None of us mentioned the incident again after that. I was never sure if what Ethan had said that night was true, and even if it was I knew he'd never have said it sober. But even so it had changed things. Between me and Ethan, what had once been mistrust was slowly growing into... hatred is probably too strong, but certainly violent dislike. Although... I felt sorry for him. I think he knew, and it only made him angrier.

And between me and Ripper... it was as though there was something hanging in the air between us. Our friendship had an edge on it that had never been there before. We were still close, if anything closer than before, because he had left himself so open to me, and I had seen him so vulnerable. But there was an awkwardness between us that had never been there before. One of the things I had always liked about being around Ripper was that I could always be myself. Now I was beginning to wonder if he was the one wearing the mask, keeping himself hidden from me.

We neither of us said anything. Half the time, I would wonder if he had even noticed the change. And then I would catch him staring at me strangely, and he'd look away as soon as he realised I'd noticed. Nothing was quite the same, and he knew it too.

Not that anything had changed drastically. Life went on pretty much as normal. We were nervous of magic for a while, went back to safety of rock music. Even when we went back to magic I stuck to simple stuff: turning water into whisky and keeping the TV running without electricity when we failed to pay the bills. I kept well clear of anything dark and dangerous...

'There are books on magic in the university library, you know,' Ripper told me one day.

'What, in the Bodelian? Really?' I said, slightly bemused. He nodded.

'Yeah. I've been looking stuff up.'

'What kind of stuff?'

'Oh, you know. Just stuff.'

'And you found stuff? In the Bodelian Library? Proper stuff? Not just fairy tales? Demon raising and that?'

'Yeah. And stuff about exorcism, and elemental control, and astral projection...'

He sounded excited. I smiled cautiously, wondering where this was leading.

'I think we should try some of it out,' he said. I shrugged. I wasn't sure I wanted to go back to that yet. I wasn't sure I wanted him to go back to that yet.

Suddenly he frowned slightly.

'John... you're not... you're not trying to protect me or anything stupid like that, are you?' he said.

'You what?' I said incredulously.

'Don't... god, please don't take this the wrong way,' he said, 'But I feel like you've been holding back for me. I know I passed out on you last time we did any serious magic, but... but you've been treating me differently ever since...'

I was stunned into silence.

He thought I'd been treating him differently because he hadn't had the power to keep up with me... He had no idea of what Ethan had said to me. All he knew was that one night, he'd pushed himself to the limit, and not been able to cope, and ever since then, there'd been something wrong between us.

I felt awful.

And the worse thing was, although I'd never thought of it like that... in a way, I suppose I had been trying to protect him. It wasn't that I didn't think he could cope, it was just that... it had scared me when he'd passed out like that. I cared about him too much to be able to stand seeing him hurt...

... And that wasn't a thought I was comfortable with having.

I took a deep breath.

'Sorry,' I said. 'I really didn't mean to be so bloody patronising. I don't think you need protecting. I just thought you wouldn't want to do the dangerous stuff anymore. I thought I'd put you off.'

'It'd take more than that!' Ripper laughed.

He was right about the university library, the Bodelian had the best collection of occult books I'd ever seen. Now, thinking about, I suspect that the Council must have been using it for storage space. I'm not really one for books myself, everything I do, I've either been taught first hand or just worked out for myself. But Ripper... well, he was a college boy after all, and he loved occult books. Not just reading them, he seemed to love everything about them, the smell, the texture of the pages, the weight of them in his hands...

'You really are destined to be a librarian!' I joked. He smiled.

'Destiny can go to hell!' he said cheerfully.

And we began to work proper magic again. Stuff that even I had never done before. It got to be more complicated, more dangerous, and more of a buzz every time we tried something new.

Despite our growing mutual dislike, more often than not, Ethan would come and join us. It cut down on his suspicion and jealousy, and also the extra power he provided was becoming more and more necessary. It was strange, the first few times I saw him working the occult, I thought that he had very little natural power. Now, watching him more closely, I realised that for some reason, he was almost always holding back. I couldn't work our whether he was doing it deceitfully to hide his abilities, or out of malice, to stop our magic from working properly, or it could have been just plain cowardice – fear of what he was doing. I couldn't even tell if he was doing it consciously or not. But even the limited power boost he was providing us with was necessary, and three is a better number to work with than two, not as powerful as five, but not as hard to control either.

