Disclaimer: Neither of the stories drawn on in this fic are mine. Constantine:Hellblazer belongs to DC/Vertigo Comics, and the Dark Tower series belongs to Stephen King. I am only responsible for my burning desire to mash the two together in an entirely uncanonical way.
And I'm a poor student, so if anyone feels the need to sue for all my wordly possessions, please be assured that you will get about a fiver out of it.
A/N: Nobody reviewed the last chapter - now, I'm not sure, but I have a sneaking suspicion that the reason is related to the fact that it didn't, you know, actually show up in the New Stories - not for me, anyway. So here's hoping it works a bit better for this chapter. Once again, I'm not American, much less a New Yorker, so any mistakes on that front are entirely my own fault, especially as (so far) this chapter is unbeta'd. I'm just too impatient to wait. xD I'll edit it when it's back from betaing.
1
"Let's go, did I say? Clearly, what I meant was let's stand in a human traffic jam." Constantine glared at the packed street, which showed no signs of movement whatsoever. "Jesus fucking Christ, New York really is a hellhole, isn't it? And I thought London was bad at rush hour!"
I see an apothecary, Roland informed him, as though he had not spoken, in the same infuriatingly calm tone as he had used for the last hour. It was a tone that was really, really beginning to grate on Constantine's nerves.
"Okay, so now we're playing I-spy?" he snorted. "All right, fine. I spy, with my little eye, something beginning with L."
What are you talking about? The gunslinger sounded impatient.
"Just a game. Don't you have it? The answer, by the way, is Lots-and-lots-of-New-York-cunts-in-my-fucking-way."
The gunslinger didn't say anything, but Constantine could feel the disapproval.
"Fine, fine. Just because you've got no fucking sense of humour, doesn't mean the rest of us have to live in your world. Right!" He dusted his hands together. "Apothecary! Chemist! Drugstore – you know what, fuck it, whatever it's called. On the count of three, I'm shoving my way over there. One, three, there we go." With a little grunt, he pulled his coat tighter around him, narrowed his eyes, and lunged into the crowd, elbows going here and there and everywhere.
It took him several minutes, nonetheless, to reach the chemist's, which was only a few hundred yards away. The bell over the door jingled softly as he elbowed it open, sidestepping into the brightly-lit, near-empty shop.
Astin, Roland reminded him, as they passed a shelf of painkillers.
I know, I know, Constantine thought back irritably. If this doesn't work, I'm not carting two fucking tons of aspirin to the counter and back for no fucking reason.
You said it would work.
It will. Shut up, I need to concentrate. Okay? Little co-operation goes a bloody long way, you know.
Roland said nothing, which Constantine took to mean assent. Striding over to the counter, he dug into his deep pockets, shoving aside God only knew what in favour of the scrap of hotel paper he had scribbled THIS IS A PRESCRIPTION onto.
"Oi! Mate!" When the clerk didn't turn, Constantine slammed his fist down on the counter, impatiently and almost petulantly. "Oi!"
"Hm?"
"Keflex," the Englishman said bluntly. "I need Keflex. How much have you got?"
"Have you got a prescription?" the clerk asked wearily, turning and sighing. "Can't dispense Keflex without a valid prescription. And you don't even look ill." He was a young man, probably twenty or twenty-five, all skin and bone topped with a wild mop of ginger hair.
Constantine rolled his eyes. "I had lung cancer," he informed the younger man. "Apparently, that's why I'm getting all these infections. My doctor back in England gave me a prescription, but nobody here'll fill it, so I went to see another doctor on this side of the Atlantic." It was pure bullshit, but John Constantine was an established bullshitter. He didn't even know whether the cancer – and oh, how he wished that part was bullshit – had any sort of bearing on infections. Luckily, by the looks of things, the chemist didn't either.
"I'll need to see it, please," he said, holding his hand out. Rolling his eyes again, Constantine pulled out the scrap of paper, glanced at it, and handed it over without any further hesitation.
Inside his head, Roland was gawping. Somehow, the paper that had been plain and greyish moments before was crisp, pure white, printed with boxes and text that he couldn't read, but which were certainly not the scrawling handwriting that Constantine had put there. This – this was unlike anything else he had seen in this world. This was sorcery.
