Hellblazer 1 - War Lord (26 page)

She came to the end of the priestess’s litany, broke off chanting, and Constantine took up the incantation, establishing his priesthood in this circle; calling names that resonated out through the ether because, as he spoke them, he made them into three-dimensional forms in his mind, each one a cabalistic exactitude that emanated a specific signal . . .

Tchalai was shaking a little as she stood there, reinforcing his summoning with her mind, taking the names of power he spoke into her brain and womb, sending them out again with feminine energy; male and female energy circling within one another, alternating the way waves do on an oscilloscope, up and down, an inversion and yet each a version of the other.

Over and over again they incanted, using every erg of psychic energy to call out across the Hidden World. The air thrummed around them as the force of their demand built; the plants around them rustled and leaned closer, like animals sniffing a scent; the stars overhead grew more intense and hummed to them, as if channels from the stars had opened up through the atmosphere directly to the supplicants; lines appeared in the steam on the glass of the greenhouse’s walls, a cryptic orthography marking out the symbols Constantine envisioned appearing there, vanishing, appearing again, pulsing in and out of appearance with the pulsing of the power they channeled to the Hidden World.

Something approached . . .

Constantine felt its approach with a chill, then a thumping in his head like the booming of a bass drum—and then a cascade of agreeable and oddly disturbing smells filled the room, a perfume that kept changing its scent from one flower to another sort entirely, to the smell of earth just after it rains, to the smell of a tree freshly blasted by lightning. Music soared from the air itself, like a great church organ playing a song that constantly altered its own composition without dropping a beat. The symbols on the magic circle, in Hebrew and Greek, lit up to project their configurations over the pentagram as if lasers were writing the letters over and over in the air; the light shifted from red to green to white; it played over Tchalai’s limbs, writing words in ancient script on her hips, her arms, her breasts.

Tchalai still had her hands extended, and she was shaking, ecstatic, her arms trembling like the limbs of that lightning-blasted tree.

Dark apparitions seemed to congeal into form outside the magic circle, but none of them was the being Constantine and Tchalai had summoned. These spirits of nightmare had been drawn here by “the action,” almost as idle men on the street are drawn to look at a house fire or the arrived of police. Constantine caught melting glimpses of froglike men; of living gargoyles with three snarling faces on three sides of their craggy heads; of evil infants with wings made from the severed limbs of cats; of jackal-headed men; of giant flies in Armani suits; of beings with the bodies of angels and the heads of drooling, skew-eyed hydrocephalics . . .

They were spiritual predators—called Nightmare Makers in some quarters—kept at bay only by the magic circle . . . They shuffled hungrily just outside the invisible barrier . . .

All at once the five candles blew out, and then relit, of themselves, with a surge of flame that licked up toward the ceiling as a voice cut through the air.

Who calls upon us?

To Constantine it seemed a male voice, young and old at once, speaking in English; Tchalai would hear it as female, and in her native language.

“It is you I call, and no other,” Constantine responded, speaking aloud in English. The seraphim they had summoned—more precisely, the seraphim who had chosen to visit—comprehended all languages. “I call you in the singular, and I beseech you to appear before me, that I may serve the higher.” There was none of the arrogant, even condescending tone that Constantine often used with other beings of the Hidden World; those were lower beings who served better if you put them in their place. Even if you didn’t control them it was best to act as if you could. But this being, above mere angels, could not be jeered at or condescended to. It’d be like taunting a supernova.

Whose higher would you serve? Which eminence?
the voice demanded.
The true eminence of the Absolute or the sub-eminence of the Archons? The mountain under the ice-locked sea or the mountain against the sky?

Constantine responded: “It was said, Heos ho phos echete pisteuete eis ho phos hina huioi photos genesphe . . .” While you have light believe in the light so that you can be its children.

Well said. I see into your hearts, priest and priestess. Confusion I see, especially in the priest. You are not fully committed to service, John Constantine. But as evanescent as you are, yet the pearl beyond price resides in your heart, in the nest of your confusion. In honor of this pearl, the reason for your creation, made in the course of suffering many lives, I will show you one face, and to this you will speak your request.

