The six split into three groups: Gedeyon threw himself toward Constantine, Nijah clashed with Cassandra, and the Question grabbed Sadie by the wrist and ran for the exit.

"Hey!" Sadie tried to shake free. "What's the big idea?"

"The cultists don't know your part in this yet," the Question said. "They just think you're the most vulnerable. That vampire went for you in France, it'll happen to you again if you let it here."

"But—but I'm supposed to be there! For my girlfriend!"

When the two made it out of the station in front of a tall, multi-tiered statue of some esteemed conquistador, the faceless detective turned Sadie around and glared at her as best as she could manage. "Cassandra's been fighting the good fight nearly as long as I'd worked as a cop in Gotham, we had a whole, thorough case file on everything we knew about her. If all goes right, she's going to win. But the last thing she needs right now is worrying about you in the thick of it."

Sadie opened her mouth to object, slowly closed it, and looked down, shamefaced. "Wow, I really am kinda the load right now, aren't I?"

"You didn't ask for this and you're the only lead we've got," the Question said. "If they get their hands on you, it could compromise everything. So for right now, let's just keep that off your girlfriend's mind."

With a swallow and a nod Sadie ran alongside the question into a tight alleyway crowded with the half-drunk.

Back at the train station, the gray beast that had been Gedeyon overtook Constantine with a single lunge and backhanded him into the station's main foyer. The magician shouted in pain as he struck a wall of faux marble back-first and struggled to his feet. As the giant stomped his feet and civilians ran in terror, Constantine spat out a bloody loogie and stood up straight as he could manage. When Gedeyon beat his wooden stump arms at the floor roared at him, he held his ground.

"That 'be afraid' line is the oldest one in the book." Constantine put on a stern face and tried to mask the throbbing pain in his back. "I know what you are now."

Gedeyon snarled. "No, you've never faced anything like me."

Constantine held his glare of a moment before he rushed for an opposing train platform. The sign that hung over the terminal was black and inactive, no more trains would run through that night.

"Keeping away from the innocents? I can respect that!" Gedeyon roared as much as he spoke as he leapt down the whole flight of stairs at once, landed on all fours, and stood up straight in Constantine's path. "Or were you only running away?"

"I did one better, let me show you" A crooked smirk crossed Constantine's face as he flung a handful of magical fire toward the giant's face.

The fireball burned like an eyeful of hot ash against half of Gedeyon's face. He doubled over in pain, grit his fangs, and demanded, "What is this?"

"You told me to be afraid. You're just like that bloody Stephen King clown, aren't you? You get stronger when you can feed on terror." Constantine cracked his knuckles. "Well now you're down here alone with me. And I've eaten bigger demons than you for breakfast."

Gedeyon stared at the magician in shocked stupor for a moment at how easily he'd been played before he lowered on all fours again, screamed, "I don't need your fear to break you in half, assama!" and galloped hundreds of pounds of scales and iron toward Constantine.

Back on the train platform the unseen armor of the Suit of Sorrows overtook Cassandra's street clothes when she caught the first strike from Nijah on a white gauntlet. In the other woman's hand was a dagger red with the same blaze that covered one of the suit's swords.

"So, Benjie was right. It really is you." Nijah took steps backward and regarded the stained-glass bat that ran across Cassandra's chest. "The Angel of the Bat."

Cassandra met and held her glare. "You know me?"

"We've been at work far longer than you have, but you're still an inspiration." Though she didn't so much as loosen her grip on the knife, Nijah's tone was calm as it was admirable. "You've saved hundred, stopped who knows how many evils, even toppled a madman calling himself a seraph. We've seen what a wretched hive Gotham is, you are the one light in the darkness."

Cassandra already felt exhausted with this new threat. Numerous lives had already been put in danger, and Sadie, who she had tried so hard for so long to keep away from his life, was caught in the middle of it all. She'd faced cults and struggled internally with her own Catholicism since the first day she decided that she believed. All she wanted was to be done with all this. But if Nijah truly meant what she said, maybe it was worth it to try something other than combat after all.

"You believe in what I do? Then let us pass," Angel said. "Call your partner off Constantine. Leave us alone. Leave the one you serve."

