V. The Client
Ophelia woke up the next morning and promptly ran to the bathroom to throw up. She had been doing so periodically since her voyage into hell, and she had a feeling that she would continue doing so, despite the fact that she hadn't eaten anything. She felt like she had the world's worst hangover and had been hit by a truck. Ophelia rested her head on the corner of the cold bath tub before standing, flushing the toilet and brushing her teeth.
Looking at herself in the mirror, she knew that nothing about her had changed. She still had pale brown hair without a strand of grey or white; her eyes were still grey. Overall her trip to hell hadn't made much of an impact upon her appearance-wise. Ophelia popped a few aspirin and a pepto bismol before she grabbed a lollipop from her suitcase and settled down on her bed, trying to figure out what to do. She could continue with her job, or tell her client to keep his money, go home and get a much needed CAT scan.
There was a knock upon her hotel room door and Ophelia got up to answer it, wearing only a wife beater and a pair of short Rainbow Brite boxers. Coupled with the striped toe socks, braided hair, and lollipop, she looked like an innocent school girl. This look didn't stop her from grabbing her gun off of her bedside table before she opened the door, hiding it behind her back. She opened the door a little before recognizing her client and letting him in. He was wearing a pinstripe suit and to Ophelia's horror a polka dot tie. When were men going to realize they couldn't wear two patterns together?
Mentally shaking her head at his fashion faux pas, Ophelia watched the man sit in one of the chairs at the tiny table. She took the opposite one, feeling nervous about having her back to the door. Her client seemed different somehow. He seemed to be radiating something that made her instantly dislike him. It wasn't something she had sensed when she had first met him, and she was surprised by the change.
"How can I help you?" she asked, surprised.
"I heard you were attacked by a demon of some sort yesterday," her client offered, giving her a smug smile that she wanted to punch off of his face. Ophelia didn't betray her surprise, but instead looked at him with questioning eyes. "I have contacts higher up on the grape vine."
"Oh really? Been keeping a close eye on me, have you?" she replied with a smirk, crossing her legs. Somehow, in this rather human situation, her client seemed less human to her. In fact, it appeared like his eyes were glowing red in this light. Ophelia blinked once or twice, but the red glow did not subside or disappear.
"In a way, yes. I don't like to allow my projects to run around unattended to," he replied.
"Well, I'm fine. So glad you cared. You can go now." He was starting to make Ophelia nervous and she wanted to get the man out of her hotel room as soon as possible.
"I will be going in a moment. You aren't having second thought about this job, are you Ophelia?" he asked her, giving her an all-knowing smile. Ophelia had given that smile once or twice before and hated seeing it on his face.
"I have a question for you, I was hoping you could answer for me," she replied, ignoring his question.
"Go ahead."
"What does a stock broker have against an exorcist and his chauffeur?"
"Oh, so very much. He screwed up a grand plan of mine and I want to get him back for it," he replied in a smooth voice. "So you aren't going to drop out of this job, Ophelia?"
"We'll see. I want to get a feeling for the territory. This Constantine seems a little more valuable than I thought. Maybe too valuable to kill, if you get my drift."
Her client seemed perturbed by this, but leaned back in his seat calmly, examining her. Ophelia felt herself grow more and more nervous as the man stared at her, the sneer on his face growing wider and wider. She tried not to show her discomfort, but was pretty sure she was failing miserably.
"Something's changed about you, but I'm not sure what," her client informed her. "Like you've seen something that no human's should be able to see." With this, the man leaned forward, examining her even closer. "I think I know what it is though."
Suddenly, her client kissed her and Ophelia thought she was going to throw up. She bit down on his lip and pushed him away, pointing her gun at him. He stared at her with a wide grin on his face.
"You taste like sulphur..." he wondered out loud. He stood, his gaze not breaking away from Ophelia. "Why, of course... Mr. Constantine doesn't know what he's getting into, now does he?"
