, the floral smell was unmistakable. The man reposed with hands clasped loosely over his chest, a beatific smile on his face. The body was dressed in a plain-spun brown robe, tied around the waist with a rope. His bare, callused feet jutted into the air, one pink peanut clinging perniciously to the underside of a pinky toe. He was bald, with trailing white beard that obscured his neck and part of his chest. The wrinkles creasing his forehead and mouth made him look like a thin Santa Claus. For all John knew this could be a hobo that had kicked it in an alleyway ten minutes ago. If it weren’t for the pleasant aroma.
"Yes," John interrupted, "I did." He didn’t even try to hide his smug grin. "A real, genuine, one-hundred-percent blessed saint."
"This is - oh, wow." Chas beamed at John then turned back to the crate. John watched with amusement as Chas tried to clear away the styrofoam as quickly as possible without brushing the corpse. It was a like watching a combination of an archaeologist and the Big Bad Wolf. Chas leaned in to examine the face. He pulled back, looking at John in awe. "Do you know who this is?"
"No," John said, still resting nonchalantly against the table.
"No," Chas said, biting his lip, "I think this is -" and then he dashed out of John’s apartment, taking the stairs so fast John was amazed he didn’t just slide down the banister.
John chuckled to himself and looked at his acquisition. If Chas had looked at him with hero worship before, now it looked like he was about to start painting icons and lighting candles at his own personal John Constantine shrine.
He’d barely finished the thought when Chas banged back into the apartment, clutching one of the books John recognized as a usual resident of Chas’s dashboard. Chas flipped through the book, stared intently at a page, then at the corpse, back and forth until he was practically bouncing on his feet.
"This is St. Wilfrid!" he crowed. Chas pushed the book towards John, and John had to admit that the wood carving printed on the page bore an uncanny resemblance to the corpse in his apartment.
"He was the Bishop of York - born 634, died 709," Chas said from memory, still holding the book towards John. "He was responsible for solidifying the power of the Holy See in England. So really, you can blame Henry VIII and the Anglican church on this guy. If not for him, English kings might never have been Catholic in the first place."
Chas shook himself, closing the book, "Anyway, this guy preached like a motherfucker." He looked down at the saint reverently. "People say that when he spoke, the Holy Spirit would come down and touch the people in the church. Real tongues of fire Pentecostal stuff." Chas looked back at John in awe.
John had to admit, he was impressed. "Knew I kept you around for a reason. The seller thought he was some lower clergy member, fifteenth century."
"Pfft," Chas grimaced skeptically. "Please. Who’d you get it from - a little Chinese lady on the corner? Fifteenth century, my ass."
Chas crouched down next to the crate and reached out a hand, not quite brushing the forehead of the body. He pulled it back and quickly crossed himself. "The point is," Chas said reverently, "you have an honest-to-god founder of the church in your living room."
John crouched next to him, grinning. "It’s a great angle. I’ll get a much better price for him."
"You’re going to sell him?" Chas exclaimed incredulously. "You can’t - it’s St. Wilfrid!"
John grinned at him. "What did you think I was going to do with him? Consecrate communion wafers?"
*
After Chas left - reluctantly, with many longing glances at the dead saint - John smoked half a pack staring at the crate.
John was just an intermediary - he’d earn a commission on whatever price he could get for the whole saint - but anything he could squeeze out in addition to that would be gravy. His mind immediately leapt to relics - there weren’t too many places a private collector could go to get one, ever since the overzealous Catholic Church had emptied every catacomb that could possibly hold Christian martyrs a few centuries ago to supply their churches with holy objects.
John did a little mental math - each finger could be sold intact or divided up into three separate relics. Price would vary on the size of the piece, of course, but he could expect anywhere from fifty dollars to a couple thousand per knuckle. And if he sold an entire hand - well. Not to mention the toes.
He might even keep a finger for himself.
Of course, he’d have to be careful. His contacts had probably heard that there was an intact saint on offer, so one without any digits would arouse suspicion. If word got around that he’d skimmed, no reputable dealer would touch him. But as long as he was careful, no one but his bank account needed to know.
John toyed with the idea of enlisting Beeman to construct decorative receptacles for the fingers; 90% of the value of a reliquary was presentation. Only a very few would be able to sense directly the power of the saint, and for everybody else, a severed finger didn’t command nearly as much respect as a hand-crafted bronze container concealing the artifact.
