I met Ripper years ago. I remember it so clearly even now...

It was raining. But then it was always bloody raining. I didn't know where I was going or what I was doing. I'd been staying with a mate in Oxford, a college boy, and a right poncy bastard, but a good magician, and with enough money to pay for some of my more expensive occult experiments. A good fellow to know. But the trouble was... well to put it bluntly, we hated each other. He needed my power, and I needed his money... and there's nothing like feeling used to kill a friendship stone dead. So first we'd started drinking, and then we'd started fighting, and then at two o'clock in the morning, he'd chucked me out into the rain. Bastard.

So I had nowhere to go, and nothing to do. No money. No nothing. I turned up my collar, and shook my long, blond, dripping wet hair from my face, and wandered around the dingy Oxford back streets, waiting for the rain to stop, waiting for morning.

I'd ended up in a student area. And I don't mean the colleges, with their grand architecture and air of respectability. I mean cheap houses falling into disrepair cos the students living there can't possibly afford better. I remember trying and failing to light a cigarette, but it was raining too hard, and I was fairly drunk.

And then, suddenly... a tingle down my spine. A change in the texture of the air.

Magic...

I looked around me. Through an upstairs window of one of the grottiest nearby houses, I could see flashes of light. I grinned wickedly to myself. Where there were students playing with magic... I was sure I could blag myself a bed for the night.

I forced the lock and climbed quietly upstairs. I was going to just knock and invite myself in, but pausing on the landing, I caught the words of a spell.

A demon raising spell.

Like I said, I was fairly drunk, and I've always had an evil sense of humour. I tried the door, and they'd left it unlocked, and I just couldn't resist. I crouched in the doorway, waiting for the spell to come to its climax...

And as they finally finished with the formalities and summoned the demon to appear, I bathed myself in ethereal light, and stepped calmly though the door, trench coat swirling in a supernatural wind.

Panic ensued, just as I'd hoped. I leaned against the doorway, in silence, and watched the chaos. It quickly became clear that they hadn't been expecting their little spell to have any effect at all... which in truth, of course, it hadn't; there wasn't much true power in the group. After a while of ineffective pandemonium, someone had the intelligence to blow out the candles, which would have ended the spell and cause the summoned to depart. The room was plunged into darkness. There was some more shouting and confusion, and then someone yelled: 'Shut up and keep still the lot of you!'

There was stillness and silence. The man who had spoken carefully picked his way across the darkened room and flicked the light-switch. The room was filled with the harsh glare of electric light, and the students stared at me. I grinned, fighting the urge to collapse in hysterical laughter. The expressions on their faces were priceless.

'You're no demon!' the man standing closest to me – the one who had flicked the lights – said eventually. I couldn't tell if he was relieved or disappointed.

'What the hell do you think you're playing at?' someone else yelled. I glanced around at the other would-be magicians. Their relief was turning to anger. The other man, however, seemed to find the whole thing amusing. I glanced at him, caught his eye. He grinned. I could get to like you, I thought. He had shaggy brown hair, and an evil gleam in his eyes.

'Your little ritual wasn't going to summon anything. I didn't want you to be disappointed!' I said with a Constantine-special cocky grin. 'Oh you have to admit it was funny... You should have seen the looks on your faces!'

'He's drunk,' someone said disgustedly.

'And you're ugly. I'll be sober tomorrow,' I quipped.

'Oscar Wilde. Very good!' laughed the amused student.

'Was it? I thought I'd made it up...' I said, disappointed. He laughed even harder.

'Ripper, it's not funny!' said a man with darting, wary eyes.

'Lighten up Ethan, it's bloody hysterical!' he replied.

Ripper. Ethan. I made a mental note of the names.

'You want to get your locks looked at. Any bugger can just walk in off the streets,' I warned them, pleasantly. Ethan scowled.

'What's your name then?' Ripper asked suddenly.

'John Constantine.' I flicked my hair out of my eyes and grinned.

'Ripper,' he said with a slight nod, and then gestured round the group, 'Ethan, Deirdre, Philip and Thomas.'

'Nice to meet you,' I said, with only a hint of sarcasm. They glared at me, all except Ethan who was still glaring at Ripper, and Ripper, who was still trying not to laugh.

And after that, blagging a bed for the night was the easiest thing in the world.

'Are you a real magician?' he asked me. I laughed.

'You could say that. I can certainly do a better job of demon-raising than you and your mates did.' His eyes gleamed.

'Show me,' he said.

And I did.