The seraphim manifested itself then, so they could see it with the eyes in their heads. Their inner eyes saw this lord of angels extending into infinity like pi working itself out in a corridor of mirrors.

~

On a nearby rooftop, a potbellied old man named Louis Malheur was feeding his homing pigeons. He was caught up in the swishing and whir of their wings, their gray iridescence, when a flash of light caught his eye and he turned to see the strange octagonal structure of glass on the opposite roof glowing from within, limning the silhouettes of exotic plants which split beams of light to oscillate like dancers in a slow ballet.

The light grew in intensity till to Louis it looked like a lighthouse beacon, shining so blindingly that the glass enclosure seemed to vanish for a moment.

Once before he had called the gendarmes and told them that that crazy witch Madame Dermitzel was playing with fire on her roof. The gendarmes had investigated the greenhouse, finding only a puzzled woman in her bathrobe, watering her flowers, and no trace of fire or bright lights. Louis had almost gone to jail for filing a false report. He was not going to call them again. But he was not going to stay on this roof either, though his pigeons were fluttering madly now, disturbed by the subsonic pulsing from Madame’s rooftop and by a drone that was like organ music, but then again was like the sound of a jetplane approaching . . .

No matter, only a few of his birds would die, he supposed, this time, in their terror. His wife thought he had too many pigeons anyway. He was not going to call the gendarmes. Madame Dermitzel would only cloak her witchery again. No, Louis had quite another plan.

He was going to go to the brasserie to have a smoke and a very large glass of brandy . . .

~

The seraphim appeared to Constantine and Tchalai in congruence with their Judao-Christian culture. It appeared like a figure from Isaiah, like something glimpsed by Ezekiel. Were they Hindus, it would have appeared as a Hindu deity; were they Africans, it would have seemed a loa; were they Muslim it would have been an enormous djinn.

Hovering over the magic circle within a translucent sphere of light was a being with nine wings; three on each side, three more along its spine. They were of a restless whiteness that flashed inwardly with other colors; the being was a nude human figure, its skin the color of the blobs of color one sees if one looks too closely at the sun; it was both male and female, but somehow was no mere hermaphrodite. Its male organs emerged from within its female organs which somehow then changed places with its male which emerged from its female organs which . . .

Its iconic face, to Constantine’s eye, was like that of Michelangelo’s
David,
except for the eyes. There were no eyes in the head, its eye sockets were blank skin: instead there was a ring of nine eyes floating around about four inches away from the head, as if slowly orbiting its skull at eye level. They were like emeralds set into balls of ivory.

Its perfect lips opened; its eyes looked at Constantine, one after the next, as they circled around its head. It was a beautiful creature, really, the very definition of proportion and elegance, as much a perfect iconic symbol as a being—yet somehow it was harder for Constantine to look at than the most hideous demons had been.

Now speak, and I will consider if your furtherance, within the current of time, is justified; or if the pearl in you is better served by the fiery reduction of its husk.

Constantine knew this meant that if he said the wrong thing, his mortal form would be incinerated. It was an instantaneous incineration, he knew, and wouldn’t hurt. Not physically.

But he wasn’t ready to be incinerated. That would be a bit of an inconvenience.

Well, here goes . . . hopefully not here goes nothing . . .

“Right. Great Seraphim, a little more than a year ago, in our time, the Red Sepulchre opened a way, and the day of Armageddon nearly chanced—”

Yet it did not come about. It is of no great moment: a mere change of venue, a shift of governing agencies, a relocation, when that comes about—if that way is chosen . . .

Constantine filed that knowledge away: the apocalypse that in his culture was called Armageddon is not an inevitability, only a possibility. Scriptures didn’t always get it right.

He went on, “Great Seraphim, was there a door I failed to shut? There are those who bring about another transfiguration—is it the Armageddon of prophecy?”