John crouched by the body to inspect the hands. He could feel the power trapped within it. A skilled mage could harness that power and focus it like a weapon, but toying with God’s chosen was not a good way to earn his favor. John wasn’t that reckless, or that stupid.
He blew out another puff and closed his eyes. Might as well get to it.
John rummaged through his kitchen drawer until he found an old rusted pair of curved pruning shears. True, he didn’t have any hedges to trim, but in his line of work, pruners were surprisingly useful. Like now, for instance.
He knelt beside the body and pulled the left hand so that it draped out of the crate. The limb moved supply, as if attached to a living being. Touching it, he felt a buzzing sensation radiate up his arm to his shoulder, just short of being uncomfortable. When he let go, he found himself unconsciously rubbing his hand against his thigh, as if the pins and needles sensation had been caused by his arm falling asleep.
He gingerly placed the shears around the base of the finger, then rocked back on his heels so he could grip the ends of the handles for the best leverage. He turned his head away and squeezed. The shears came together with a crunch like a turkey’s wishbone being snapped, then there was a soft thud as the pinky hit the floor. He set down the shears to pick up the finger, then had to juggle it like a hot potato until he could drop it on the table. Direct contact with that sort of power was sending all sorts of unpleasant thrills through him. It was pulling at him, demanding surrender, but the feeling was invasive and unwanted. By the time he set it down, he found himself struggling to catch his breath.
Oh, that would definitely be worth at least a few thousand, he thought, possibly more if he could find the right buyer.
John looked back at the body, with one hand trailing over the side, fingertips brushing the floor - well, three fingertips anyway. He picked up the shears, but the thought of cutting off another finger made him feel a little queasy. Might as well price out the market a little before getting ahead of himself with the chopping, he thought.
He smoked another cigarette before he felt normal enough to handle the finger again, and this time he grabbed a washcloth from his bathroom before picking it up. He wrapped the finger in the towel. Neither the finger nor the hand bled where they’d been severed, which was unsettling. John chided himself for expecting anything else from a thousand-year-old corpse. He dropped both the shears and the finger into his kitchen drawer, pushing the bundle towards the back.
Grabbing an oven mitt, he went back over to the saint and moved the arm back to cross over the chest. He placed the right hand over the mutilated one so that without close examination, both hands looked intact.
John covered the crate before turning in. Power like that would call to others. He hoped the wards on his apartment would mute its pull, but it wouldn’t be long before word got around that he had an extra guest.
John stretched out on the sheets, sure that he was sleeping safer now than he had in years.
*
John’s limbs felt warm and heavy. He curled onto his side, away from the morning light. He hoped the movement hadn’t woken Kit - she was such a light sleeper.
Fragments of dreams clung to him, and he tried to recapture them. They’d been happy, and peaceful. He could remember an open space, light. Something about wings and being led like a member of the flock by its shepherd.
He smiled and nuzzled into the pillow. Kit’s fingers tickled at the nape of his neck. He rolled, reaching out for her hand.
He came fully awake sharply and looked across his empty bedspread to the brown mesh beyond it. Kit had left him more than a year ago, after he’d come home from one too many close calls. She’d told him she loved him, and she couldn’t watch him destroy himself. Then she’d walked out. He hadn’t dreamt of her in months.
He sat up, pushing the sheets back, trying to mentally push back the cloying comfort of his sleep. He knew why he expected Kit to be beside him. Lying in the pre-dawn dark, he’d felt God’s grace wrap around him like a lover’s arms.
Now he just felt sick.
He stumbled into the bathroom, the yellow lights casting a pallor on his stubbled cheeks. It was a rookie mistake. He should have known better. But he’d let his guard down because the power was of Divine origin. He’d gone to sleep, no less, in the presence of a powerful magical object. It had pushed into his subconscious, giving a false glow of acceptance. The feeling was nothing more than a trick, caused only by the saint.
John threw on yesterday’s clothes and banged out of the apartment, needing some distance to clear his head.
*
John returned to his apartment midmorning, with two bottles of Jack and a fresh pack of Silk Cuts. He had to step over a bum at the base of his stairs. As he passed, the man grabbed for his pant leg, mumbling something about "the calling" and "the hand of God."
One in three homeless in the U.S. was insane, John thought. Why they all had to hang around the bowling alley, he didn’t know.
He entered his apartment and turned to drop the brown paper bag on the table. His toe kicked something, and it skittered across the floor, wedging itself under the edge of one of the jars of holy water that lined the wall.
