The original Harry Cooper was a monster.
And I don't mean that in the classic sense. He wasn't an being from beyond the veil, or anything. He was just a right old animal, and had raped, burned and butchered more people than most literal demons I could care to name. Harry Cooper scared me. Because the only thing that had ever kept me safe from him was the suspicion in the back of his head that I could take back what I'd given, that I could take his kid away.
Mobsters don't have rules. Or at least, they only have only the rules you enforce on them, and even those are shaky.
But demons? They're beings of contracts, binding and law. They had rules. Ones I understood.
So why the hell was I more scared of this bastard than I ever was of Harry?
"John Constantine. Not the man I expected to see" Rumbled Harry's voice out of Harry's body.
It wasn't spoken by Harry though.
"And you ain't the one I expected to see either." I told him, sliding the door shut behind me and waltzing into the room. It was a lovely old office. Oaken doors, mahogany floors. Imported marble, victorian drawers.
And a gun hung like a trophy on the back wall, overly expensive, gilded with actual gold. Fairly sure it had some kind of family crest emblazoned in small writing on the barrel. Subtlety was not Harry's strong suit, nor was metaphor. It was a strong message for people coming into his office, but a simple one.
I had a message of my own, of course.
"So how's the kid holding up, Harry? Not seem him about all day." I plastered a shit-eating grin onto my face. He knew what I meant. The way his brow twitched told me that.
"He's doing well. He's really been maturing, you know. Starting to help me with my… work."
"Really? 'Cause I heard he got sighted out and about on a hit against the League." I tutted in false sympathy, wagging a finger. "Endangering a child, how awful. You must feel so ashamed from how hard you're trying to hide it, how hard you're going after witnesses."
He rolled his shoulders a little, in a way that emphasized the neck-snapping muscles in his arms. I winced. There was a sense of danger in the air, barely restrained. Every word he said came sharp, with a snap. A snap that my gut instinct kept telling me was him charging for me, going to grab me. Sometimes the snap was a sudden motion, sometimes just sharp words, but it never quite materialised into an attack
So for now, we sparred.
"We both know he's not a child. And even if he was. he's helping the old man with his work, it's good for a growing kid." He grunted, before looking at me with level eyes. "John. I know you don't give a shit about petty endangerment or intimidation, or you'd have come at me years ago. So stop barking like a yappy dog and tell me what you're here for."
He had a big oaken desk with papers scattered across it, writing implements. I grabbed a smaller little chair that was in front of it. The poor thing was barely a stool, tiny and deliberately uncomfortable, there for his supplicants to sit on, not the boss. I leant against the back of it rather than sitting down, and picked up a pen from the desk just to play with it in my hands.
"One've those witnesses you've got your lads trying to murder is me best mate, you fuckin' moron. Chas Chandler? Len didn't tell you he had to come breaking down my damn door looking for him? And he wasn't even there!"
"So? What, you here to try to save the dumb bastard?"
"I waaant…" I grinned a little wider, leaned further forward. And used my forearm to cover my using the tip of the pen to chicken-scratch a tiny rune into the cheap wood of the chair. "...Compensation for my door. That thing's expensive! Really tied the room together, and all."
He looked so damn unimpressed at that he could be doing an impression of his good buddy Len.
"You want paying for the door. That's what got you to barge in on my private party and usurp one of my business meetings? All that for, what, a hundred quid?" Boredom turned to anger, blazing behind his eyes.
I kept scratching away as I nodded. "Damn straight I do. But a hundred seems low, by my maths it should come to about…" I pushed off from the chair, flouncing a little, leaning my back against a very expensive cabinet to the left of the chair, and started to scratch another rune into the side of that. I was parading about like I owned the place, and it was pissing Harry off, but I had to dance the line, keep him mad but not actually mad enough to hit me. Not yet, anyway.
"Two hundred quid? For the door plus the emotional trauma." A small enough number he'd be considering paying it just to get me to fuck off, I hoped.
He never actually would, but he'd be considering it.
"...Why the fuck." He stood abruptly at that, hard enough the desk clattered from the force. Hell, enough the cabinet I was scrawling on jolted, fucking up the rune I was drawing. Shit, shit, okay, uh, right, I can salvage that, turn it into a- "-Should I give you two hundred bloody quid, hm? You think this a shakedown? You, John Constantine, are trying to shake me down?" He chuckled a dark, bloody chuckle, showing too many teeth and much too much blood-red gum. "It's meant to go the other way around, see."
"Yeah, that ship sailed as soon as I found out you weren't really Harry Cooper. Now we're talking what you can give me to keep from ratting you out or binding you away."
I expected him to take a moment to process that. I expected him to get scared. I'd bound him once before, after all. I'd expected him to hold off long enough for me to scratch down the third rune to finish warding this side of the room.
There was a moment of processing, but I badly misjudged what he'd do after it. He froze for just a second and then launched forward, colliding like a freight train into an invisible wall. The ward I'd just made erupted into golden light and sparks, running from the chair to the cabinet.