Blood dribbled down his chin where she had bitten him, but her client seemed unaware of it. He seemed rather bemused as he stared at her. Suddenly, he flew at her, pushing Ophelia against the wall, making her drop her gun out of surprise. He was only an inch from her face, and was squeezing it between his thumb and forefinger. He looked her straight in the eye, his eyes glowing even brighter than before.
"You tell Constantine that Balthazar is back. Can you remember that, human?" he asked her, and Ophelia nodded, her eyes betraying her fear. "Good girl. We'll find a use for you yet."
He stepped back and Ophelia punched him as hard as she could. His flesh gave way beneath her hand like tissue paper and beneath it, Ophelia saw her client's, Balthazar's, true form. The demon glared at her for a moment before leaving the room. He left the strong stench of sulfur behind him. Ophelia crumpled to the floor, feeling like a used rag doll.
She needed to find Constantine.
John Constantine popped another piece of gum and kept flipping through the pages of the book he was going through. He had spent the entire night chewing nicotine gum and reading book after book, trying to figure out what he had done. Chas had spent most of the night with him, reading as well, but had left in the early morning hours to catch some shut eye before he went to work. It seemed no matter what he read, John wasn't going to find what he wanted. There was no viable explination as to why the barrier between the living world and hell had become so weak. It was the only way that full-fledged demons could leave hell and humans could enter so deeply into it.
He would have gone looking for Ophelia if he hadn't been so caught up in research. He couldn't imagine the kind of things that she had seen by now and Constantine vaguely wondered if she would go insane from it. Sometimes it felt like it would happen to him, and he hadn't gone even close to as deeply into hell as Ophelia had. From what he could guess, she had gotten a tour up to the seventh level, where she belonged. He slammed the large, old book shut in contempt of the irritating assassin and watched a cloud of dust launch into the air.
"Damn you, why do you have to be so difficult?" he asked no one in particular, though he had a feeling that it applied to all of the beings in question: God, Lucifer and Ophelia. For some reason he kept thinking about her and wondering where she was and if she was okay. Constantine was beginning to think he had made a rather major mistake by giving Ophelia the sight. Then again, he wasn't even certain that it had worked. Angela had reacted to it almost immediately, after all. All Ophelia had done was look absolutely terrified and punch him. Maybe he had just given her a tour of hell and pulled her right back out.
Suddenly, his phone rang loudly in the quiet apartment, making Constantine jump. He leaned back in his chair and grabbed the annoying thing off of its reciever on the wall, holding it to his ear.
"Uh, hello?" he asked, curious as to who would call him. Despite the many girls he had picked up over the years, Constantine very rarely was called by anybody.
"Constantine?" it was Ophelia, she sounded shaken up.
"What is it?" he asked, curious as to why the person who had been hired to kill him would call him.
"Meet me at the cafe a block down from your house in fifteen minutes. You have some explaining to do," she replied. The line went dead as she hung up. Constantine sighed and hung up as well.
Casting a glance at the books still waiting to be read, he decided that he needed to get out of the apartment, even if it was just to meet up with his potential killer. He needed to take a quick shower first. He turned to look at his new bathtub, now lying in pieces on the bathroom floor. It figured. He could take a shower, of course, but his landlord was going to be pissed about the flooding. Constantine sighed. Nothing seemed to be going his way lately.
Ever since she left her hotel room, Ophelia had become more and more convinced that she was going completely insane. She kept seeing people with wings and people who looked like they were demons. Strange, winged things were scratching at the windows of the cab she took to the cafe, and when her taxi driver turned to get paid, his eyes glowed red. It wasn't a good day for her overall. All this, and she was still vomiting periodically.
She sat in the corner of the outdoor cafe, trying not to look at anything around her, because she wasn't certain anymore what was real and what wasn't. The paranoia was getting so bad, in fact, that she had nearly screamed when Constantine suddenly sat down in the seat across from her.
Ophelia was wearing a pair of leather pants with a matching jacket and a dark red tanktop. The jacket was swung across the back of her chair, and she tried to keep a look of nonchalance as Constantine stared at her in silence for a moment. She knew that she was pale, and she was also still wearing her red lensed sunglasses because she wanted to hide the fact that her eyes were darting everywhere waiting for something new and more frightening to appear.