We were working towards another big project, something that Ripper had come across in one of the older and more obscure manuscripts. Combining a kind of astral projection with a complex form of summoning spell it would allow us to take possession of a demon's full occult power, as well as its physical body, for a short time.

Hell, the stupid thing is, we didn't even need to do it. It was just curiosity, power hunger, arrogance. The fact that we thought we could. I've done some fairly pointless things in my time, and some bloody dangerous magic... but usually when things are life-threateningly dangerous, they're at least of life or death importance as well. Now, when I risk my neck, it's usually to save someone's soul, and when I sell my soul, I expect the world in return. Then... I thought it was a bit of a laugh. And despite all the warnings, I still hadn't realised that if you play with fire, you're going to get burned.

Or, worse still, someone else is...

Ripper wanted to do the actual projection, to have the experience of looking out on the world though demon eyes, so he was going to be the Wanderer. Ethan was the Anchor; his job was to keep Ripper fixed on this plain. I was going to be the Vessel; our power would be combined in me, and I would have control.

With practiced hands, we marked the chalk pentagram on the bare floorboards, placed and lit the seven candles, burned and scattered the herbs. We stood facing each other for a moment, and then linked hands. Ethan's were slick with sweat. Ripper's were trembling slightly, but I could tell it was with excitement. I squeezed his hand in a wish of good luck. He smiled slightly.

And we began.

I don't know when I realised that something was badly wrong. At first it felt like nothing was happening – there was the build up of tension in the air, and my skin began to prickle, but there was no tangible result. Ripper was squeezing my hand tighter and tighter. Ethan stared at the floor, his face frozen in concentration, but Ripper's face wasn't frozen, his eyes danced in the candlelight. The candle flames flickered in an ethereal wind, burning more and more fiercely, until I was forced to look away. The temperature dropped suddenly, making me shiver violently, and then slowly began to rise until sweat was dripping down my forehead, plastering my hair to my face. A strange humming noise filled my ears, blocking out all other sounds so that I could no longer hear the words Ethan was chanting. Ethan glanced up suddenly, his frozen face melting into a look of fear, but he didn't break the chanting. Ripper seemed not to have noticed any of this, he was staring ahead, his face full of excitement, his eyes reflecting fire...

... there was something wrong with his eyes...

Ethan must have noticed at exactly the same moment I did, because at that moment, he jerked his hand out of Ripper's and pulled away, breaking the circle. He was shouting something and gesturing wildly, but I couldn't hear him, all I could here was the humming inside my head, which was beginning to sound less like humming and more like... screaming.

...There was something wrong with Ripper's eyes... something wrong...

He met my gaze squarely, and I realised that they weren't reflecting the candlelight; the fire was dancing within them. His pupils had shrunk to pinpricks. His smoky-grey irises seemed to be spreading across the whites of his eyes, and fire was dancing at their heart.

It wasn't Ripper looking out through those eyes. It was something else entirely.

The screaming in my head was drowning out all thoughts.

Not Ripper. Not him. He'd gone, he wasn't there. And something else was staring out through his eyes.

Not Ripper.

Ethan was panicking, and I was terrified he was going to scuff the chalk circle and let out Ri... the thing that was no longer Ripper. I grabbed his shoulder, and forced him to the floor. He stared up at me, angry and afraid.

I tried to keep my head. I tried to locate Ripper, he should still have been joined to me by the spell we'd cast. If it was a standard possession, he'd still be in his body, held down by the psychic strength of the...thing which was now looking out through his eyes. But if that was the case, then me and Ethan combined would have strength enough to force the demon out. After all, we had summoned it.

But even as I thought this, I knew instinctively that it wasn't a standard possession.

No, what had happened to Ripper... what I had done to him... was far worse.

He wasn't in his body. I couldn't feel him anywhere in the room.

He was gone.

I realised I was shaking. But there was no time to panic, there was no time to be upset. Desperately hoping it would work, I put out the candles as quickly as I could, burning my fingers in the process. The room was plunged into total darkness, but I could still see the fire that burning in the heart of what had once been Ripper's eyes.

It was moving slowly towards Ethan now, sweeping Ripper's hair out of its face with a lazy flick of one hand. Ethan backed away in terror, his arms flailing out.

