Constantine

by John Shirley

  She rocked back in her swivel chair and scrolled down through articles mentioning Constantine. They had headlines like:

  OCCULT ACTIVITY ON THE RISE

  and

  CLAIMED POSSESSION REFUTED BY BISHOP

  and

  SATANIC CULT DISSOLVED

  Some of the photos with the articles were disturbing. Patterns drawn in blood on a wall. Symbols burned into a ceiling. A crucifix burned to little more than ashes. And there was Constantine himself, in handcuffs and a rueful expression, looking at a mother holding her infant son in her arms. A man standing with them, unhandcuffed; caption said he was a Father Hennessy.

  A line from the article struck her: . . . insufficient evidence to prosecute . . .

  She scrolled down, seeing the variety of cities where Constantine had made waves. London, Paris, Rome, Budapest, Moscow . . . Los Angeles.

  She went back to the LAPD case files, and scanned down . . . till she found Constantine’s last known address. She highlighted it and told the computer to print it.

  The printer started to hum, hissily shuffling paper inside itself. And then the phone rang—seeming so loud in the quiet room she jumped a bit in her chair. She picked up the receiver.

  “Dodson . . . Hello?”

  No one there. Not even a dial tone. No sound of someone at the other end.

  She hung up—and the phone on the next desk rang. She got up and put her hand on it . . . and the phone on the desk beyond that one rang. Then another phone, and another, and another yet, till every phone in the room was ringing.

  She tensed, and then thought: No. Stay calm. Stay calm and see . . .

  And as if in response to her refusal to be intimidated, the phones stopped ringing. All at once.

  She took a long breath, looking around. But there was nothing to see.

  She stepped to the printer, plucked off the page with Constantine’s address, and left the building. Kind of hastily.

  ~

  Chaz slammed the taxi’s door and hurried after Constantine. Always trailing after. “It’s usually the bear, right?” Chaz asked. “Or three ducks in a cloud?”

  Constantine just shook his head.

  The rain had eased to a drizzle by the time they got to the EI Carmen. “So am I coming in with you?” Chaz asked.

  “Give it a shot,” Constantine said.

  “Give it a shot? What does that mean?”

  But Constantine was already on his way through the crowd outside the club. Some very elegant people here, Chaz noted.

  Chaz heard a lady in a sparkly black gown say, in a sort of stage whisper, “I understand there’s a kind of backroom club here that almost no one can get into . . .”

  “You wouldn’t want to go there, from what I’ve heard,” her handsome, tuxedoed companion said.

  Constantine and Chaz threaded through the crowd and into the bar, where the sounds of a mariachi band pervaded the air like the flavor of pineapple. Chaz suddenly wanted a piña colada. But there wasn’t time for that—Constantine was headed for the back, through a side door.

  Chaz hurriedly followed, caught up with Constantine around the corner from the bathrooms, where a sizeable bouncer sat at a small table, looking uncomfortable on a small folded metal chair.

  Despite his red blazer and tie—the jacket stretching tight for his massive chest—the bouncer had the look of a thug, but one who maybe knew more than most thugs do. He seemed to be blocking access to whatever was beyond the red velvet curtain behind him.

  The big man sized Constantine up for one expressionless moment, then cut what looked like a tarot deck on the little table, and pulled out a single card. He held the card so that only he could see the front of it; Constantine and Chaz saw only the back, which showed an image of two dolphins leaping into the air.

  Constantine looked at the card. He closed his eyes. After a moment he said, “Two frogs on a bench.”

  The card smacked down on the table, faceup. On it was artwork showing two frogs sitting companionably on a bench. The bouncer gestured for Constantine to pass.

  He sidled past the table and started through the curtain, which he left half-open, as if inviting Chaz to follow.

  And Chaz started to follow—then was blocked by the bouncer’s hand. He drew another card from the deck, held it up between them, face away from Chaz. It was Chaz’s turn to take the test.

  On the back of the card were the same two dolphins. Chaz said, “Two frogs on a bench.”