He crossed the room and crouched to pick it up. It was a St. Christopher’s medallion. He turned it over, inspecting the weathered metal. It was his medallion - but he’d thought he’d lost it during an exorcism in West Hollywood last fall. He stood and humphed to himself, still toying with the medallion. It must have caught in his coat, he thought, and fallen out on his floor later.
John froze suddenly and turned to look at the crate sitting innocuously in the middle of the floor. He couldn’t see St. Wilfrid’s face, but even through the wood he felt like the old guy was winking at him. He dropped the medallion on the table next to the bag and crossed to the coffin. He kicked off the cover and looked down into the face, serene and still.
The door to his apartment opened and banged against the wall. "John!" Chas called, waving something in his hand.
John turned from the crate to see his apprentice’s ebullient face. "Look what I found! I was vacuuming the back of the cab, and I found this stuffed in between the seat cushions!" Chas pressed his prize into John’s hand: a folded hundred dollar bill.
"One of my fares must have dropped it," he said, gleefully snatching it back. He snapped the bill, holding it triumphantly in the air. "Oooo," he crowed, "somebody’s getting lucky tonight! That’s right, ladies, the drinks are on the Chas-man."
John shook his head ruefully and retrieved the medallion from the table. "I found this this morning."
He dropped the medallion into Chas’s palm. "Mine’s better," Chas said automatically, and then looked at it more closely. "Hey - didn’t you lose this at…" He looked up and John nodded, hoping the kid would be bright enough to connect the dots.
John could see the epiphany on Chas’s face, and he turned towards St. Wilfrid’s reposing body. "This is an actual miracle, isn’t it," he said in quiet awe.
"Yes, the miracle of Chas trying to get laid. Right up there with the loaves and the fishes." Chas smacked him in the shoulder, and then turned back to the body.
"People often experience miracles in the presence of the bodies of saints," he spoke, more to himself than to John. "Finding lost items, healing, speaking in tongues, communing with animals, all that sort of stuff. I always believed it, but I didn’t believe it, you know?" Chas removed his cap and stared at the crate in abject wonder. "The hand of God, right here. Acting on the life of Chas Kramer. Amazing."
Chas knelt next to the body, then froze and leaned in closer. He moved the untouched right hand over, apparently unaffected by the power that had overwhelmed John the previous day. "John…" he said, his voice low and threatening. "Where’s his finger?"
John tried for surprise. "Is it missing?"
"Of course it’s - John! Did you cut off his finger?" Chas was standing now, glaring at him. "You did, didn’t you?"
John gave up trying to look innocent. He shrugged. "I can make more if I sell him in pieces than if I sell him whole. It’s business."
Chas looked scandalized. Chas might have an attitude and a foul mouth, but at heart he was still a good little Catholic. He never came around Sunday mornings, and even though John never asked and Chas never offered, John had a fair guess where he was. If you were in this line of work, it was either because you had a lot of faith or none at all.
"John, this is a fucking saint here!" Chas pointed to the crate, as if John could have forgotten. "This is one of His Chosen. This body was blessed. And you - you - mutilated it!"
"This from the kid who’s going to use ‘the Hand of God’ to buy some bimbo a few drinks," John knew he was being petty, but didn’t care. "Obviously God feels a great personal connection to you, which is why He’s buying your faith with a hundred bucks. That makes you cheaper than my last date."
"This is not about me, John," Chas said. John didn’t think he’d ever seen him so mad.
John rolled his eyes. "Come on, Chas. Don’t be so naïve. The Catholic Church does the exact same thing. They took the bodies of the martyrs and cut them up into hundreds of little pieces so all their little churches could have one."
"It’s not your place, John," Chas snarled.
"Not my place?" John knew his place - God had chosen it for him at birth. His place was haunted by visions he couldn’t control or understand. God cursed him then abandoned him. God let him be damned. John had never explained all this to Chas - if pressed he’d say it never came up. John’s life was his trump card, his proof that God was a vicious son of a bitch. In truth, John didn’t know if Chas would agree with him and lose his faith, or keep his faith and condemn John. He didn’t like to picture either outcome. "After the crap He pulls, God has no right to tell me my place. And you certainly don’t."
"Maybe not, John, but somebody has to."
John felt like he was having an entirely different argument than Chas. "Right. And it falls to you because you’re such a faithful believer."
In other circumstances, Chas might have seen that description as a compliment, but John could see Chas had clearly understood it as he’d meant it - as an insult. "Just because I don’t need to see God raise the dead or walk on fucking water doesn’t mean I don’t understand," Chas said coldly. "I have faith, John. You should try it sometime. Maybe if you did you wouldn’t be such an asshole."
