Hellblazer 1 - War Lord (24 page)

Constantine needed time to expand his psychic awareness to the others at the table, and he was determined to take no chances with his meager betting money. He folded the first two hands. At the third deal he got two eights. “Pocket eights.” Constantine called the one-hundred-Euro bet. It was a risk, but he was tired, it was late, and he had an edge. A tanned guy with receding blond hair, looked Swedish but sounded American, whistled when he looked at his own cards and muttered, just as if he didn’t intend the others to hear, “My Sweet Lord. Sometimes you get the cards . . .”

He did it pretty well, and two people folded right there, but Constantine knew it was “table talk” and the guy was just acting stupidly open about his cards as a bluff. He didn’t even need to read his mind to know he didn’t have a good hand.

The flop came: a queen of hearts, a jack of spades—and an eight. That gave Constantine three of a kind. He could still be beaten, though.

He extended his psychic field, focused it on first one, then another of the three players remaining beside him and read their minds, picking up their hands. A pair of aces for the French lady wearing the crokies on her glasses, a pair of sevens for the fat guy—and the smug table-talking blond guy had a three and a six off suit. Nobody had the makings of a straight or a flush. Even so the balding blond guy chuckled to himself with satisfaction and raised everyone three hundred Euro. The guy with the sevens folded. Constantine had the best hand with three of a kind. But that could change when the next two cards came . . . The pair of aces folded . . . And the blond guy looked at Constantine expectantly, counting his chips out so it looked like he was going to make a big bet. He was trying to frighten Constantine into folding.

Constantine couldn’t see what cards were coming up—he didn’t have X-ray eyes and his precognition had its own timing. He couldn’t see into the future at will. The other players would have to see their own cards first, before he could read their minds and know what they were.

So he was still gambling, despite knowing what the others had in their hands, when he went “all in,” betting everything.

“Ohhh-kay,” the balding guy said, swallowing. He couldn’t win even if the next two cards gave him three of a kind—his cards were of a lower value than Constantine’s. Two deuces came up, giving Constantine a full house.

Moments later he was scooping in the chips. He folded the next hand, but the following one gave him an ace-high diamond flush. The bald guy had a straight and this time he was acting as if he had nothing. Constantine had read his mind and knew he had a straight, and again, when it came down to the end, he went all in. The blond guy’s triumphant smile faded when he saw that Constantine had an ace-high diamond flush.

Having cleaned the table talker out, Constantine spent another forty minutes winning every hand he bet on. There was a sense, he liked to think, in which he wasn’t cheating; he only played the cards he was dealt; he didn’t palm cards, didn’t use sleight of hand to make good hands. But of course knowing what someone else has in poker is critical, and if you do it any way but guessing, you’re cheating.

Constantine noticed the floor manager watching him, consulting with a chunky, greasy-looking man in a tuxedo with a coffee stain down the front. The “kingfish” maybe. He made sure to lose a hand, coolly, while these guys were watching. They wandered off.

He still had four thousand Euro and decided it was enough to get a serviceable car. They couldn’t keep the Balkan’s car and they needed one to transport Mercury—she couldn’t go on a train in her state. They had to pay for a nurse for Mercury, to come with them to Paris. They’d also need plane fare later, he suspected. He got up and went toward the door, and found himself stopping at the crap table. The money was piled up, the dice were rolling; you’d win the casino’s money. Unfortunately he was not significantly telekinetic. Not enough for this. He shrugged and turned away.

And the mummified hand in his coat made a fierce clutching in his pocket. He shuddered, jumping a little. The floor manager stared at him, scowling. Constantine waggled his fingers at the guy. He started to turn away again; again the hand twitched. He felt an overpowering urge to bet his money on the dice.

“Don’t be daft,” he muttered at himself.

But he hadn’t gotten to be
the
John Constantine—with all the good and bad that went with that—by ignoring powerful intuitions.

He went to the craps table and put four thousand Euro on sevens.

Everyone at the table looked at him in astonishment. He didn’t look like a high roller. He looked like he’d gotten high, and then gotten rolled. But he put four thousand down on a bet that the dice would come up two sevens.

“Daft,” he muttered.

The dice rolled . . . and almost stopped. Then they gave a strange twitch and rolled sevens.

He didn’t even count the money they paid out to him. It was a great deal. He thought he ought to give that another try . . .

But two large thugs in suits were coming his way. They sensed he was up to something. He blew them a kiss and went to the cashier’s window to exchange his chips for cash.

