Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Also, no attempt was made for this story to be in any way factual... all religious/demonic scenes are purely the creation of my imagination. As an aside, reading Dante's Inferno may help slightly - it was a major source of inspiration.
Chapter 1
"…Demon of Hell, I summon thee from the Gates of Dis
By the Power of the Wrath of Lucifer
All Praise be to the Fallen One forevermore
I command the Deity Charon
Accept this mortal blood as payment
For the immortal soul of the Demon Balthazar"
Vivian Charbonneau spoke slowly, sitting on her living room floor at the base of a large pentagram. The symbol was burned into the dark hardwood and traced in salt; each of the five points marked with a lit candle, in honour of the five demons of Hell whose help she would need to complete her task. Under each candle, Vivian wrote the name of its dark Deity idol in chalk – at the base, Minos and Plutus; at each arm, Phlegyas and the Fallen Angels; at the head, pointing due east, Charon, eternal ferryman of the River Acheron. In the center of the arcane symbol, she'd written Balthazar's name in the language of the immortals, so that none may mistake the subject of her summoning.
With a small kitchen knife, the Necromancer made a tiny incision in the tip of her forefinger, squeezing two drops of her blood over the flame of Charon's candle, watching it crackle and sizzle with a whisp of dark grey smoke. Immediately, the temperature in the room began to rise, slowly at first, and then to the point where it became unbearable with the arid heat of Hell; Vivian closed her eyes to the intense warmth, but didn't move - it lasted only a few moments, dissipating as quickly as it had set on. Opening her eyes once more, Vivian glanced immediately down at the pentagram. Sprawled before her in the center of her salt-drawn symbol was the Demon Balthazar. He was laying face-down and completely naked, lightly tanned skin covered with cuts and burns, ranging in severity. Several deep lashes, inflicted upon him fairly recently etched across the man's back; a small trickle of blood fell from one of the massive cuts and dripped slowly to her floor. His arms and legs were laced with burns and minor scrapes, and all of his skin was covered with a layer of soot and filth, saturated into his wounds.
The woman broke the circle of salt, feeling the last hot air of Hell pour from it like blood from a blister. She touched a hand to the Demon's shoulder, drawing it back quickly as she felt the heat of his flesh frothing under her touch. Vivian rose and retreated to her washroom, returning moments later with two sopping wet bath towels; she draped them over his body in a blanket of ice-water, and slowly he began to wake.
He looked up at her with somnolent, empty eyes. She was thin, but not beautiful; her deathly pale skin and cream-white lips made her seem sickly and fragile. Her hair was black and long, falling lifelessly down either side of her face to the middle of her ribcage where it thinned and ended in irregular, shapeless tresses – the product of years of split-ends. Vivian was only in her early 30's, but the Demon could swear her hair was already flecked with grey. The woman's eyes were hazel and not particularly pretty, but she had thick, dark lashes and gently sweeping eyebrows that gave them a sort of could-be glamour, and a look of definite intelligence. She wore a simple black sleeveless shirt and grey sweatpants, both garments well-worn and moth-eaten – but to Balthazar, it didn't matter. To him, now, she was ravishing.
"Vivian…" he began softly, only to be silenced with a long, soft shush. Carefully, the woman placed her hand on his back, over the fabric of the bath towels to turn him over, mindful not to drag him through the salt. The place where she'd drawn his name in the pentagram was bare, and instead the ancient writing had tattooed itself in black over his breastbone, in the center of his chest. She immediately brought her fingers to the mark and touched it very lightly, leaning into him to kiss his neck; he didn't move to welcome her, but rather drank in the scent of her hair, so near his lips. It smelled as always, faintly of cigarettes and flowers, from her shampoo.
Gently, she clasped his head in her hands, kissing his forehead once before pulling away,
"Can you get up?" Vivian prodded, watching Balthazar's head fall in fatigue as she withdrew.
"Yes." His reply was remarkably soft. Slowly, the Necromancer helped him to his feet, and then to her bathroom; it was the first door to the right down the hallway separating the den from the kitchen.
The walls were a yellow-gold; the floor: bare concrete. A large free-standing porcelain-white shower-bathtub stood against the back wall, taking up most of the space in the small room. Filigree patterned brown shower curtains encircled the bath, draped from a brass rod. In sharp contrast to the relative luxury of the washroom, the space's only light was a bare incandescent bulb hanging by its wire from the ceiling. Dangling from the light was a rather large spider, all legs and belly as it manoeuvred gracefully on the end of an invisible thread. With a soft thud, Balthazar sank into Vivian's bathtub, towels and all. She turned on the faucet as soon as he'd lie down before her, pulling the lever to turn on the showerhead. He sighed quietly under the stream of ice-cold water and threw his head back over the rim, eyes closed.