"Fine. You want to hang out here and commune with his Holiness, be my guest. Just make sure to lock the door when you leave." John stormed off in what he knew was a childish huff.
He hated Chas for having more in common with St. Wilfrid than he ever would. It was like the two of them were ganging up on him. After all, what he felt when he touched the body would be a preview of coming attractions to Chas, but it was just a fucking tease to him.
He could hear Chas call after him, but the kid didn’t follow.
Which suited John just fine.
*
"Cow with a halo," John said, pushing past the bouncer into Midnite’s club almost before he’d gotten a nod.
It may have been 11AM, but the club was crowded with half-breeds. Angels and demons didn’t worry too much about propriety when they sought out temptation, John figured. He quickly scanned the floor, looking for a familiar innocent-seeming brunette, but didn’t spot her. John crossed to the bar, sure that she’d show if he hung around long enough.
His argument with Chas rattled in his head, but he refused to feel bad about it. Sometimes the kid was so blind to the truth behind all this religious ceremony, John wondered why he ever thought taking him on as an apprentice was a good idea.
John felt the sanctity of the saint clinging to him like cobwebs. Right now he just wanted to wipe away the reminder of his own damnation. The best way he knew how to do that was with his favorite half-demon, Ellie, and far too much alcohol.
He’d barely given his order to the bartender when he heard the tap of an expensive cane next to his bar stool. "Hello, Midnite," he said charmingly.
Midnite stood at a slight cant, like a model showing off the latest line of pinstripe suits. The smile he gave John from under his fedora belonged on a shark, his white teeth a gash across his dark face. John was reminded again of why this man was one of the most respected - and powerful - in the occult circles.
"May I have a word?" he asked in the exotic Caribbean accent he had never tried to lose.
"Join me for a drink," John said turning to the bar. He knew what Midnite wanted. Didn’t mean he’d make it easy for him.
Midnite leaned in, that shark’s grin still shining in the dim light. "In private."
John nodded to the bartender, and then followed Papa Midnite through two sets of padded doors to Midnite’s sanctum. John always felt like he was walking into a bank vault - John wouldn’t be surprised if the room was airtight. Midnite was paranoid (careful, John corrected himself) enough to make such arrangements. Granted, most bank vaults weren’t appointed like bordellos, but that was just Midnite all over. John felt the tingle of the wards Midnite surrounded himself with, the only thing that had made it possible for him to have remained safely neutral so long.
Which was exactly why John knew Midnite would be interested.
"I hear you have a new roommate," Midnite said, sitting comfortably behind the table that served as his desk.
"Well, you know how the housing market is nowadays," John said, sitting across from him. "Things are always cheaper with a roomie."
Midnite grinned and cocked his eyebrow. "From what I hear about this roommate, ‘cheap’ isn’t the first word that springs to mind."
"Oh?" John replied coyly.
"I’m sure I’d be able to make a substantial contribution to your … rent … in exchange for this roommate."
"Who says I’m looking for another arrangement? I quite like his company. But if you’d like another body around the place, I’m sure Chas would be more than happy to crash on your couch."
Midnite narrowed his eyes, dropping the playful pretense. "You’re not keeping him, John. You can’t afford your own personal guardian angel."
"I think you just insulted me," he cracked.
"I know you’re looking to sell."
John hummed noncommittally.
"I just want to make sure you understand what will happen to you if I hear you’ve sold it to someone else. And I will hear." Midnite almost growled that last part, leaning his hands on the table menacingly. John had known Midnite far too long to be intimidated by his tactics.
"If there’s one thing I never doubt, it’s your resourcefulness," John replied, unfazed.
"And it had better be untouched, John," Midnite added. "Not nearly as valuable otherwise."
John hid his nervous swallow, though it seemed to him that Midnite must have been following his train of thought. For all he knew, Midnite already knew about what he’d been up to that afternoon. "I have a lot to consider before I’m willing to take offers," John said, standing. "Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some drinking I need to catch up on."
Midnite curled his lip and sat back down. Only someone who knew him as well as John did would recognize the gesture for the sulk it was. Midnite put up a good show, but at heart he was still a five-year-old who didn’t understand why he couldn’t get everything he asked for.
"I’ll expect to hear back from you," Midnite said, as John approached the exit.