Illusion, actually, Constantine corrected him, his mental voice rather strained. And it's a bitch to keep up for any length of time. We should get out of here ASAP.
ASAP?
As Soon As Possible, you stupid bastard. Constantine glanced up at the clerk, who was giving him an odd look, then lowered his eyes again, tapping his fingers impatiently on the counter. I don't like this, all right? Even in New York, the fucking crowds shouldn't get this big, I swear to God.
What does it matter? Roland asked. It was a mistake.
It matters because it could be the fucking demon, that's why it matters! Constantine near-yelled in his head. It matters because there's people out there who could be fucking dying while I'm stood here talking to a man from another world! It matters!
The clerk cleared his throat, hauling Constantine's attention back to the matter in hand, and shoved a bag of pills over the counter. "Is that everything?"
"Nah. Give me a sec."
2
"Aspirin. Keflex. There, that's two out of three, not bad for a start."
Four, Roland corrected him reflexively.
"No shit, mate. Look around you and tell me that getting food is going to be a problem. Well, I suppose that all depends on what you call food, of course. That pasta, for example, was clearly not it." Pulling out a fresh packet of Silk Cuts, he shoved one into his mouth and lit it, taking a long drag. "Okay, mate, that's all I can do for you 'til Midnite gets back to me on the bullets thing. We've run your errands, now let me run mine." The aspirin and Keflex vanished into the depths of the trenchcoat's pockets, along with Constantine's hands, and he started to shove his way through the slowly thinning crowds with all the expertise of a veteran Londoner.
Inside the head that they were unwillingly sharing, Roland's consciousness sank back slightly. His mind was buzzing. The other two had never thought of themselves as gunslingers, he was fairly sure – it hadn't been a skill they had needed, and that was fine; that was ka. But that this Constantine seemed to be a gunslinger bred, not just born, and apparently a wizard to boot – that was ka too, of course, but it was also very, very different. Roland didn't know whether it would be good or bad, but something told him that it would make things a hell of a lot more complicated, either way. And the man seemed honest enough, too – a little too lighthearted, a little too flippant, but there was steel there, for sure.
One thing was certain above all else, though. The eyes Roland had seen in the mirror, straight before he had come forward – they had not been the same ice-blue, or the same shape, or the same size, but they had been a reflection of his own, nonetheless. Hard eyes. Bombardier's eyes. Gunslinger's eyes.
He had never been so sure of anything in his life as he was sure of this. Constantine was a gunslinger – and the weight of ka laid as heavy on his shoulders as it did on Roland's own.
"Shit..." The word, combined with a low whistle, broke into Roland's thoughts, made him concentrate sharply on what Constantine's eyes saw.
His first thought was of a wolf – a great, angry wolf. Or a bear, smashing and slashing its way through this strange city, hungry, angry, destroying everything in its path. But no bear could have done so much damage, however huge, however deadly. The ground around the shattered shell of the storefront was caught in bubbles, as though it had been boiling underfoot; bodies were scattered willy-nilly around the street, backs broken and eyes wide with horror.
Constantine's first thought was rather more concise. Fuck.
The policemen behind the band of yellow tape looked shellshocked, taken aback by the sheer scale of the destruction, and he wondered furiously how he hadn't seen this from a mile off. Three of the shops ranged along the street had been torn through, so violently that he could see daylight the other side, and rubble filled the street.
Glancing around at the hungry, perverse looks on the faces of the throng, he muttered, "Shit," again, a little more violently, and shoved forwards, ducking under the police tape. "I'm MI5," he told the policemen, before they could even move. "We've been looking for the guy who did this for months. We think it might be some new sort of bomb, but we're closing in on him, and.."
"ID?" There was the click of a safety catch, flicking off.
"Fuck's sake..." Constantine muttered, digging in his pocket and pulling out his wallet. "There. ID. Happy?" he snapped, pulling out his credit card and holding it out. "Roland Deschain, MI5, terrorist division, special services, there you go, now can I do my fucking job?" Without waiting for a reply, he shoved past the policeman, pushing down on the barrel of the gun.
Roland Deschain? Roland commented in his head, sounding almost amused.
Yeah, well, rather not have it traced back to me when they find out there's no terrorist and no MI5 involvement, Constantine replied automatically, then paused, squatting down and squinting at the wreckage. You almost sounded human then. Congratulations, mate. You've gained a sense of humour. Now, what you do with it is this...