"You can use my housecoat once you're finished," Vivian added demurely, turning to the door, "I'm going to the pharmacy. It's just down the street, I'll be back soon."
The Necromancer left the room and shut the door, donning a pair of well-worn black sneakers before she exited the apartment. The corridor outside her flat was painted a shade of sterile grey, with identically coloured cheap, if durable carpets. Though she thought the shade was chosen to hide the grime and filth that had collected on the walls (she knew no one had ever washed them in the time she'd owned her apartment), it succeeded only in accentuating the grunge and dust that had gathered on the doorframes and ingrained itself into the carpet through thorough use and seldom cleanings. She looked up briefly; several dead insects were in the ceiling light cover just above her head, casting winged silhouettes against the sterile brightness of the sunken fluorescent bulbs inside. The basement level flats shared the space under the building with the apartment's underground parking. There were only 5 other units like her own, spanning a single strip just under the front of the building. A glass and metal door led out into the parking garage, and next to it, an industrial steel elevator took her either up to the street, or down to the maintenance level. She pushed the button to release the lift doors; they opened immediately. Technically, it was a service elevator and tenants weren't supposed to use it, but the building's main lift that ferried to the basement broke down several months ago, and Vivian was never one to take the stairs.
She stepped out of the building's small lobby and into the LA night, immediately pulling a cigarette from a package in her pocket and lighting it. It was early September, and the air was still hot and sticky with the city's pollution. The street was dark, though tall, heavy grey streetlamps shone down on the empty road. Vivian turned to the gleaming white lights of the 24-hour pharmacy, striding quickly passed stoplights that changed for no one. A taxi was waiting in the drug store parking lot – its driver glanced up at her from behind a book as she walked by. He was young, just a kid, she thought as she returned the gesture with one final drag from her cigarette before heading inside.
†††
Balthazar rose from the bathtub and turned off the icy water after several minutes with some effort. He felt better – far better than he had when he'd first been raised from Hell. Dressing in the woman's wool housecoat, the demon folded the soaked bath towels Vivian had first wrapped him in and left them in her bath; one of them was stained pink with his blood. He turned off the light as he left the room, and walked down the hallway to the apartment's den.
Her flat was small and rectangular, the majority of it comprised by the living room and adjoining kitchen. The den was dark, but tasteful and eclectic. A large, deep brown leather chesterfield took up most of the space. The longest of the apartment's dark olive green walls had the subterranean apartment's only windows; two small slats cut from the stone of the building, and covered, as it was night time, by stained rosewood blinds. The sofa sat on a black shag area rug, which served to cover the massive pentagram carved into Vivian Charbonneau's dark hardwood floor. A rectangular oak coffee table with a glass center shared the black rug, standing between the chesterfield and a large entertainment center of the same material. The flat's kitchen shared the space, divided from the den only by a breakfast bar and change of flooring – in this case, faux slate linoleum. Her kitchen was painted a dark chestnut with black appliances, black tile countertops and stained honey-oak cabinets that were so golden they were almost yellow. Two stainless steel and black leather chairs faced into the kitchen from the den-side of the breakfast bar, creating a sort of breakfast nook that Balthazar guessed served as her only eating area.
Balthazar stepped carefully over the arguably hideous shag rug, towards her sofa. He felt the gashes on his back tear open as he moved to lie down, bleeding slightly into her clean, cream-coloured robe. The fabric of her housecoat was soft, but it bit into his wounds just the same, making the cuts on his back hurt and bleed. He remembered how and where he'd gotten them – as clearly as he remembered every seemingly eternal torture he'd received in Hell – it would take days for him to forget, or at least put it out of his mind. Three days, he approximated, since the Exorcist Constantine sent him to Hell. He'd failed the Diablo, Lucifer, and for it, he'd suffered the flames of Dis – that torture, the Exorcist did not know. He would gladly take the Wood of Suicides over the Eighth Circle of Hell, Balthazar mused, almost smiling. But that was over, and now he felt nothing but the coolness of the icy water drying from his hair, and the softness of Vivian's bathrobe, and the pleasant dull ache of his name etched into the tender flesh on his chest.
†††
It was a little passed midnight according to the clock above the pharmaceutical counter; Vivian noticed there was another man in the store with her, ordering a prescription – the taxi was probably waiting for him. She took a basket and did her shopping quickly, cleaning out the pharmacy's supply of gauze and Neosporin, as well as taking packages of generic men's underwear and socks. When she got to the store's one checkout counter, the man was standing ahead of her. He was dressed in a black suit with a plain white button-down shirt; quite professional, for the middle of the night.
"Good luck," Vivian mentioned, as she watched the cashier ring up half a dozen consecutive packages of nicotine patches for him. She knew she reeked of cigarette smoke, and he probably hated her for it.