"Oh, you will - I’ve come across some lovely twelfth century crucifixes you’d be interested in."
Midnite actually snarled at that. John laughed and crossed back into the club.
*
John sat back down at the bar and waved to the bartender to bring over a glass of the cheap beer. It looked and tasted like piss, but after four or five, he didn’t mind.
He didn’t know how many he’d had when he felt a warm hand trail along the nape of his neck, making him goose-pimple all over. "Hello, John," a sultry voice breathed, the warm air puffing into his ear.
"Hello, Ellie," John said, turning to look at her. She left her arm around his shoulder and leaned so far into his personal space he couldn’t focus on both her eyes at the same time. Or maybe that was just the beer. He leaned back until he could see her face clearly; she grinned and a red gleam flashed momentarily in her eyes.
"I hear you’ve been looking for me," she said, nuzzling her nose against his cheek. John just tilted his head invitingly and looked back at his empty glass. Ellie stopped suddenly and drew back.
"Something’s different about you, John," she said, intrigued. "I can smell it."
"New cologne," John said, swirling the glass.
"No," Ellie drew out the syllable and leaned in again. She ran her tongue from just under his collar up to his earlobe, tasting him. "It’s not that," she said, wrapping her arm around his neck to stroke his cheek. "Something else." She mouthed along his jaw line, then drew back.
"You’ve been to see Gabriel, haven’t you? What have you been doing with the Snob? I thought you only played with me," she pouted. She pulled back again, and John felt chills run down his spine. "I can taste Him all over you." Her eyes flicked upwards on Him, and John didn’t need to ask who she meant.
John tried to look innocent, but was too drunk to know if he was pulling it off. He turned to the bartender instead. "Can I get a blowjob for the lady?" The bartender pulled out a shot glass. "Better make that a double," John added.
"Oh, John," Ellie said, sitting on the stool next to him. "You say the sweetest things."
Later, when Ellie pulled him out of the club, John was surprised to find that it was dark.
*
The bar of light falling across John’s face felt like a letter opener digging into his eyes. He rolled away from it, but the motion set the headache off anyway. He tried to crawl back into some semblance of unconsciousness, but it was useless. The pressure in his bladder was reaching critical levels. It was move now or face the consequences.
He sat up, squinting his eyes, trying to determine where the bathroom was. He hadn’t looked last night when they’d checked into this pay-by-the-hour motel. Ellie had been distracting him far too much by the time they got to the room.
Ellie was long gone, but he’d never expected her to stay. She wasn’t much of a cuddler.
John rocked to a standing position and the sheet came off the bed with him, sticking in unpleasant places. He peeled it off and threw it on the floor. He stumbled to the window and drew the blinds, more for his eyes than for his modesty. Definitely too late for that now.
The inside of his mouth felt like he’d licked the rail bed of the New York subway. He hoped that didn’t mean he’d fallen asleep with a cigarette in his mouth. He’d done that before, and it wasn’t at all pleasant.
After he relieved himself, he stuck his head under the faucet and rinsed his mouth, trying not to think of what else might have been in this sink since the last time a maid came through here.
He found his clothes crumpled in a corner next to a dried pool of vomit. It might have been his. He inspected them as he pulled them on and was happy to find they had no stains. That was something at least.
He sat on the edge of the bed, as far from the yellowed stains as possible, and lit a cigarette. He dragged on it, trying to wait out his headache. Eventually it was the thought of Advil that got him on his feet again.
All in all, it was the complete opposite of the previous morning, but far more of his mornings were like this. John felt absurdly proud of that. He felt like shit, but it was only his fault. He had complete control of his destiny - he maintained the absolute ability to make himself feel like crap any time he wanted. He thought about laughing, but figured it would hurt too much anyway. It wasn’t much, but it was all the control he had.
*
When John pushed open the side door in the alley that led up to his lone apartment, he wasn’t surprised to see the bum from yesterday huddled in the dim light. The enclosed space was starting to reek of him.
John was surprised to find three more people sitting, singing hymns, in front of his doorway at the top of the stairs: there was a young couple that looked like they’d missed their true calling as hippies and a middle-aged man in business attire, all well-groomed, all clearly not bums.
"What the fuck are you doing in front of my apartment," he whispered harshly, unable to work himself up to more volume.
The girl looked at him with eyes too wide and innocent. "We had to come," she said, and that looked like that was all the explanation he’d get out of her.
John looked at the business man, who shrugged. "I just felt like I was supposed to be here," he said.
