I want to apologize to my readers for the delay in posting this. It's been half-written for months. But it's been a hectic summer. Funny how I seem to find more time when it's not summer vacation!
I must also add that the character of Dr. Les Archer...not much you can do with figuring her out when she only had two minutes of movie time. But I did the best I could.
Los Angeles, California. Same time.
Constantine was comfortable. Never in his life would he have believed he could admit such a thing here, being where he was, for the purpose he had come for. But he was comfortable. He sat relaxed on a moderately fancy office chair, his feet propped up on the corner of the counter in front of him, reading a magazine by the light of the panel of glowing monitors in front of him. The bag he had brought with him was sitting upon the counter next to his feet, but the only thing in that was a due library book.
He wasn't particularly paying attention to anything around him. People passed by the slightly open door leading out into the corridor. A page for a Dr. Arnissan echoed mechanically through the old intercom speakers in the ceiling. And in the corner of the room, a screensaver beeped with the bouncing of a rubber ball across the black screen. Constantine was not moved by any of this. He simply shifted his weight and turned the page of the magazine.
And then a door on the other side of the room opened. Constantine glanced up to see his preferred doctor—if there ever was such a person—enter. She carried a large plastic red envelope in her hands.
"Comfortable?" she asked, smiling as she approached.
"Very," Constantine replied smoothly, brandishing the magazine. "Gotta keep up with all that Brangelina bullshit."
"I prefer reading up on Keanu Reeves, myself."
"He's just a pretty face. There's nothing else to him." Constantine echoed this with a half-hearted roll of his eyes.
Dr. Les Archer laughed as she pulled two sheets of filmy plastic from the envelope. He obligingly removed his feet from the counter so Les could stick the pair of x-rays on the light panels above the line of monitors. She flipped a switch, and they flickered to life, revealing the pair of chest films.
"John…" Les began, shaking her head. "I wasn't going to believe it until I saw it. Hell, I still don't believe it, and yet the proof is staring me in the face."
"Hell being the operative word," Constantine replied, standing. "Well, Les? Am I gonna make it?"
Les managed to hold a serious expression for a moment longer. Then, she burst out laughing.
"Do you realize how much tampering I'll have to do to convince the file room that the dates on these scans and records were printed backwards?"
Constantine shot Les a grin as he studied the x-rays. He remembered the one on the left. The lungs were heavily speckled with black, diseased and rotting. That x-ray was of a man with only months to live. The one on the right, however, was the picture of health. No blemish on the image at all. Les was gazing at him with open admiration.
"It's a miracle, John," she said. "I never thought I'd see one like this, but…"
"I know," he interrupted. "Thanks."
Les smiled again.
"So what have you been doing with yourself, John?" she asked. "Rumor has it you're keeping very unusual company these days."
"I guess so." Constantine shrugged. "Job's been a little slow lately. I have more free time than I'm used to."
He reached out for his bag, but Les beat him to it. She glanced inside as she handed it over, and blinked.
"Wow," she said. "Is that one of Hunter's books?"
Constantine rolled his eyes and pulled the book out, showing her the aging cover. She raised an eyebrow as she studied it.
"John, how on earth did you actually manage to find anything in that library, or did you just grab at random?"
"I got this because the librarian likes me," Constantine replied. "Or she likes good scotch. Doesn't matter either way."
His gaze lingered on the book for a long moment. It was the same one Hunter had brought out to him that day in the library. And it had been a bear to translate enough of the archaic Latin for him to get a halfway decent idea of the information the book held. It would have been a hell of a lot easier had Beeman still been alive.
Examining the book brought back that moment in the library, staring at the elevator doors as they slid open. In that moment, the Ghost Rider was revealed to him for the first time.
His jaw had nearly hit the floor. And behind him, Hunter had gasped.
"Oh…my…" she had breathed.
"Am I the last thing you two expected?" the Ghost Rider had asked, approaching them. "Figures."
Constantine had glanced once at the Rider, then turned back to Hunter.
"Does Lu often make teenage girls his Rider?"
Hunter had shaken her head, adjusting her spectacles as though she could not believe the sight of the young woman standing before them. She looked completely average for a girl her age. Plain features, very short brown hair, not overly tall, wearing a light blue baby-tee, jeans, and sneakers. Not in any way threatening or imposing.
She had approached them without hesitation, eyeing him almost as critically as he was her.
"You're John Constantine?" she had asked.
"You're Ghost Rider?" he had replied.
A moment of silence passed. Constantine had glanced once again at Hunter, who had adjusted her spectacles one more time and pushed the cookie tin towards the center of her desk.
"Ginger crisp, dear?" she had offered.
It had all rolled on from there. When he had been forced to start thinking about the Rider, Constantine had imagined a powerful warrior, perhaps a military man or a biker. He had not been expecting a sixteen-year-old girl from Louisiana whose only excuse for coming to find him was curiosity.
"They talk about you everywhere," she had said. "You fell, and yet you made it out again."
"Constantine made the right choices, Rider," Hunter had responded.
"And what sort of bullshit did Lu pull over you to make you agree to this?" Constantine had asked.
"A promise," the Rider had said, very quietly. And that was the only thing he and Hunter could get her to say on it.
The Rider had not stayed very long. Curiosity had rapidly grown to shyness. This had seemed to be so against the mystique of the Rider that Hunter had been rendered speechless. It was more out of curiosity than any kind of desire to be polite that made Constantine shoot a final question at her as she stepped back into the elevator.
"What's your name?"
The girl had finally given a very slight smile.
"Lucy," she had replied. "See you around."
"John?"
Les' voice broke through his thoughts. He looked up.
"Something on your mind?" she asked.
"Nothing important," Constantine replied.