  The bouncer frowned, and slapped the card on the table faceup. It showed a dancing bear in a dress.

  The bouncer wordlessly pointed at the exit, shaking his head.

  “Hey, I’m with him!” Chaz said, shouting after Constantine. “Right, John? John! Come on, don’t be such a dick!”

  Constantine didn’t even glance back. The bouncer got threateningly to his feet and Chaz backed away, thinking:

  Someday, John. Someday.

  ~

  Constantine pushed through a metal door, stepped out onto the landing over the cavernous room—a room far, far bigger than the nightclub upstairs. Impossible to tell, for sure, how far it was down to the floor. It was a vast chamber with many lights and other sorts of glows in it, yet dark for all of that. The farther wall wasn’t visible at all—the light-flecked dimness might’ve gone on forever. The lights only dented the darkness, didn’t illuminate much past their small circles. Smirking, thudding dance music played from somewhere within the walls.

  He started down the stone stairway, cutting through level after level of tables and bars. At one table was a small group of businessmen in suits. They seemed ostensibly normal, but when one of them filled shot glasses from a bottle of Evian, another waved his hand over the water—and it turned instantly into what looked like red wine. And, Constantine knew, that’s probably just what it was: a truly divine vintage.

  At another table, two girls in their early twenties looked up at him—and their eyes began to glow as they watched him pass. He heard their flirtatious whispers, their giggles—and he felt a bit uncomfortably undressed. He sensed they had quite literally undressed him with their X-ray eyes.

  Still Constantine descended. At one of the many bars set off to one side of the stairway, a young man, seated on a stool, extended his long tail to wrap around the waist of a girl sitting beside him: a girl with jet-black eyes. Just jet black, no whites. In that same bar a manlike being who was perhaps ten feet tall, or a little more, spotted Constantine moving down the stairs—and beat a hasty, nervous retreat to the exit, ducking to go out the door.

  Constantine paused—not because of the giant; he was old news—but because Ellie was smiling at him, from a table near the edge of the bar’s balcony. She was sitting with two men—one black, the other white. When the two men turned to glance at Constantine they showed just the flicker of halos. Ellie had no halo, of course.

  Funny to see her with them—but not unusual in this club. That was the point of the Club Midnite: It was neutral ground for supernatural beings, and those who trafficked with them.

  “Hey, John! Want to party?” Ellie asked, her tail twitching invitingly.

  “I’m a little short tonight.”

  “I can fix that.”

  She was, after all, a working . . . creature.

  Constantine shook his head and waved good-bye. She turned back to her demi-angels as he continued down the stairs, passing people and nonpeople; from the corners of his eyes glimpsing wings, tails, horns; turning a couple of times to look at some of the more distinct ones: a crookedly smiling man whose arms and legs and head were detached from his torso and floating in the air near the places they should be connected to but not touching them, the limbs sometimes spinning in place in a way impossible for people with joints; a man with a winged skull sitting on his shoulder, a sort of pet nuzzling his head like a cockatoo, now and then tearing off bits of a human heart and feeding them to the sniggering skull; a black woman whose gown seemed to be brilliant red rippling satin, till
he saw that it was made out of flame, real fire that exuded from her unharmed skin; a prominent senator chatting up a creature with the body of a woman and the head of a large snake, the creature somehow seeming surprisingly pretty, for all of that.

  At last Constantine reached the level he was looking for, and set off down a corridor cut into the onyx wall. At the end of the corridor, he found two imposing doors of some indefinable material that might have been frozen time.

  He waited. Knowing Midnite was aware of him out here. Seconds ticked past.

  A wave of dizziness swept over him as he stood there, till at last he gathered his strength and shouted, “Midnite! Come on, do I have to huff and puff here?”

  Two long moments, as if the doors themselves were considering the matter, and then they groaned open. A tall man entirely covered with old scars emerged, and gave Constantine a wide berth, looking at him askance as he passed.