"What is this, Close Encounters of the Third Kind? Do I look like Richard fucking Dreyfuss? Get the fuck out of my hallway!" John grated, trying to yell without raising his voice.
The three looked at him a little piteously and John knew that he must stink as badly as the hobo on the first floor. "Go!" he barked, kicking the doorframe for emphasis, then winced as his big toe started throbbing along with his head.
They looked wary, but reluctantly filed down the hallway and down the stairs, leaving John to regret both the shouting and the kicking.
John threw open his door and looked hard at the crate. "Fuck you," he said quietly.
A note fluttered to the floor, loosed from where it had been stuck between the door and the jamb. He bent down to pick it up, moving slowly so as not to jostle his head. It read simply:
Go fuck yourself, you self-righteous prick. - CK
He walked over to the trash can by his sink to throw it out and stopped. Sitting on top of the empty beer bottles and cellophane cigarette wrappers in the trash were a half a dozen similar pieces of paper, crumpled up. John didn’t know which was funnier: that Chas had written "Go fuck yourself, you self-righteous prick" and stuck it on his door, or that he’d gone through several drafts before landing on that particular epithet. John decided the most amusing bit was that Chas had signed it - as if anyone else would be sticking abusive notes in his door.
John looked around his apartment and found Chas had replaced the cover on the crate. He probably hadn’t stayed too long after John barged off; John didn’t often acknowledge it, but the kid did have a day job. Chas had probably just stuck around long enough to short-sheet his bed and saran wrap his toilet.
John swallowed as many Advil as he thought he reasonably could without causing acute liver failure. He sank into the hot water filling his porcelain tub and made a mental note to wheedle Chas into going to Home Depot to get a shower attachment. Once Chas stopped telling him to fuck himself, of course. It wasn’t worth entertaining the thought that John might actually manage to drive him off, like he had Kit. Chas was tougher than that; he’d come back.
John’s muscles started to relax, but the headache remained, just sharp enough to make it impossible to think about anything else. He considered drowning himself, but was fairly certain that would land him somewhere a lot worse than a hangover.
When he couldn’t reasonably pretend the water was warm anymore, he climbed out. Now that the edge was off the hangover, he could feel the warm glow of the saint seeping into him again. He dressed perfunctorily, keeping an eye on the crate as if worried it would move if he looked away.
Thanks to Chas he had a coffee-maker and a supply of quality coffee beans, an un-asked for Christmas present that hadn’t been reciprocated. He chugged the first cup, then poured another.
He swung a chair around so that it was facing the crate, and after a thoughtful moment, removed the lid. He sat staring at the beatific face for a few minutes, sipping from his coffee.
"So," he spoke into the silence of his apartment. "How’s it hanging, Bill? Had any divine revelations lately?"
John set the coffee cup on the table behind him and massaged his temple with one hand. "I bet you never had a hangover. Bet you never woke up with your mouth tasting like an ash tray. Of course you didn’t. You didn’t even know what tobacco was, did you?" John leaned forward, resting his forearms on his knees. "And I’m sure you never slept with a half demon to try to... Never fucked anyone at all, probably. Between the two of us, you really missed out. The things half-breeds can do with their tails, I’m telling you. Whatever He’s offering can’t be worth it."
John leaned back in his chair again, feeling smug, as if he’d won something. But as the silence stretched out, the lack of retort angered him. Warmth spread over him, drawing from the saint’s body. The comfort felt insidious, unwanted. The perfect passive aggressive rejoinder to his antagonism. "Is this what it felt like to be you? All the time? That would make it pretty damn easy, don’t you think? I mean, what makes you so special? Anyone could be a saint if they felt His presence like you did. You know what that makes you? Lucky. Not righteous. He gave you a gift - you didn’t do a goddamn thing to deserve it. So why do you get to lie there looking so pleased about it?"
John walked over to the crate and knelt next to it, leaning in so close to St. Wilfrid’s face he could see the pores on his nose. "You’re an intercessor, huh, Bill? The Big Guy listens to you, right? Well, the next time you see him, make sure to tell him this from John Constantine." John extended his middle finger emphatically at the corpse, instantly regretting it.
He could know - know for a fact - that he was going to Hell when he died; he could know that God was a vindictive bastard who’d curse somebody at birth, then screw them over just for breaking rules they didn’t know were there, and still John felt like a kid who’d just flicked off the teacher. He still wanted to deserve that grace he felt seeping out of the saint into the air of his apartment.
