Budgiebird – Oh, you'll find out soon…I'm sorry I made you wait so long, but I'm glad that you're enjoying this, and have more cookies! (hands them over). Thanks for reviewing!

Lovely – Don't worry, I'm being bad about updating when I say I will, so I can forgive forgetting to review! I'm so glad you're liking the suspense. There is a reason for all the stuff happening, never fear! And yes, there will be more fluff. I'm too addicted to writing it to stop!

Evelyn Valerious - Ah, don't worry. I'm really glad that you're reading it now. I think it's so convenient that Angela's a cop, it all ties in beautifully. Can I ask where you got your name from? Is it something to do with the Mummy, by any chance? (grins). Thanks for reviewing!

DesertFlowerSimion – Yay, thanks for your reviews! And I'm glad you like my AngelaJohn fluff. I adore writing it!

scarstar – Ah, thank you! I intend to keep you all gripped, that way you'll have to come back and read some more! I'm soulless, aren't I?

Lady Hawke – That's good, keep you hooked! It's very evil of me, but I am an utter review whore, so I might as well be evil (grins)

Silverbloodrain – Sugar is good – we like sugar! Which movies were you watching? Constantine I trust? Thank you for reviewing!

Seven reviews…I do not deserve all of you lovely people as reviewers. Especially when I keep promising I'll update weekly when I rarely do. So from now, I will be updating every other week. Though if I do by a miracle write ahead of myself for once, I will update weekly. But officially, I will update every other Sunday. I'm sorry, but I'm approaching my GCSEs and I don't want to spend hours everyone Sunday struggling to write a mediocre chapter when I could write a better one. Sound fair?

Anyway, as my apology for not updating last week this chapter is about double the length of some of the others. Parts of it I took from a Constantine fic I started and then abandoned, so if any parts seem like they don't gel, let me know and I'll fix it.

With that done, on with the show!

Chapter VIII: Guilt

Constantine glanced around to get his bearings, feeling a strange sense of déjà vu. A couple of months earlier, he had been in a place very similar to this, and for exactly the same reason. However, he felt far less confident about this exorcism than he had for the other one, and it hadn't been someone trustworthy who had informed him of it. He felt a small pang of guilt as he remembered Father Hennessy. He was an alcoholic, a spineless man who had refused to accept his own gift, but he was a good person, and one of the few friends Constantine had had in his life. Same with Chas and Beeman. He hoped that they were all in the good place now. The one without the fire and eternal torment.

He realised that he was unconsciously feeling inside his pocket for his lighter. His mind knew that he had left it on Chas' gravestone, but after over two decades of smoking certain habits were engraved in his bones. Instead, he pulled out a stick of nicotine gum and chewed it meditatively. He knew it was meant to help overcome his lifelong habit, but God it tasted awful. It made him feel like a kid, and he preferred not to be reminded of his childhood, surrounded by demons with no way to control them. No wonder he was considered insane by the time he was fourteen years old.

It was weird, what had happened this morning. After Angela had left, he hadn't done much. Until the call came. Someone – he didn't know who and they didn't give a name – had said they needed an exorcist. That was unusual. He wasn't exactly in the Yellow Pages. And people who needed his help usually knew him and vice versa. This was definitely strange. You didn't need to be a psychic to know that. But he'd gone anyway. He could tell that the person at the other end was genuinely emotional – though he wasn't sure that it was fear. But it was definitely something in his line of work. This building, this atmosphere, just confirmed that. Unlike his last exorcism, where the whole building and all its inhabitants were buzzing, this building was quiet, almost eerily so. Obviously this person hadn't been found – or was already dead. A flicker of suspicion ran through his mind, but it was quietened when a loud thump and a scream came from an upstairs room, and his sixth sense, his astral feelers flared.

Something was here that was definitely not supposed to be here.

He had planned on having to follow this psychic sense to the source, but as he started to enter the building, another scream echoed from upstairs, and a window smashed on the fourth floor. That made it easier for him.

He started to climb the flights of stairs, thanking, not for the first time, the Devil for ridding him of his cancer. However, he thought his silently, and gave the mental finger to Lucifer. Just because he was thankful didn't mean he was going to pretend to give anything more than a shit for the guy. He took in a deep breath, revelling in the feeling. It still surprised him to be able to breathe deeply and clearly, without wheezing or coughing. Just another thing he wasn't used to yet.

John entered the apartment in question. He could find it easily; the screaming from the apartment hadn't stopped and his astral light was drawing him to the source.

A man was standing there, inside the apartment, as though he was waiting for something. He appeared to have found it in Constantine, as the second he saw him, he stopped uncomfortably shifting his weight from one foot to the other and left, pushing past John hurriedly. The brief contact made John's psychic powers more acute, more specific, and he could tell that the man was terrified, terrified of the creature that appeared to be devouring his partner – whether wife or girlfriend, Constantine couldn't tell, but he knew that this wasn't the person who had called him about his notable skills as an exorcist. And it didn't take any sort of supernatural ability to know that. The person who had called him was female. And damnably familiar. But there wasn't really any time to worry about that now.