"Oh, I believe in what you do. I just don't believe you've become all you can." Nijah turned and ran in the opposite direction. "And for that, you clearly need motivation!"

Angel's heart jolted and she took off after her opponent. Despite her own speed and whatever boost the Suit of Sorrows gave her, something within Nijah made her even quicker. Angel pumped her legs through the remaining gaggle of late night travelers as Nijah rushed up a roped off stairway. As Angel caught up, she heard a shout in Italian before a grunt, at the top of the polished staircase Nijah had thrown a security guard aside, thrust open a set of enormous windows, and stepped out to the balcony.

Without any Italian and barely enough French to struggle by, Angel offered the guard a quick, "Pardon," before she stepped out into the open air. As if in contradiction to her threat, Nijah just stood at the end of the balcony and awaited her.

"You're quick. But I expect you were before." Nijah drew a second dagger out from her coat, touched some unseen mechanism, and it too began to glow with the ethereal orange fire her first blade did. "Benjie told me you used the Sword of Sin against him, and I know you were a wielder already."

Angel instinctively reached for the handle on her left with her right hand. But when the vampire's horrible screams echoed in her mind, she hesitated and drew the grip on her right side instead. As she raised the handle a fierce, cold blue light burst to life and formed the shape of a blade.

"That one is the Sword of Salvation. Or it is meant to be," Nijah said. "The Sword of Sin," she raised the fiery daggers for effect, "burdens its victim with their failures. The Sword of Salvation," she pointed with one of the dirks, "is meant to guilt the wielder toward redemption. In truth, all it is is a different color for the same effect."

With squinted eyes Angel took in the ghostly blue sword for a moment, hesitated at the possibility, then ran at her. Nijah crossed her daggers and caught Angel's first swing, the phantasmic fires blazed against one another and sparks flew for an instant before dissipating.

"Have it your way then." Nijah's smile suggested she was pleased. She broke the lock and began a flurry of stabs.

With her own abilities enhanced by the armor Angel slipped and parried the furious strikes as Nijah dealt them, but the Sword of Salvation's length kept her at a disadvantage as long as the woman kept in close. Angel jumped backwards to create space, but Nijah's dance was quick and precise enough to close whatever distance she'd made. With the speed and reflexes on display it was clear—Nijah, like her companions, wasn't entirely human. Cassandra's mind rushed for what she could be, what might put her at an advantage—

Angel's heart leap when she stepped back and her heel met open air. She turned for just a moment to confirm and, indeed, she was half a step from falling four stories into pavement.

"I don't want to kill you!" Nijah pulled back her daggers for a twin thrust. "Let us help you—"

She'd left herself wide open for a counterattack. Angel raised the blue sword and delivered a sloppy diagonal slash. Nijah fought back a scream as the blade cleaved clean through her body. For another instant Angel was horrified by the thought of the damage she could have done and how senselessly she'd just dealt it. But the moment she registered even her opponent's jacket hadn't suffered damage, she swallowed the fear and switched the blade to her left hand. Her dominant one available, Cassandra delivered a series of pointed finger strikes.

Nijah fell to the ground as the pressure point attack took effect. Angel, winded but unharmed, breathed a sigh of relief as she looked down at her and turned back toward the rooftop entrance. Perhaps Constantine still needed her—

"Ha!"

Angel jerked back around a split second fast enough to catch the two dirks as Nijah swung at her again, her stance recovered and the fire still in her eyes. The heroine flinched. "But—how did you—"

"I'm not totally constrained by the corporeal," Nijah said with a sneer. "Fine work, no doubt. But, as I suspected, I think it'll still take more to show you what that armor is truly capable of."

Angel fell forward as Nijah dissipated like a popped bubble. In confusion and fear she whipped her head about but found no sign of her opponent.

"Better hurry." Nijah's voice seemed to travel with the wind. "Or I'll find your friends before you can."

With a swallow of her rage and worry, Angel turned back toward back and ran into the principe.

Back on the main floor Constantine grunted with pain as he was thrown into a column of faux marble. He'd held his own against Gedeyon in the underground, but the beast drew on his great strength and forced their battle back out into the open. As just a few of the dawdlers screamed and ran as the titan ascended the stairs, Gedeyon took in a deep, satisfied breath.