John shook his head. He was no better than Chas.
*
In the late afternoon, he got a call from a Jesuit priest out in Pico-Union. Seems the man, whose voice quavered over the phone, had heard John was someone who could handle certain ‘situations.’ John had five guesses as to who had been whispering his name in the priestly brotherhood, and he didn’t need four of them.
Chas hadn’t been by at all yet. The kid must still be pissed, especially since John knew he must be itching to spend more time studying St. Wilfrid.
He’d get over it.
John called his cell phone, knowing that Chas always picked up, even in traffic. "Chas Kramer," the voice came through his phone after the second ring, cheerful.
"Hey Chas," he said.
"Oh," Chas said, his intonation flattening out. "It’s you."
"Yeah, Chas - look," he paused, wondering if he should apologize, then figured he shouldn’t have to - he’d been completely justified. "I’ve got an exorcism. I could use a lift."
There was silence on the other end of the line, and John wondered for a moment if Chas would tell him to fuck off.
"Whatever," Chas eventually said and hung up.
John figured that meant he was coming.
*
Chas burst into his apartment just when John was beginning to wonder if he’d misinterpreted the ‘whatever.’
"Why are there hippies chanting in the hall?" Chas said, grumpily.
Chas left the door open, not moving too far into John’s space. Behind him, John caught the flickering light of candles and heard the low murmuring of prayer.
John jerked his head to the crate by way of explanation.
"You charging admission now too?" Chas asked testily.
"Don’t be asinine," John replied. "Just drive me to Pico Boulevard."
"Fine," Chas said and turned around to leave.
Before John followed, he hesitated, then impulsively grabbed the washcloth-wrapped bundle out of his kitchen drawer and stuck it in the inside pocket of his coat.
The people in the hallway looked up as Chas picked his way around them. John noticed that the three from that morning were back, and they’d brought friends. He could only guess that the bum was still curled at the bottom of the stairs.
"All right, you credulous sheep. This is private property, and I will call the police if you don’t leave right now," John said, mustering all of his considerable hard-assed menace, even though both he and Chas knew it was a bluff. "And if you don’t move your asses in the next five seconds, I will go downstairs, bring back a few bowling balls and treat you all like my own personal set of pins."
Now they looked a little frightened - probably less because they believed John would do it, and more because they thought he was a raving lunatic and bound to do something unpleasant. "Get the fuck out!" John yelled, and they finally scattered, though they stopped long enough to gather the candles and Kabbalah books lying in the hallway.
By the time they’d all dribbled out into the alley again, John was pissed and tired. Chas looked like John had kicked his puppy. Great, John thought. Fucking great. Because this was, of course, the perfect frame of mind for doing a nerve-grating, teeth-jarring exorcism.
Chas stamped down the stairs without saying a word, and John followed him to the cab. The entire trip to Pico was silent. When they pulled up in front of the address the priest had given him, Chas popped the cab into park and grabbed a book from the dashboard - it was the same one Chas had been reading two days ago. Chas furiously flipped it open and didn’t look at John. He didn’t even ask John if he could tag along, which was about when John realized he was going to have to fix this or risk finding alternate means of transportation on the way home.
But first he just needed to get through the damn exorcism.
*
The possessed girl looked about five years old. She was tied to her cot with wire; from the welts around her wrists, she’d probably been there for days. She lay limply on the bed, not moving when John entered the room.
The priest he had spoken to was consoling the parents in the part of the room that served as the living room - the girl’s bedroom was partitioned off with a sheet strung across a corner with a clothesline. They didn’t speak any English, but from John’s limited understanding of Spanish he pieced together that they had tried to banish the demon themselves first before going to a priest. When John drew closer, he could see the bruises and burn marks that were the evidence of amateur attempts at exorcism.
If your car stopped running, you’d take it to a mechanic. Why people thought that when their child was possessed they could handle it themselves, he didn’t know.
The exorcism itself was easy, possibly the most straight-forward expulsion he’d ever done. Too bad Chas was being pissy in the car - this would have been a perfect case for him.
John barely had to touch the girl’s forehead with the sign of the cross for him to feel the demon detach itself and slip away. When he stepped back from the bed, he realized that he had kept his right hand tucked into his inside jacket pocket the whole time, clutching the bundle there.
*
John headed back to the cab, unsurprised when neither the family of the afflicted nor the priest offered anything more concrete than heartfelt thanks in payment.