It is not. Deceptions disguise the working you speak of. Yet if this working is completed, only one-eighth of those now living will survive. It is the making of a great war amongst mortals, which will lay low many so that a few may be elevated. But all are cast into the wind, ashes when time feeds the furnace . . .

“How can we put a stop to this war, Great Seraphim?”

Your question is asked without sincerity. You are full of anger, and you are not concerned in your heart to stop it. Your anger would consume all the world, John Constantine . . .

“Great Seraphim—”

You speak out of turn . . . I have here a fire that already knows your bones . . .

It lifted one of its immaculate hands, palm upward, and a flame with a hungry face appeared there and looked at Constantine as if eager to devour him.

“I stand corrected, O Seraphim.” Hating to be threatened, he wanted to say other things to it—earlier in life he would have—but in memory of the Blue Sheikh he held himself back. There would be time yet to denounce God and his servants if it came to that, if it felt right . . .

“A glimpse is all I ask, of the way to end this working. Then I will choose my course. I admit my uncertainty now.”

I can show you only one doorway; there are many to go through. I show your priestess. And this time . . .

It closed its fist, smothering the eager flame.

I will not let your flesh be consumed. There is another coat of Being, within this vestment, to add to the pearl that grows within you.

Then its body folded up, falling inward into itself, so that it sucked away into its own vagina and mouth, its upper parts going into the head, its lower into the groin, till the two came together, merged into a sphere, which spun and exploded joyously—and was gone.

Tchalai collapsed, moaning, slumping across three candles, snuffing them out, her arm falling across the magic circle, breaking its integrity.

Triumphant cackling came from the shadowy demonic forms flitting about the fractured circle and the drooling idiot-headed angel extended five boneless rubbery arms into the circle to snatch at Tchalai. It tore at her hair and scratched at her shoulders even as another demon, in the form of an enormous snake that’d had its scales shaved away, slithered bloodily over its shoulder and the fly-thing buzzed above them both—

“Get
BACK!”
Constantine shouted, sending a furious burst of negative psychic energy at them—and they recoiled. “You heard me, you louts! The seraphim couldn’t be troubled to notice you, so low are you hodgepodge beasties compared to him—and he put his wisdom into her heart! The seraphim selected
her
to convey a truth to me and if you touch her he’ll take a vengeance on you that’ll make you wish you were snug in Satan’s jaws! Now
FUCK OFF
or I’ll fucking
kick your foul little abscessed souls
right up to the seraphim for disposal! I swear I will, you reeking little goits!”

They drew back, hissing foulness, and Constantine lifted Tchalai in his arms, restoring the sanctity of the circle. He spoke the words that would disperse the Nightmare Makers and the rubbernecking evil spirits fled.

~

“Hi, uh . . . how you feeling?” Gatewood asked.

The girl in the bed was hugging herself, frowning, but her eyes were wide open and she seemed conscious.

She glanced over at him. Suspicion was like a fly crawling on her face. “You might not be who you seem to be . . .”

She had a British accent—Gatewood wasn’t sure which one, London or smother sort—and she had dark tousled hair and a rather ordinary face, but there was a depth in her eyes that drew him.

“I’m just . . . Paul,” he said. “Gatewood. I’m a friend of John Constantine’s. At least I hope he’s my friend. Wouldn’t like to have him for an enemy. Can I bring you anything?”

She sat up, pulling up a drooping shoulder strap of her nightgown. “I guess you’re not . . . I don’t know . . . I remember you.”

“You do? You weren’t really awake . . . for days.”

“I was and I wasn’t. I was sort of in between. I saw things sometimes. You were carrying me once over a metal floor . . .”

“The deck of a yacht. They sank it but we were picked up by a guy I know. You’re in France now. With a friend of John’s. Tchalai something. Gypsy lady I guess.”

“I know who that is. I’ve heard of her.” She seemed to relax, somewhat. “I’m hungry . . . Can I have a salad? I feel too weak to get it myself, and I feel safe in here.”

He smiled and went to the kitchen, found the makings of a salad, decided Tchalai wouldn’t mind, put it together, and brought it back to her.