"Thanks." He half-turned his head as he spoke, and it was enough for her to recognize him. John Constantine – of course it was him. He did look different now, she thought. The bags he'd had under his eyes from the first time she caught a glimpse of him were beginning to fade, and his skin was distinctly less pallid. But then, it was no secret what had happened between him and Mammon, and what Satan had done to him, to let him live.
She watched him pay and leave, without saying a word as to what he'd done, or offering any indication that she was more than a woman restocking her medicine cabinet. He might have known of her; as an Exorcist he probably would, but they'd never met and he'd have no way of recognizing her, or knowing her ties to Balthazar.
"Your total comes to forty-one dollars, even," the cashier said, breaking her thoughts. Vivian dug the money from her pocket and paid in exact change; she took the brown bag with her purchases off the counter and walked back outside, in time to watch the taxi pull away and dart off down the street. The woman turned for her apartment, weight of the bag making her bicep, weak from chronic smoking, curve through her papery skin as she walked.
†††
The only light in the church that night was the glow from 15 small lit candles, adorning the ivory-draped altar; each in a fitted glass cup painted with an image of the Madonna. Their flames caught shadows from the stone and plaster sculptures of Angels lining the Cathedral's walls, casting them like charcoal tendrils onto the painted ceiling. The scent of slowly decaying cloth and fading incense filled the air, dank with the Los Angeles heat and compounded by the candle's radiance. And in a darkly varnished wooden pew, the once-Angel Gabriel sat. In her hands she clutched a well-worn bible, brown leather binding supple and smooth against her skin. Gold lettering embossed on the cover had begun to fade, leaving small, underwhelming flecks of shine in place of the words "Holy Bible." Gabriel could identify.
"It's awfully late." The voice was soft, but it pierced the nighttime silence of the chapel without warning – Gabriel tensed briefly with the unfamiliar tingle of adrenaline.
"Father Francis," She answered placidly, turning half-heartedly to glance at his feet over her shoulder. He was a young man, easily in his late twenties – but every ounce of youthful energy and passion within him was spent on the Glory of God, the once-Angel thought, in reverie. He sat next to her, folding his robes under himself as he sunk delicately into the pew,
"Angel Gabriel." The words stung more than she thought they would. She did not correct him – he already knew everything, but found some pleasure in reminding her of what she'd forsaken. "Isn't it beautiful?" he asked in rhetoric after some time, gazing up at the high, gilded ceiling. "But you must know it pales in comparison to the real thing, of course… Don't you wish that you could tell them all how beautiful it is? That you could show them Heaven, and make them see all its splendour?" The woman turned her head from him, glancing down at the holy text in her hands,
"I do wish that." Father Francis leaned over slightly, switching his eyes to her Bible,
"You know every word, don't you?" he asked gently, wearing a small smile.
"Yes," she replied in earnest contentedness, "and I shall never forget—"the Priest interrupted her, speaking no more forcefully than he had at all that evening,
"But that won't save you," He said it delicately, reaching over to tuck a loose strand of hair behind her ear. "You made a bargain with the Devil, Gabriel, and he will come for you." With a small sigh, the Priest brought his lips to her cheek, kissing her in empathy.
"I failed," she answered, almost despairingly, voice soft with fear and hopeful justification, "I wasn't able to bring Mammon unto us—"
"You're using Heaven's logic, Gabriel," he answered her, with the tone of a parent comforting a child after scolding her; "Your incompetence will not save you... Satan aided you; he fulfilled his end of the covenant, didn't he?" Tenderly, Father Francis touched his hand to her face, stroking her ivory cheek with the backs of his fingers, "You're a mortal now, Gabriel – a woman- and soon the time will come for you to pay him back…" The Priest's guarded smile flickered, as though trying not to grin, "He'll come for your soul, Angel Gabriel. And when he's through with you, you'll have wished you hadn't a soul to give…" Finally, she spoke, slightly bolder,
"I shall never surrender my soul to Lucifer." Father Francis breathed a small sigh, as if his pity were only for her denial,
"You could always give your soul to me, Gabriel. After all, I'm sure the pain will be… exquisite – who knows what you may be willing to do?"
Sharply, Gabriel struck him across the face, his cheek white where her hand had met it. The slap of skin-against-skin rang out and echoed in the empty church, breaking the silence with a deafening crack. The woman rose quickly, stepping into the aisle with mock-audacity, striding from the fire-lit church in silence. Father Francis ascended from the pew after her, leaning forward from where he stood. His words boomed in the ancient Cathedral, splitting the placid night air with sound, speaking heresy with a gloating grin;
"Only you can slake the lust of Lucifer!"