"Inspector... Deschain, was it?" Dislike positively dripped from the cop's voice. "With all due respect, what does MI5 have to do with this? In short, why are you here?"
Constantine was on his feet immediately, his face inches from the other man's. "Because we know what's going on here, and you don't. Because we have specialist training, and you don't. But most importantly, because I've been following the bastard from Newcastle to New York and crossing over every other bloody place in between, and I am not about to let you bastards fuck it up." Taking his cigarette out of his mouth, he pursed his lips and puffed smoke into the policeman's face. "If you want to argue with me, take it up with the MoD. I have a job to do. Now, are there any witnesses?" He glanced around the devastated street, then added as an afterthought, "that I can contact without a séance?"
The man's got gall, he thought, staring the American policeman down.
Unfortunately, Roland agreed, almost impressed by the insolence in the conflicting glare. What in the hells did this?
Demon, Constantine replied shortly, not so much as blinking. Out loud, he said sharply, "Look, this guy is dangerous. If you want this..." - the sweep of his arm encompassed the crushed streetfront, the mangled bodies, the crowd drawn nearer by that sense of perverse fascination - "...to happen again, then by all means, be my guest. Get in my way. Stop me from catching him. I'll go home, watch from London, and if anyone complains, then I'll just inform them whose fault it was, and remind them that, at least, it isn't in Britain any more. Capische?"
Sullenly, the policeman nodded. "Young woman. Hid next door."
"Where is she now?"
"I don't know."
"What did she see?"
There was a brief pause – but not, Roland and Constantine noticed together and with some satisfaction, the sort of pause you got before a lie – as the policeman gathered his thoughts together.
"Nonsense. Post-traumatic stress, I think the paramedic said."
Constantine nodded levelly. "It's common. But I still need to know what she said. Did she see... a big, big animal, sort of like a gorilla?"
The policeman narrowed his eyes suspiciously. "How do you know that?"
Constantine rolled his eyes. "How long have I spent on this case? Which way did she say the gorilla-thing went?"
It took a while for the answer to come, but eventually the American jabbed his thumb over his shoulder. "Down Forty-Sixth Street."
"Fuck," Constantine muttered, dropping his cigarette on the ground and grinding out the smouldering end. "When?"
"Two hours ago."
"Nothing after that?"
The policeman shook his head, looking slightly frightened now by the burning in this strange Englishman's eyes. "Not that I've heard, Inspector."
"Fuck! Bastard's gone to ground! Look, mate, you hear anything, ring me, okay? Here's my number, call it without good reason and I'll rip your spleen out, got to go, fetch more supplies, don't go after the fucker unless you have a death wish. Ta." Patting the policeman quickly on the shoulder, he turned, vaulting over the police tape, and pulled out his phone as he shoved through the crowd.
Settled at the back of his mind, Roland watched grimly. He was beginning to reevaluate the Last Man whose head he found himself in.
Maybe not so honest, then.
3
"Midnite? It's here. I don't have time for your quibbling or your procrastinating or anything, you voodoo fucker, get me those bullets. Now. I'll get down to the club, even, make it easy on you, just get me the fucking bullets. Got it?"
His voice was hard, and there was no humour in it, only a steel that made him sound increasingly like Roland. On the other end of the phone, Papa Midnite heard it, and decided against argument. It was his city at stake, after all.
"I fucking hate New York," Constantine muttered, flicking the phone shut and shoving it back into his pocket. "Absolutely fucking hate the shithole. Roland, do you know anything about demons?"
Roland thought about it – thought about Farson, and Marten, and Rhea of the Coös. Then he sighed, and answered.
Only the human kind.
4
Papa Midnite's club was definitely running itself downhill, Constantine decided. Years back, when he'd come here last, it had been a high-rent sort of place. Now, he could actually get in through the front door – which just went to show how standards had declined. Then again, he wasn't dragging along a drugged-up Gary Lester this time, so that might have something to do with it, too.
Up on the roof, and in the chilled Manhattan air again, he tapped his fingers impatiently against the wall, uncomfortably aware of Roland's presence in the back of his mind. Then again, this time around, they did at least have something in common. Both of them had no time to waste.