Before Ripper, I'd never had any time for college boys. Mostly they just pissed me off to high hell; they all seemed to have more money and education than sense. And those that weren't complete right-wing shits were bathed in pathetic middle-class liberalism mixed in with a generous helping of juvenile idealism.

But not Ripper. Ripper wasn't like that. Ripper was a true rebel. He knew the world was too hard for idealism. He was... streetwise. He knew that the system sucked, and he was prepared to stick two fingers up at it and screw the consequences. I don't know how he got to be that way. I know most students rebel. But not the way Ripper did. To be that tough, that angry, that knowing, you have to have lived a hard life. As far as I could tell, Ripper was from a nice middle-class background. Hell, I think daddy was probably paying his college fees. There were no signs of a hard life anywhere in sight. So I never did work out what had happened to Ripper to make him the way he was. He didn't trust me enough to tell me even when we were close.

Now, I doubt I'll ever know.

Maybe magic is the ultimate form of rebellion. Maybe that's what draws us to it, people like Ripper, people like me. It's one power that they just can't take away from you. Because of course it's about power, too. Demon-raising is the ultimate power trip. Maybe that's what drew Ripper in. Maybe he needed a way to feel powerful.

Me, of course, I didn't need a reason. I'm a Constantine. I was screwed before I'd even started.

So I showed him magic. Sometimes it was just him and me; sometimes he'd bring Ethan, the man with the wary eyes. I wondered about him and Ethan. It wasn't that they were overly friendly; in fact, mostly they were just the opposite. Sometimes they seemed to hate each other. But then, sometimes they seemed to know each other too well. There were times when they could finish each other's sentences. There were times when they couldn't look each other in the eye. There was tension between them, and I was never sure if I was reading it right...

Sometimes, if it wasn't just the three of us, he'd bring a big group. And I loved it that more than anything. It was such an ego trip. They were my willing little disciples; eager to learn everything I was prepared to teach them. I was young – younger than most of them – and I was broke – admittedly most of them were too, but I was likely to stay that way, while they moved on up in the world – and they were college boys (and to be fair, college girls as well), and I was just some bloke off the streets, no education, no money, no nothing... but all the while I was teaching them, I had power over them. I was superior. They listened to me. They respected me.

I was John Constantine, master of the occult, for the first time in my entire life. And it was... magic. It was the most wonderful thing ever. Of course, that was long before I'd realised how painful, how lonely, how terrible the path I'd chosen to walk truly was. Before the deaths had begun to mount up. Sure, there'd been accidents, containment spells which didn't quite hold, exorcisms which hadn't gone as planned. From these, I already had my first scars. But I thought back then that that was as bad as it could get.

I was wrong.

'Ripper?'

He was sitting slumped at his table, his face buried in his hands. There was a half empty bottle of whisky in his hand. Not a good sign.

'Ripper? You all right?'

He didn't look up.

''ve got a...a des... desi... dessiny...' he slurred drunkenly and miserably. I sat down next to him.

'Fuck destiny.' I said cheerfully. He looked up. He looked like he'd been crying.

'You don' unnerstand. 've got... things... gonna happen. Bad...' he murmured. He swallowed. 'They're watchin' me...' he continued. 'I'm gonna become... one of them. It's written down. In books. They showed me...'

'You're not making any sense,' I said.

''m drunk,' he said, waving the whisky bottle around.

'At least your honest.'

'John... I don' wan' to be... what they're goin' to make me...'

'Why? What are they going to make you?'

'A li-librarian...' he said morosely. I almost laughed... but I realised he was being deadly serious. 'One of them...' he continued in a whisper.

'One of them?' I said quietly.

'You know... them. The good guys. The ones tha' sit behind desks. Them...' he said miserably. 'The bassards...' he added forcefully, before burying his face in his hands again.

'John, you won' let them, will you?' he murmured, his voice so muffled I could barely here him.

'Won't let them what?'

'You won' let them take me? I don' wan' to go...' He grabbed my arm. 'Please, John...' He was crying again.

'No one's taking you anywhere. You're drunk. I'm putting you to bed.'

Of course, he was embarrassed about it in the morning. It turned out that two guys from the Council had visited his flat. The Council were bad news. They knew where he lived, which is never the most reassuring thing. In fact, it was worse than that: they'd known all sorts of things about him that they had no right to know. They'd turned up on his doorstep suited, official, intimidating... and told him that he was destined to be one of them. It took a lot to unnerve Ripper, but that had reduced him to a drunken, tearful wreck, if only briefly.

'Fuck destiny,' I told him again, now that he was sober enough to listen to me. 'You make your own decisions.' Back then, I probably even believed my own bravado. I know Ripper did. And look at us both now...