  Constantine stepped into Midnite’s office, a big room busy with masks, exotic plants, and a variety of phones and computers. Midnite sat at a table on which was a brass orrery, a scientific sculpture of the sort that displayed the solar system, except that this sculpture was frozen, unmoving at present, and it was an orrery of the primary forces of the universe—and these versions of the worlds were etched with sigils and ancient terminology, correspondences in Greek and English: Material, Astral, Spiritual, Iconic, and so on. The globe at the center of the orrery was labeled Creator.

  Seated at a table, working over the orrery, was Midnite—which he was black as. At one time a Haitian witch doctor, he was rather more now. He still had his shamanistic chops, of course, but he had progressed into more sophisticated magic. He was also a savvy businessman, owner of this club and the one that concealed it, and more; and possessor of many very finely tailored suit jackets—including a silver pendant shaped like a scorpion. Constantine had seen that pendant come alive and sting people.

  Midnite didn’t look up from his tinkering as Constantine entered.

  “That thing’s never going to balance . . .” Constantine remarked.

  “Ah,” Midnite said, wielding a tool with the delicacy of a brain surgeon, “but it always does. We simply must learn to see how it balances.” His Haitian accent was still with him.

  “Somebody has been reading way too many fortune cookies.”

  Midnite looked at him with mild irritation. “You’ve been absent some time. Have you come here with . . . relics to sell?”

  “No. I’m out of that now. I’ve been too busy.”

  “Or perhaps peddling forgeries has ended up being bad for your health.”

  Constantine stared. “You behind what’s happened to me, is that what you’re saying?”

  Midnite shook his head, smiling faintly. “No. I don’t know what’s happened, but I’m not behind anything—not what’s happening to you, anyway.” His smile was an odd mix of joy and malevolence. “But whatever it is, I’m sure it’s what you deserve. That relic cost me a lot of Krugerrands.”

  “Jesus, Midnite—I thought the thing was authentic. You can’t still be pissed off about that . . .”

  They locked eyes. Testing wills. Constantine returned glare for glare—till he had to break off for a short fit of coughing.

  Midnite sighed and shrugged.

  “What?” Constantine demanded. “I didn’t blink. That was a cough. You never cough?”

  Midnite’s eyes narrowed, seemed to look into him. And probably did. “Ah. I see now. Your health is bad for . . . other reasons. How long?”

  It was Constantine’s turn to sigh. He looked at the Creator sphere. “A few months maybe. A year.”

  “Yes. I thought I heard thunder last night. It must’ve been Satan’s stomach growling. You’re the one soul he’d come up here himself to collect.”

  Constantine managed a thin smile at that. “So I’ve heard.”

  “Well,” Midnite went on, “I am most certain you did not come here for a sympathetic shoulder to cry on. And so?”

  Constantine toyed with a cigarette but didn’t light it. “A demon just attacked me—right out in the open, on Sunset.”

  “Not so surprising. They don’t like you, John. How many have you deported back to Hell?”

  “No, you don’t get it—this was not some angry half-breed. It was a full-fledged demon. Here. On our plane. On Sunset and Crescent, to be precise. Here in person.”

  Midnite raised his eyebrows. “Clearly I do not have to remind you, that is impossible.”

  “And . . . I saw a soldier demon trying to punch its way out through a little girl. Scout’s honor.” He cleared his throat, wishing he had something to spit blood into. “I mean, if I was a scout.”

  “Or had any honor. But you must have been mistaken. Here we have only half-breeds and remote control—what people call ‘possessions,’ John. Demons stay in Hell, angels in Heaven. The great détente of the original superpowers.”

  Midnite thoughtfully touched the orrery, just where the circles of Heaven and Hell intersected at the orbital plane of Earth. “Fantasies of savage, marauding armies from Hell are simply tales spun to scare schoolgirls.”

  Constantine dripped sarcasm. “Thanks for the history lesson. You’ve been a tremendous help.”

  Midnite spread his hands as if to say, No problem.

  “Now, Midnite—I need to use the chair.”