Unfortunately, wasting time seemed to be exactly what Papa Midnite was about.
"Look, I know you have the bullets already, you fucking cunt. You've got fucking everything. Few bullets should take five fucking minutes to get hold of." Stubbing out his cigarette, he immediately replaced it with another, fingers shaking slightly. "We know where we stand, all right? I hate you, you hate me, we're a fucking happy family. Get the hell over it, move on, and get me what I need."
"It takes time," the witch doctor replied calmly, standing at the edge of the rooftop and looking out over New York. "You still haven't told me what you do need."
"You haven't given me a chance," Constantine countered. "Show me a chart or something, you know damn well I'm no gun expert."
Those ones! Roland cried out, as soon as Midnite pulled the crumpled sheets out of his pocket. Those ones, there! They weren't what he was after, not exactly, but he knew – and almost immediately, Constantine knew as well – which ones would fire.
The Englishman nodded briefly, tapping the paper. "Right. Them. How soon?"
Midnite shrugged, a thin smile crossing his face now that he knew he was in charge again. "Five, ten minutes?"
"Right, then I need a map of New York and some quiet while you get me some fucking bullets." Taking a drag of his cigarette, Constantine tapped the ash off the end and put his free hand in his deep pockets. Pulling out a little pendulum, he swung it to and fro in front of the witch doctor's face, then snatched it back again. "Got a back room I can use?"
"Downstairs," Midnite said shortly, jabbing his thumb over his shoulder, and turned away again, phone in hand.
Who is he? Roland asked, as Constantine stalked away, eyes narrow and fists clenched.
"A prick," Constantine replied promptly and unhelpfully, feet clattering on the metal stairs. After a moment, he added, "A witch doctor. Voodoo bastard. Have those where you come from, Roland? Anyway, thought I'd dealt with him for the last time back in '87, but I guess not. Thing is, he's a prick with a criminal empire, which makes him the quickest way to get ammo around here. I mean, he's got what you might call a vested interest in the survival of New York – the city goes down, he's going to lose one hell of a lot of his pension fund." Snorting, he shoved open the nearest door, glanced around, and, finding the room empty, kicked the door shut behind him. "And don't say you don't get it, because I know damn well you don't."
What are you going to do? Roland asked instead, as Constantine pulled a map out of his inside pocket and laid it out on the ground.
"Find the fucking demon. Shut up, I need to concentrate." Taking the pendulum out again, he closed his eyes and held it over the unfolded map. "And keep an ear out for me. I don't trust Papa Midnite an inch."
5
Why didn't you do that straight away? Roland asked cagily, as they left the club. You could have found this demon by now.
"I did find it, remember?" Constantine retorted, shoving the box of bullets forcefully under one arm and striding on down the street. "I was on its tail, and then you shoved your way into my head and fucked it up. And then it got its act together while I was getting you your pills. Remember?" he added nastily. The implications were obvious: Roland bridled, but said nothing.
"I thought it would wait a little longer before it made its next move," the blonde Englishman confessed eventually, as they turned down the next street. "But I'm confused, honestly. That cop said it headed down Forty-Sixth Street, and now it's here." He tapped the map he was still carrying in one hand, frowning. "That means it must have turned halfway to here..." - he tapped the map again, on the junction between Forty-Sixth Street and Second Avenue - "towards this street here, and I don't think that's because a traffic warden told it it was driving on the wrong side of the road."
Maybe it saw a better hiding place? Roland suggested, but in all honesty, he was equally interested.
"Doubt it. That's like saying a mammoth would hide in a sleepy little village. You obviously haven't seen the size of the thing. Last hideout it found was a multi-storey car park, and even that was a bit of a squeeze." Stubbing out his third cigarette of the last ten minutes, the Englishman reached into his pocket, cursing. "Okay, so we'll be making a pit stop on the way."
I do not...
"Understand, yeah, I know. I need some more fags. In industrial quantities, at this rate. We'll get you a sandwich as well, 'kay?"
Tooter fish? Roland asked, something like eagerness in his voice that made Constantine smirk.
"Tuna? Sure, mate, if that's what does it for ya." Glancing back down at the map, with the demon's current position circled in red biro and all its previous ones scribbled out, he frowned and shoved it back into his pocket. "Now, where does one go to find a bloody newsagent's in this town?"