"What did you do to!" she demanded in an angry whisper. Constantine looked at her for a moment before leaning across the table. She leaned across as well to hear him speak.
"Listen, assassin, you said you wanted to see what I see. Normally I wouldn't do this to anyone, but you happened to get me in a bad mood, alright?" he replied. He sounded irritated with her, though he wasn't the one having severe hallucinations.
"So you drugged me and tried to drown me!" she exclaimed, then realizing people were staring, she lowered her voice.
"I didn't drug you," Constantine replied, infuriatingly calm.
"Then what did you do to me?" she asked. "Because my client is starting to look a little like a cheap Freddy Kreuger knock off and I'm having a really bad trip, if you know what I mean."
"You aren't tripping on anything, Ophelia. You're seeing them."
"And who's them?" she demanded, angry. They were interrupted by a rather confused looking waiter who asked for their orders. Constantine ordered breakfast and a coffee, Ophelia got a cappuccino.
"Alright, this might take a bit of an explanation," Constantine answered once the young woman left to place their order. "And I don't expect you to believe me, but just listen, okay? Humans are born capable of all sorts of evil and good things, right? Well, God and the Devil decided to place these things on earth that nudge us in the right direction. I call them halfbreeds. There are good ones and bad ones, blah, blah, blah."
"So that thing in the bowling alley was a halfbreed?" Ophelia asked, trying to figure out what Constantine was telling her.
"No, that was a full fledged demon. They aren't supposed to be able to cross over onto our plane, neither are full fledged angels. It's just the way it is. But recently, there have been a lot of demons breaking the rules. And I have a feeling that your client has something to do with it."
"But what does all this have to do with what I'm seeing?"
"By putting you in hell and pulling you back out, I've given you the same abilities as me. The ability to see all of the things that most humans can't. It's not an easy thing, and I'm really not sure why I did it, but I did and you're stuck with it."
"Are you telling me I'm going to be seeing this stuff for the rest of my life!" she exclaimed loudly. Once again, everyone in the cafe was staring at them. "Rehearsing for an audition," she answered their questioning looks with a small smile and a laugh. The other diners looked relieved and returned to their food and drinks.
Their waitress returned and placed their drinks on the table with shaking hands. Ophelia lowered her sunglasses, getting a good look at the woman. She saw the red glow before John did and grabbed the waitress' wrist.
"What are you so scared about, halfbreed?" she demanded, and saw the strangely proud look that Constantine was giving her.
"The mark," the demon woman replied pointing to Ophelia's bare arm. She had completely forgotten about Lucifer's hand print that was scorched into her arm and hadn't bothered to cover it. "You have seen him with your own eyes, human."
"Leave," Constantine commanded the halfbreed who immediately did so, looking back at the pair once with suspicious eyes. Ophelia leaned forward after taking a sip of her cappucino.
"Listen, I don't know about you, but I wanna get the hell out of dodge. I think I'll go nuts if I stay here too much longer," she informed him, and throwing a five dollar bill on the table, stood to leave.
"It's no different anywhere else, Ophelia," Constantine told her as she reached for her coat. "They're everywhere. But if you help me, we may be able to considerably lesten the number."
Ophelia sat back down. Now she was interested.
"How can we do that?" she asked him.
"Well to start off, you're going to have to tell me what your clients name is," he replied, looking as if he didn't think she would say it. Suddenly, Ophelia remembered what the man had told her in the hotel room.
"He told me... he told me to tell you that Balthazar is back," she replied, though the phrase had no real meaning to her. Constantine, however, seemed floored. He sat back in his seat and gaped at her for a moment. "What?"
"If Balthazar is responsible for this, we might have to worry about someone worse," he told her and rose, donning his trench coat.
"Where are you going?" she asked.
"To see Midnite," he replied as he left. Ophelia ran after him, throwing on her leather jacket.
"I want to come."
"You can stay in the car."