  Midnite shook his head. “John. John. Forgetting the fact that it would almost certainly kill you . . . you know I am Switzerland. Neutral. As long as the balance is maintained, I take no sides. How else could I provide an establishment where my patrons can let their hair down, come in and feel free to be . . . themselves.”

  Constantine decided it was time to remind Midnite of old debts. “Before you were a bartender, you were the one witch doctor against, what, thirty Ashgar? And I—”

  “You were Constantine,” Midnite said, nodding, just a little. “The John Constantine.” He looked at Constantine, then again at the sculpture. “Once.” He smiled sadly. “Balances shift. Times change.” He sat back in his chair. “And I have always been a businessman first. You know that.”

  “This isn’t the usual game,” Constantine insisted. “I can feel it. Something’s coming.”

  “Ooh,” said a voice from the doorway. “Spooky.”

  Constantine spun to the door to see a man there—lean, superficially human, chillingly confident. Young and old at once. Stylishly dark clothing.

  “Balthazar . . .”

  Balthazar smirked an assent, flipping a gold coin from finger to finger. “The expression on your face alone, Constantine, has made my entire night.”

  Constantine took a step toward him, and another, setting himself. Grinned at Balthazar. “I’ll make your night. I’ll deport your sorry ass right where you stand, you half-breed shit!”

  He took another step, raised his hands to make the passes that would begin the deportation.

  “Constantine!” Midnite barked.

  Constantine stopped in his tracks, knowing . . .

  “You know the rules of my house, Constantine! And while here, you will abide by them!”

  Balthazar hadn’t bothered to tense himself. He just stood there in the doorway, smirking, rolling that coin . . . finger to finger to finger.

  Finally Balthazar said, “Johnny-boy, you’re not still sore? I just made a suggestion. She was free to choose, remember?”

  He leaned into the room a little, and went on, the coin flashing in his fingers, “Word is, you’re the one on your way down. Fresh meat!” He leered and licked his fingers with a flickering forked tongue. “Finger-lickin’ good!”

  Constantine turned a pleading look to the impresario. “Midnite—he practically fed her the pills . . .”

  Balthazar chuckled. “Temper, temper, dead man.”

  “We have a meeting now, John,” Midnite said, shrugging. “He has an appointment. I’m sorry.”

  Constantine started to answer back angrily—but all that came out was a fit of
coughing. He tasted blood.

  Balthazar grinned. “What? I didn’t catch that.”

  Constantine tried to catch his breath—and couldn’t. A frisson of unmitigated fear ran electrically through him. Was this the moment? Was he going to die now, this instant, with Balthazar leering at him? Balthazar, who’d seduced and destroyed someone important to him?

  At least he could die somewhere else. Not in front of this sneering son of a bitch who just might catch his soul as it left his body—and personally carry it down to appease Satan.

  Still coughing, Constantine plunged past Balthazar, out the door, down the black corridor. He managed to catch his breath as he got to the stairway. Said the words that would make it carry him up like an escalator. Managed not to fall off . . .

  Just barely.

  He spotted the sign for a bathroom, behind one of the bars. He stepped off the stairway and staggered down to the bathroom door. Once inside he just got a few strides into the room before the blood came up, a double mouthful staining the sink red.

  Behind him: giggling, carnal laughter from inside a stall. He fumbled in his coat for the Vicks—which he’d topped off with Jack Daniels—and chugged it, till at last the convulsion in his breast abated.

  Breathing hard but shallowly, he looked in the mirror, past his pale face, to the reflection of the leather wings rising over the top of the stall door behind; to the barbed tail snaking out beneath it.

  He looked down at the sink again. The blood had fallen into a shape he could almost read, like tea leaves. Yes: It was a cabbalistic sigil symbolizing . . .

  Triumph through death.

  SEVEN

  The United States/Mexican Border

  Francisco left the keys in the truck. He couldn’t take a truck over that fence . . . and driving it across the desert to this spot had nearly wrecked it, anyway. Its radiator was steaming and the right front tire was flat.

  He trudged to the fence and looked it over, shading his eyes against the baleful sun. The fence was high, chainlink, and topped with razor wire.