He could hear a strange scrabbling sound. Looking for the source of the noise, John could see it; it was coming from behind a wooden door to his right; clearly locked. Whether that was to keep people out or demons in, he couldn't tell.

Picking up a wire coat hanger dangling from an ironing board in the main room, he untwisted it quickly into a straight strand of wire. Jamming it through the lock and manipulating it roughly, he heard the definitive click that meant the lock was undone. The whole operation had taken about half a minute. It was scary, really how practised he was at it. But, after all, he was thirty-eight, and had been exorcising demons for over fifteen years. Knowing a few tricks like lock-picking definitely helped.

The door popped open easily, and Constantine wisely stood back slightly, giving the door a solid kick to open it fully. However, it did not open properly, instead hitting into the bulk behind the door. Taking advantage of the moment, Constantine entered the room, and grabbed the stunned demon – well, person possessed by a demon. One thing that they never seemed to learn was that when they possessed a body, they took on their frailties as well. A door hitting a seplavite wouldn't have done a thing besides pissing it off mildly. But hitting a human – especially catching it just on the crown of the head – resulted in a concussion, as proved here. The host body slumped behind the door, fingers splayed out and bleeding. There was a cut or a wound on the person's palm – he couldn't see what it was clearly.

The demon was there, rippling beneath the skin of the woman. She was young, maybe twenty-five or so, with short, crisply-cut blonde hair that was sprawled over the pillow messily and soaked with sweat. Dark red vessels showed down the side of her face, like dried blood, and every now and again, something flickered over her face, like a shadow of demon. Which, entirely non-ironically, it was.

Constantine deliberately turned his back on the demon, knowing that it couldn't do anything while the host body was unconscious, and ripped open the curtains, allowing sunlight to flood into the room. The demon shrank back, recoiling from the light like it was acid. Even though the host was unconscious, the demon within was still active, stretching and tearing at the skin like it was tissue paper.

Coming back towards the demon, Constantine started the Latin chant that would hopefully force the demon back to where it belonged.

Crux sancta sit mihi lux

Non draco sit mihi dux

Vade retro satana

Nunquam suade mihi vana

Sunt mala quae libas

Ipse venena bibas

The power of the ancient Latin words forced the demon from just below the girl's skin to further, back through the source, back into Hell. Her outward appearance shifted slightly, back towards its normal look. Constantine however knew that the demon within was still there, still fighting. It just needed to move out of range of Constantine's exorcism. If it went deep enough, it should have been able to escape his power. But John had plenty more tricks up his sleeves.

Without warning, the demon pushed forwards, stretching the girl's skin paper thin in a completely grotesque way. However, Constantine had been prepared for that, and pressed one of his silver saint medallions to the demon's head. There was definitely a certain satisfaction as he watched the flesh sizzle and felt the demon underneath recede back to Hell. You didn't spend twenty years exorcising demons and not then get some pleasure out of watching them burn.

The demons fell backwards, not just out of Constantine's psychic range but right back, down into Hell. He could sense it falling, and the flare of heat the resulted make him doubly convinced that it was gone. No demon he had ever faced would have survived that.

He turned to go. He'd had to deal before with sceptics, who, not believing that they had been possessed and finding a strange man inside their home, often threatened to call the police. John smirked. He'd love to see the look on Angela's face as she got called out to deal with an exorcist, not exactly the usual in the LAPD, but he liked her too much to humiliate her. What had happened last night had been a surprise. He'd have expected her never to want to see him again. After all, they'd met after her sister had killed herself. Now that it was all over, he had thought that she would want to forget him and go back to a normal life. And it would have been in his best interests to do the same…

Except that this was his normal life. Every rotten stinking second of it.

Well, at least he wouldn't be dying any time soon. And the son of the Devil wouldn't be making Earth an extension of Hell.

And at least Angela was still in his life. For now, at any rate.

John popped another stick of nicotine gum in his mouth, his old one stale and tasteless. As he placed his hand on the door, his senses flared, so much that he was almost stunned for a second.

Turning around suddenly, he could just see the demon returning to the surface of the woman's skin. It was stretching at her body again, pulling it with scaly fingers like her skin was rubber. It was grotesque, and the sight of it spurred Constantine on, if only to get the disgusting sight out of his mind.

The demon was tearing from within, hungrily and desperately. Constantine reached again for his medals, on his keychain in his pocket, but the creature was quicker. With a mighty burst of energy, it was propelled forwards and used one clawed talon to gouge through the woman's midriff. She spluttered, the body spasming even though her mind wasn't in control, as her life's blood poured out onto the carpeted floor. She was dead between the space of two blinks. And the beast – the demon within her body – had sprung out of her body, crossed the divide between Hell and Earth.