"They are my power, pagan. They know how to fear properly."

"Christ, you're full of it." Constantine grit his teeth as he pushed back to his feet. The magician tried to think of a creature who owed him a favor the whole time they had fought, but most of them required long, elaborate rituals he didn't have the time for. He needed a weakness he could draw on while Gedeyon was still feeding on fear. With a hand reached into his pocket he rolled a handful of small, iron coins as the creature rushed toward him again. Constantine leapt from its path and threw the coins at his head. The metal bounced off the beast without acknowledgement, and Constantine checked European Fae off his mental list of possibilities. Out of the corner of one eye the magician spotted a gated-off, touristy-looking gift shop. When it was time to improvise, kitsch inventory could prove surprisingly useful. Constantine stepped in front of the gate and shouted, "Toro toro, you big, stupid bull!"

Gedeyon bellowed a shout and rushed at him. Constantine moved to step from his path, but his heart jumped when he stepped on the tail of his coat and was tripped up. Gedeyon brought him and the gate down with a crash of his enormous body and swing of his face axe, and Constantine roared in pain as a bloody slash rended his left flank. The magician collapsed backwards and took down a rack of souvenirs and stuffed animals as he did. Red flowed from his mouth as Gedeyon stomped on him with one of his woodlike arms and pinned him to the floor.

"This is your last chance, wizard," he said with a snarl. "Relent or be damned."

Ever one to just end up in the right place at the right time, Constantine fumbled around the floor and struck the appendage with whatever he could reach. First a clay ashtray that shattered on contact. Then a stuffed dolphin. Monsters of magic often had strange, arbitrary weaknesses, he was in no position to question anything that would work.

The scaley giant stared at him, stunned. "What—what in the world are you trying to do? What do you hope you're going to—"

Constantine wrapped his grip around a handful of intricately decorated spoons from a set and thrust at the beast with them. He hadn't expected any results, but like a spade into dirt, the tips of the utensils dug into the beast's wooden hide. Gedeyon screeched and leapt backwards as blood spurted from a trio of wounds. The magician, shocked as his enemy was, felt around for the box they had come in. From his fractured understanding of Latin, he picked up enough that the spoons were reproductions of an art piece that depicted the station on the bowls of the spoons. But far more important than that was the marketing line, "Made with real silver!"

"Ah, right then," he said, more to himself than to Gedeyon. "Old, reliable silver it is."

With some distance managed and as much disgust as he could manage on his monstrous face, Gedeyon demanded, "You intend to fight me with spoons?"

"Dunno." Constantine stood up straight and raised the silver in challenge. "Do you intend to fight me while I have them?"

The two held their standoff, each unsure what action would trigger the other. The black magic that coursed through Constantine's blood was already at work healing his wounds, but Gedeyon had done a lot of damage. And, for his part, Gedeyon genuinely feared the metal that dug into his flesh. Both knew the moment was absurd, but neither dared break it.

Then Gedeyon screeched in pain. Angel had run back to the main level, the Sword of Salvation in her hands, and slashed him across the back. The giant jerked his head around toward her, his eyes wide with fear and shock. Gray scales retracted as he ran, first on all fours, then back to two legs as he returned to his human shape, down toward of one the platforms and out of sight.

Angel cast a glare toward him as he ran, then looked to Constantine. "Other woman's after Sadie and Question. You all right?"

The magician cringed as he felt the bloody spot on his shirt and grit his teeth. "Will be. Any idea where they peeled off to?"

Angel shook her head. "You?"

"Lemme see if I can get a tracking spell ready," Constantine said. "Probably our best bet."

Angel looked toward the platform where Gedeyon had disappeared to, but shook him from her mind, they had other things that had to be addressed. She led the still stumbling Constantine toward the exit while he worked his spell.

On the same lower level he had the magician had battled, the human-again Gedeyon rubbed first at the blood in his arm, then at the wall. It was crude, but he was slowly forming the shape of a circle. He didn't like this, any part of it. But he'd taken the same oath as his allies when they all agreed what was necessary to save mankind from itself.

Through strained breaths he muttered, "Your will, not mine be done." The taint of the pact with Azmodus remained in all of them, and the demon was just waiting for their call. "Your will, not mine be done."