Easy or not, he felt the edgy hunger that always attended exorcisms gnawing at his stomach. That, combined with the slightly queasy sensation he felt from the pull of the relic in his pocket, made him decide he’d better eat something soon.
As he walked to the curb, his hand continued to drift towards his pocket. He had to consciously force his arm to stay at his side.
Chas didn’t look up when he reached the cab. John pulled on the door handle, only to find it locked. Chas never locked the rear doors of his cab: he couldn’t without crawling all over the inside of his cab to reach the locks. This wasn’t accidental, no matter how hard Chas pretended it was. Now who was being petty?
John rapped on the window, and Chas held up an index finger, his eyes never leaving the book. John waited for a moment, and when Chas didn’t move, turned his back on the cab. He’d just started to wonder if he could get through a whole cigarette before Chas unlocked the door when he heard the lock pop.
John climbed into the cab. "Sorry about that," Chas said with the same cool tone he’d used all afternoon. "Just had to finish the chapter. Didn’t want to lose my place."
Chas was baiting him, and John could feel the gall rising. He took a deep breath and tried to catch Chas’s eye in the rearview mirror. The sun was just beginning to set, casting the interior of the cab in orange as the light refracted through LA’s infamous smog.
"Hey," he said evenly. "I’m starving. Feel like Chinese?" It wasn’t much of a peace offering, but that was the best anyone would expect from John Constantine.
Chas finally looked at him in the mirror. "Chung King?" Chas inquired suspiciously.
Chung King was Chas’s favorite. John preferred Yangtze. "Sure," John said.
Chas smiled back at him, and John felt the anger that had been radiating off of Chas all afternoon disappear. Things were normal again - well, as normal as they could be while John had the sensation of ants crawling along his skin. He’d tried the drug thing when he was younger, and being near this relic was reminding him of some of his worse trips.
Chas pulled up across the street from Chung King just as the streetlights were flickering on. He jumped out of the car and jogged across the intersection towards the neon-lit storefront.
John leaned his head back against the headrest, trying to uncoil the tension that was building in him the longer he kept the relic so close to his skin. He thought about tossing it into the glove compartment, but caution won out over personal discomfort. Besides, he didn’t want to start up this whole fracas with Chas again, and finding the amputated pinky lying around his cab certainly would.
John checked his watch. After five minutes he decided he needed a smoke. Out of respect for Chas’s other patrons, he climbed out of the cab. While he tapped out a cigarette, his stomach clenched and he knew he was about to lose his battle with the nausea.
There was a narrow alley on the other side of the sidewalk, and John just managed to make it into the relative solitude before puking. He rested one hand on his knee and the other hand on a slatted crate that had been dumped next to the trash bags as he tried to fight down another heave. He hung his head and spat, taking a moment to regain his equilibrium. He was thankful that the twilight would make it impossible for Chas to notice his ashen complexion - there were few things worse than Chas being a mother hen.
He straightened up and pressed his forehead against the brick wall, taking a few deep breaths. As the pounding in his ears lessened, he heard the grinding of grit against pavement deeper in the alley. He twisted his head, and could just make out the silhouettes of two men, huddled conspiratorially together.
They were looking at him.
One of them, holding a bottle in a brown bag, leaned towards the other and whispered something in his ear. Bottle-less chuckled and lurched towards John. He looked about as steady as John felt.
John straightened up and stepped away from the wall. He thought briefly about stepping out into the pools of light on the boulevard, but didn’t like the idea of turning his back on this guy. As he came closer, John could see that he was Hispanic - dark-skinned with a moustache, wearing a wifebeater. A tattoo darkened one shoulder, but John couldn’t make it out.
"You want something?" John asked, raising an eyebrow.
The man replied in Spanish - from what John could tell, he was being mugged. Fuck that. John didn’t move, wondering if he should pretend he didn’t understand.
Wifebeater shouted the same request and shoved him.
Before he thought too much about it, John snapped back with a punch, but the shove had thrown him off balance and his arm pin-wheeled out, clipping the guy across the brow, probably causing more damage to his knuckles than the guy’s face.
John’s attacker snarled and punched John hard in the stomach. John felt his breath leave in a rush. The thug drew back, but John couldn’t draw his breath back in. His knees felt watery and he wondered what the hell was going on. John had been punched a lot of times in a lot of different places; it’d always hurt, but it had never left him feeling this weak.
The mugger stepped back, and John glanced down at his still-fisted hand. He was holding a knife, crimson against his dark skin.
Part II
Read entire fic on AO3.