John paused, almost unable to believe what he was seeing. This was almost unbelievable, and he wrote the book on the unbelievable, but the demon had come through. This was impossible. This shouldn't have been happening.

Even more surprisingly, the demon was ignoring him, and it was standing in the window, looking almost proud, holding itself there for a second. Now Constantine knew there was something seriously wrong. Most demons, even contained within possessed bodies, couldn't bear the touch of sunlight. But this one was standing in the window calmly.

There was a clear shot lined up, but Constantine didn't have that sort of weaponry with him. All he had were his saints' medals, a Bible and a small vial of holy water. Nothing that would help him fight this demon.

Without looking back, the demon jumped out of the window. It was too much to hope that it would somehow be damaged by the fall. John looked out of the window, just catching a glimpse of the demon as it scurried towards the shadows between buildings, blending invisibly with the darkness and leaving his sight.

"Shit" he said inadequately, his fingernails digging into his palms as he clenched his fists. Then, once he was thinking rationally again, he tried to explain what had happened.

Only there was no easy explanation. The demon had fallen into Hell. He'd never known any demon to crawl it's way back after being sent down again, besides, it hadn't looked like it was crawling back. It was being propelled back.

Someone in Hell was too desperate to let that victim go.

Constantine turned around abruptly, needing air. A vicious murder had taken place here, and as far as anyone was concerned, he was the last person to see the victim. He needed to get out of here, and quickly.

He got out of the room and left the apartment as fast as possible. The man who was in the apartment before was nowhere to be seen, which seemed to be the one bit of luck he had on his side that day. He strode down the hall as fast as possible, when his psychic intuition blazed again. Constantine stopped, and turned, trying to locate the source of the feeling.

As he circled, his senses flared up again, unsurprisingly, considering the amount of supernatural activity that had occurred there, but this time they had the light of familiarity about them. Someone was here whom he knew. He whipped around, but all that greeted him was more darkness and sterile doors that could have been either opened or closed – he couldn't tell. What he could tell though, was that someone was watching him, and someone he had once known. A demon? he asked himself. No, his rational mind reasoned. If it was a demon possessing someone else, he would notice it more. This presence was subtle, and far more human than any possessed person would be able to be. A half-breed? Maybe, but if so it was one of the better disguised ones.

Constantine relaxed himself as far as he could, which wasn't very far. When you relaxed, you put yourself off guard, unprepared for any attack that could come for you. And he couldn't afford to be unprepared. Hey, he didn't sleep in a cage for fun (his mind reeled in a number of bizarre directions). However, only when he relaxed and let his entire body, psychic and physical, and let them lose their tension could he hear the thoughts of those around him. It was advanced magic, powerful forces, but he had used it before, numerous times, and it had gotten easier over the years. It would be child's play to a more powerful psychic, but there weren't that many of them. Constantine didn't even know one. Except...

He sighed with frustration, his concentration broken. To be honest, he hadn't got time for this. A demon was on the loose – something that was completely his fault, the nagging voice in his head said – and he should be going to kill it before it killed something. But this presence intrigued him, as though it felt weirdly familiar, there was a sharp streak in it, a captivating mix of fire and ice.

Constantine rubbed his temples, hard, as if it would help, really wishing he had a cigarette or a shot of some liquor or something, anything that would make this all seem like a bad dream he could wake up from. For a second he knew how Father Hennessy had felt. He had drowned himself in drink to silence all of this, as though ignorance protected you any.

However much he wanted a drink or something, he had to do this. The suspense was killing him. He tried to still his tense nerves, something he found incredibly hard to do, but his will to succeed overcame his apprehension.

The thoughts were blurred, hard to hear and even harder to sort into coherent words. However, one thing got across clear as crystal.

I miss having someone I can…relate to.

He knew that voice. He looked around the empty hallway, not really able to see anything in the dark, but he heard a door slamming behind him. As he turned around sharply, he just caught a glimpse of a serrated tail.

A tail? his higher mind said.

Shit, his lower mind replied.

Oh Jesus…Now he knew where he knew the voice. Shit didn't even begin to cover this.

Now he really needed a drink. He strode off down the hall purposefully.

Okay, there is a prize for anyone who gets who that is that Constantine sensed in the hallway. It's a prize in the form of some Constantine graphics made by me and e-chocolate, but a prize none the less. Any ideas? (Hint: look in the novel)

Is there a sort of equivalent for the Yellow Pages in America? I didn't know, so I just left it in. But if anyone knows what the equivalent is, please tell me so I can correct this chapter.

Constantine's Latin chant means something like 'May the Holy Cross be my light, let not the dragon (Satan) lead me, step back Satan, never tempt me with vain things, what you offer me is evil, drink the poison yourself'. Or something like that. I just thought I'd try something different from the film.

Please review!