Best leave while I’m still quids-in.

The spiffy thugs watched as Constantine stuffed his pockets, debating as to whether they should stop him. But Constantine projected a feeling at them, though his back was turned and he seemed to be ignoring them, a feeling that whispered,
Don’t interfere with him. It might be dangerous. Just let him go.

It was just enough to make them hesitate till Constantine could dart out the door.

As he went he thought,
Spoink, I don’t know how you did that, from wherever you are, but it had to be you. Thanks, mate.

Paris, France

Tchalai didn’t seem terribly surprised to see John Constantine at the door of her Paris flat after a six-year absence. She had a gift for divination; she had probably “seen” his arrival days ago.

“Hello, ‘Star-eyes,’ ” he said, winking.

“Hello, John. So now you’re here.”

She was a Gypsy in her midforties; with her long softly curling black hair and dark eyes she was a Mediterranean beauty who might’ve been a consort to a Phoenician king—a Gypsy, but a sophisticated Parisian before all else. She stood barely over five feet tall, small but proportionately womanly. She was barefoot, in a low-cut purple shift clasped at the waist by a belt of gold medallions.

“You look just the same,” he said.

“As do you, six years later—or perhaps there are more lines in your face. I believe that’s the same awful trench coat, no?” She had a slight accent, difficult to identify: she was from Hungary but had been raised chiefly in Paris. He was one of the few people who knew she had a degree in quantum physics; she’d written her paper on the intellectual tension between Niels Bohr and Einstein. But she made her living mostly doing Tarot for French movie stars. She was also, quite discreetly, a sorceress, which is one reason Constantine had come to see her.

The other reason was, he hadn’t been laid since that milkmaid. He was hoping to get lucky.

“So you are hoping to ‘get lucky,’ is that why you’ve come here?” she said, either reading his mind or his eyes.

“What? Me? Who hasn’t come around for years? Here, I’ve no illusions. Just wanted to use your library, darling, that’s all.”

Her full lips—almost too full for her face—twisted with amusement. “Don’t darling me. But come in, and introduce your friend.”

“First, got to tell you that my goddaughter—you remember Mercury—she’s out in the car. Hired a nurse to look after her, but we need to bring her up. Thought you could help her, I’ll explain, once she’s inside.”

“Little Mercury! I remember, I met her once! Of course, bring her in!”

They got the nurse—a dour woman with a cap of brown hair and a fuzz mustache—to help bring Mercury upstairs in the gurney they’d stowed in the back of the SUV. “But, monsieur, we need to take her to a doctor, no?”

“Le docteur arrivera bientot,” Tchalai said smoothly, helping them with the gurney. They stowed Mercury in Tchalai’s guest room, paid the nurse, and sent her on her way.

Gatewood seemed self-conscious as Tchalai returned to the living room; he was embarrassed at his ragged, dirty state. He’d stopped and bought a pair of jeans and a blue workshirt, but he was unshaven, his hair dirty, there was still sand from the beach in his shoes, and he hadn’t brushed his teeth since the
Medusa’s Revenge.

“This is Paul, Paul Gatewood. Talented boy, he is.”

“Oh? He sings, he dances?”

“He dances with the dead when he wants to.”

Tchalai sensed Gatewood’s discomfort and smiled, putting a hand on his arm as if she were a lady with a fine gentleman at a nineteenth-century ball. “Spitlove and I are very honored to have you here.” She indicated an enormous, evil-eyed red and green parrot in an opened cage near the sunny bay windows looking out on the boulevard.

Constantine snorted, noticing the parrot. “Oh God, he’s still alive . . .” He remembered Morris’s remark:
You lack only the parrot.
Odd. “I’d have thought someone would’ve strangled that flamboyant buzzard by now.”

“John Constantine, John Constantine, eat my shit, merci!”
the bird chanted, bobbing its head. Then it made a spitting sound, with which it punctuated most of its comments; hence its name.

Gatewood laughed. “He’s served you, John!”

“I’d like to serve him with barbecue sauce.”

“Don’t listen to him,” Tchalai said. “He and Spitlove are old friends.”

Constantine looked around and found the flat largely unchanged, just a little more cluttered. There were houseplants dripping from most of the shelves, figurines of goddesses stood on the floor, adorned paintings in frames—goddesses from every culture. There were a few Gypsy good luck charms on the walls, some hanging from the cobwebby chandelier.