I could see it coming, any minute now, Ethan was going to break the circle, and then we would have no control over the thing at all.

'Watch out! Fucking stop it! Ethan!' I yelled out in a complete panic. I don't think he could hear me.

I didn't know what to do.

Ethan had lost his head. Any minute now he was going to do something stupid.

And Ripper was gone.

Ethan had buried his head in his arms. He curled his knees up to his chest, drew himself in as small as he could. The thing reached down, and grabbed his shoulder with one hand. Just for a moment, it could have been Ripper, bending over to comfort him. Then it grabbed a fistful of Ethan's hair, and jerked his head back painfully.

Not Ripper. Something else. It forced Ethan to his feet, forced him to stare into its eyes.

Ethan screamed.

It raked its nails across Ethan's face, hard enough to draw blood. Ethan cried out again, but the thing had obviously not done as much damage as it had hoped to. In its true form, it must have had claws.

It wasn't in its true form...

Suddenly, my mind cleared slightly. This thing wasn't Ripper, but it had Ripper's body, and Ripper's strength, with all the limitations that entailed.

I grabbed it by the shoulders, dragging it off Ethan. It hissed in surprise. I punched it hard in the chest; Ripper's body buckled with the blow, and crashed into the invisible barrier of the circle, before ricocheting off and landing crumpled on the floor. A pang of uncontrollable guilt washed over me, huddled on the floor, its face buried in its hands, it was hard to believe that the thing wasn't Ripper.

It pulled itself to its feet, and its eyes burned and swirled.

Not... Ripper... Keep a hold on yourself, Johnny boy. It's not Ripper... I said to myself.

Before it could pull itself together again, I had grabbed its shoulder. I punched it hard in the chest twice more, with such force that I felt ribs snap beneath my hands. It growled with pain, and writhed in my hands.

I punched it in the head, once, twice. I felt its jaw crack. Its head lolled, but it was still semi-conscious. I raised my fist again.

Suddenly, Ethan was grabbing my arm.

'You'll kill him!'

'It's not him! He's not there! You were his Anchor, you should feel that...' I realised to with a shock that I was actually crying, tears pouring down my face.

'You can't! What if he's trapped somewhere? Constantine! You bloody can't!'

'I can't let this thing out on the world! I summoned it. It's my bloody fault, and I know that, all right? But Ripper's already dead. He's not here. If I have to kill his body to get rid of this thing... maybe it's for the best.'

'You're a heartless bastard, John Constantine!'

I didn't answer. I couldn't. I swung my fist again and again, pounding blows on the thing's head.

Its head snapped back on its neck with an audible crack

There was a strange rush of wind, and again I heard the screaming in my ears, louder and louder until I thought I was going to pass out.

And then, suddenly, just for an instant, Ripper was staring out at me through half closed eyes.

'John...' he whispered, but the word caught in his chest, and he collapsed against me.

I started to shake violently. My vision blurred and my head was swimming.

'Ripper?' I said, my voice harsh with shock.

I laid him on the floor as gently as I could. He was still breathing.

'Call an ambulance,' I said in a strangled voice.

'What?' Ethan said, incredulously. He hadn't seen what I had, hadn't heard Ripper say my name.

'Call a fucking ambulance Ethan! Do it now!' I yelled. My voice cracked and gave out. I'd yelled myself completely hoarse.

'It's him. It's Ripper,' I explained hurriedly in a cracked whisper. Ethan's eyes widened in shock, and he rushed to the telephone. I heard him talking in a panicked voice.

Ripper's breath was making a horrible, rattling sound in his chest. I remembered the feel of his ribs breaking, remembered the sound that his neck has made as his head had snapped back under my blows and my head reeled. I staggered away and threw up, leaning against the doorframe, retching violently. Then I buried my face in my hands. I couldn't stop shaking.

When I looked up, Ethan was watching me.

'I'm leaving,' I said in a broken voice. 'I have to leave...'

'Yes,' he said flatly.

'I... I won't be back.' Ethan didn't say anything. 'If he...' I swallowed, '...If he wants to talk to me, I'll be in London. He knows where to get hold of me.'

'If he ever wakes up,' Ethan said maliciously. I closed my eyes. Fresh tears made tracks down my face.

I turned around and knelt down by Ripper, laying my hand on his shoulder.

'I'm sorry...' I said.

Then I turned and fled.