He had gone back to his normal routine after that morning. However, though she never came close enough to speak to him, Constantine had spotted Lucy every now and then over the past two weeks. She would always be standing silently, blending in to the crowd, just watching.
So far, Constantine didn't know what to make of her behavior. Was she watching him under Lu's orders, or just because she wanted to? Every time he got annoyed enough to want to ask, she had disappeared before he could approach.
He glanced at Les again. She wasn't as familiar with things as some of his contacts, but she was the mother of a teenage daughter.
"Hey Les, what do…" he began.
"And we can look at the images right in here," an older voice said suddenly. "We have…oh, good afternoon, Dr. Archer."
Constantine turned around. An older man had stepped into the room, carrying a plastic red envelope identical to the one Les held. He was followed by a blonde-haired man. Constantine was about to turn away, but then he did a double-take and stared at the blonde man again.
In his line of work, he had seen a lot of unusual things. And he was experienced enough to be able to stand in a crowded room and be able to pick out the unusual. This doctor was so dazzling that he would have stood out inside a packed Super Bowl arena.
If there was one trait about half-breeds, both angels and demons, that made Constantine's life even more difficult than it already was, it was their ability to change their appearances at need. A half-breed could shift from a teenage girl to a wrinkled old man in order to carry out their work. The point was to blend in, but Constantine had met more than his fair share of half-breeds who abused it. Those were the ones he most often ended up deporting.
But this doc…wasn't a half-breed. Constantine rolled his eyes privately, momentarily irritated with himself. Hadn't he taught himself over the years to sense the presence of a half-breed? Freakishly handsome though the guy was, the telltale…aura, for lack of a better word…that gave half-breeds away wasn't there. This guy was just the lottery winner in the gene pool.
The doctor had noticed his stare, and was returning it with a curious and polite glance. The other doctor had also looked at him, the expression on his face apologetic.
"I am sorry for interrupting, Dr. Archer. I did not realize you were with a patient." He gestured to the other doc. "This is Dr. Cullen. He's in town for the conference."
"Nice to meet you," Les replied. "And it isn't a problem, Dr. Arnissan. We were almost finished here."
Dr. Arnissan glanced at the x-rays on the wall, and then did his own double-take. His eyes focused upon the image hanging on the left. Dr. Cullen turned as well, and almost at the same moment both their eyes widened in surprise.
Constantine took that as his cue to leave.
"Thanks for everything, Les," he said gruffly, stuffing Hunter's book back in his bag.
He turned to leave, but Dr. Arnissan cleared his throat.
"Sir, I know a very well-respected team over at Mount Sinai," he began. "I…"
"It's alright," Constantine said quickly. He shot a glance at Les, who was hiding a smile behind Dr. Arnissan's back. "I know what I'm doing."
He left quickly, before either of them could say anything more. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Les pull down the images and slip them back in the envelope. Dr. Arnissan was speaking to her, but Dr. Cullen was watching him leave. The strange golden color of his eyes glinted more noticeably in the dim light.
Okay, so maybe he wasn't a gene pool lottery winner. He could simply be a plastic surgeon's favorite.
Constantine kept up a brisk pace until he was striding down the hospital's front steps. He may appreciate Les, but he hated Ravenscar. Way too many memories.
It was a typical late afternoon now. The rain had finally stopped, though the skies were still thick with clouds. The temperature was rapidly rising, growing sticky and humid. A low rumble that could be heard over the noise of traffic warned of yet another barrage before nightfall. Constantine increased his pace when he reached the sidewalk. The book was safe in the bag for now, but he tucked it closer just in case.
He hadn't translated a great deal of the book. His skills in ancient Latin really were rustier than he had anticipated. Constantine had only really focused on the parts Hunter had pointed out. There was a lot more information in there he had skipped over. The book was more journal than reference, written by a priest sometime in the mid 1600's. He couldn't help much but wonder how a priest had managed to figure out so much about the Ghost Rider.
There was more to the whole thing than he could have ever realized. The fact that the Rider was a living human, bound to serve but still possessing of free will, he knew. The fact that the Rider's contract was bound to one task, and not for all eternity…well, that had surprised him. If the Rider succeeded he was freed from the contract, but damned if he failed. The one the priest had written about had been commanded to hunt down some sort of artifact. The exact description of said artifact had never been explained. And the Rider had failed to find it, whatever it was.
At least it explained how Lucifer had been able to dance around the rules of the balance. The humans who served as Riders made the choice themselves, and it remained their choice whether or not to accomplish the deeds set to them, which in effect took all the blame for their actions off of Lu's shoulders. And they were never things that would help them win salvation. Getting out of their contracts usually meant a trip to Hell anyway.
"Lu, you sly bastard," Constantine said to himself under his breath, approaching a near-empty crosswalk. "You'll jump through any loophole you can find."
The stoplights had turned red. Constantine started across the street, barely hearing the grumble of cars as they waited for the light to change again. But what he did hear, when he was just about halfway across, was his name.
"Mr. Constantine, may I speak with you?"
Constantine slowed and looked back over his shoulder. It was to his immense surprise that he saw the blonde-haired doctor approaching him.
"What the hell?" he murmured, suspicious.
The doctor had suddenly increased his pace. He was running now.
"Mr. Constantine!" he shouted.
"What the hell do you want?" Constantine demanded.
"Watch out!!"
Constantine heard the sharp screech of brakes at that moment. A large SUV had taken the turn against the light, and was barreling straight for him.
The world was suddenly spinning around him. The scream of brakes and the roar of engines was mixed with the pounding of sharp footsteps and shouting voices. He saw a white flicker of the doctor's coat, the glint off the chrome of the SUV's grill, and something brownish-gray and…furry?
But then the impact came, and pain flared up the left side of his body. And then everything went black.