“Come,” Tchalai was saying, guiding them toward the kitchen. “I’ll make you some tea, and perhaps a salad, and you tell me what has transpired. Nothing normal with you, John, I’m sure, except the normally abnormal, yes?”

“You’re too bloody right, Tchalai.” He was glad she seemed to have no grudge against him for leaving—and for staying so spottily in touch. He’d sent her the odd postcard now and then, and a few minor gifts. A book, a charm, a pressed flower. But he hadn’t been back to her bedroom in years. She always had been a forgiving sort, unless you really got her ire up.

If she was well and truly mad at you, she just might enter your bedroom, quiet as a shadow, and slit your throat as you slept.

But, fair is fair; she’d have a good reason.

~

Tchalai’s library was comfortingly redolent of incense and the peculiar perfume of old book paper. Most of the volumes crowded on the shelves of the little room were at least a hundred years old, though she had a special section with the most up-to-date works on quantum theory. Constantine was seated at a low Japanese table, on floor pillows, feeling his legs cramping badly after two hours, as he went through half a dozen relevant
grimoires
and mythologues. The declining sun was streaking through the window, making ballet dancers of dust motes as he pored through the brittle old pages.

“Ah Hulneb, Alaisiagaie, Anat . . .” he muttered. The names of gods of war. “Anhur . . . Banbha . . . Begtse . . .” He scanned descriptions of the gods, based mostly on statuary and fragmentary tales. “Six arms . . . three eyes . . . not my chap . . . Honos . . . Ogoun . . .” There was good old Mars, there was Wotan, there was Tyr—that one almost felt right, so old was Tyr. The entity he’d encountered on Carthaga was something very ancient, he was sure of that. It was Tyr but not Tyr, somehow.

He selected another volume,
Warlords,
by a fellow named Jameswood. He’d never seen the book before. Early nineteenth century by the look of it. Who the devil was Sir Churchill Jameswood?

Constantine felt himself drawn to this volume, and he pushed the others aside, closed his eyes, raised his hands over the pages, and murmured certain words of power. Then he closed the book, held it balanced on its spine, and removed his hands so it fell open. It had opened to a page near the end, a description of “Donar.”

Teutonic, was Donar . . . Corresponding to the Norse God Thor . . . some relate him to Nergal . . .

Constantine sat up straight. “Nergal!”

. . . A very ancient Sumero-Babylonian deity: the overseer of the Netherworld. Sometimes he is the evil aspect of the sun god Shamash. He rules a certain particularly bleak and charnel level of Hell with his consort Ereshkigal. Nergal is an evil god who delights in war, pestilence, fever, and devastation. It is difficult to imagine any devotee actually worshipping Nergal although a temple was built to him in the sinister city of Kuthu. Likely he was simply conciliated—or called down on one’s enemies . . . His attributes are the club and the sickle . . . There are of course more ancient versions: his supposed father (some texts say “sire”), N’Hept is perhaps just another manifestation of Nergal, or he may have been a separate deity. A purer god of war, N’Hept was known to men of the age of stone, and earlier, to those beetle-browed Others who still roam the mountain fastnesses. N’Hept is the primal wargod from whom all others descend. He is the original image of whom the others are distorted reflections. His face is brutal, animalistic, both crocodilian and baboon. It is he whom the handsomer gods of war mask: behind Mars is N’Hept . . .

~

“ ‘Men of the age of stone,’ ” Constantine said, as Tchalai came in, bringing cookies and a cup of coffee on a small lacquered-wood tray. Was he, Constantine wondered, referring to Neolithic men? Even earlier men? He glanced up at Tchalai. “How’s Mercury?”

“I have removed the psychic parasite. She sleeps now. She was exhausted. But there is still some kind of enchantment on her.”

“I’m just glad you got the Akishra off her. I knew you were the one to do it.”

Tchalai shrugged. “I often work with addicts, helping them get free of their sickness, and the Akishra normally swarm around addicts, feeding off the energy they lose to their addictions. The Akishra speak to the deep wiring of their brains, keeping them in their addiction.” She glanced at the book Constantine had open, and his notes. “So you have found N’Hept. When you described what you saw on Carthaga, I thought it might be him. The primitivity of the features argues as much. I may have an unpublished transcript by Jung on him, somewhere. The archetype of all wargod archetypes. Some call him ‘the War Lord.’ ” She knelt beside him, looking at the book.