And leaving the entire right side of the room entirely open, of course. Fuck, no time to finish. I had a split second to act as Harry recoiled, clutching his head that had split open from the impact, bleeding something black and acidic onto the floor. I panicked, grabbed the chair and tossed it across the room. I thought I was expanding the barrier to cover the whole room, or at least almost all of it. And I was, it did, but…
It drew his attention to the fact the chair was the source of the ward.
Our eyes met from across the invisible barrier. And now it was a different game. Could he reach the chair and break it or throw it away, then get to me, before I could reach the door and escape into the hall?
It was a standoff. He wasn't sure he could, or he'd've charged me already, but…
"Heh. Aheheheh…" He started to laugh, a deep, eerie basso laugh, too deep for his already barrelled chest. I could see something blackened, hard like bone, where he'd split the skin on his skull.
He reached up and tore at the split, his face coming away like latex, sloughing off. Revealing what was underneath.
A hard black mask, like stone. Chitin, really. It was an opera mask, one of the ones with the plastered on smiles, shaped to the rough contours of Harry's face an with a thin layer of skin and meat around it for weight and colour. It was the only hard part of the demon's body. The rest was pure meat. Shifting, roiling like a sea of the stuff, uncomfortably wet and biological but never quite moving in any of the ways meat really should, lacking joints or bone or structure even where joint or bone or structure should be, either based on the shape of the body or just the way it seemed to move.
It collapsed a little, sagged. There was too much of the stuff being held in too little space, and once the skin ripped, it all came spilling out, leaving a corpulent mass, a pile of meat, barely humanoid.
A pile that was staring at me through those little black eyeholes in the mask, dark pits.
"Mother said you were tricky, John. I didn't believe her. Foolish, foolish me." it crooned, in a deep gurgling voice, uncomfortably wet.
"Mother? What bleeding mother, you-"
"My mother. Frakpuug. The one you bound into the body of a DAMNED CHILD!"
The demon crashed into the barrier again, no mind or intelligence to it's motions, raging, it's meat straining like improvised muscles as it banged its fists against the barrier. I staggered back. Shit. Shit! This wasn't- this wasn't the demon I summoned, the kid's still out there, it made children?
That explained how it was in Harry's body and the kid was still wandering around, but raised the question of where the kid- that is to say, the adult mother… of where Ronnie Cooper was.
"So what, you're doing this for her? You're, what, try to get her a new body? Targeted my friend to get me to come? Bet you didn't expect me to do it with a gaggle of supervillains though, did you mate? What do you reckon they'll think when they see-"
It was chuckling again. Why was it chuckling?
"Oh, Constantine… I wasn't trying to lure you here. I just needed a threat to hang over your head to compel a favour. One you already fulfilled to a T, all on your own."
It's stomach twisted, the flesh splitting open and sprouting teeth, tearing itself apart just to give me a toothy, mocking smile.
"I know you had friends amongst the truly powerful of this world. Heroes and villains. My mother wanted people of… station, to grant as bodies to her children. The common staff and riff-raff wouldn't do, after all. Not after tasting the… luxury… of being a mobster's son."
It let out another wheezing laugh as I took a step back, eyes widening in horror.
"I wanted you to bring us heroes and villains to take as our own, and you did it without even asking. And even if you did find out a little early…"
"...We've taken enough of them to start our work already."
—
Okay. Okay, right. I had about three metres between me and the door. Six between me and the demon. Not far at all, far enough to dash, and if I got the door open, The Rogues would save me. Probably.
The ones who weren't already shapeshifting demons.
If that wasn't already all of them.
I inched back another step, and it inched forward. I went back, it went forward. Towards the chair, towards me.
"Move and I call for help." I tried, trying to swallow down my terror.
"Call for help, and I'll tear you apart before they get here."
"Tear me apart, they tear you apart."
"And we both die with them having no understanding of magic, no knowledge of the demons in their midst. And my mother gets all she wants and needs." it purred the words, running a tongue across those pearly teeth in its belly, savouring the thought. "A worthwhile death."
A bluff. It had to be bluffing, or- think, John, think. Who do you know's safe, who isn't a demt-
"Whoever the hell it is outside! Guard! Get your ass in here, your boss wants you!" I called out. There was a pause, and then a dozen things happened at once.
The poor, gormless guard opened the door up and froze in horror at the toothy, masked blob of meat that used to be his boss.
The demon launched forward, grabbing the chair and tossing it. I ducked. It went over my head and smashed into the guard, shattering into pieces, wood flinders flying as the ward cracked and snapped as the first rune binding it broke.
The second rune binding the ward exploded, throwing the demon into a wall.
And I scrambled at a full sprint out into the main hall, screaming like a girl and trying not to piss my pants as I went.
"John! Christ, you okay? The fuck happened in there, mucker?"
Mirror Master rushed up to me, reacting faster than either the remaining guard who didn't just get his skull cracked open by a chair or any of the other villains.
Captain Cold and Golden Glider had their weapons out in an instant, but they were rounding on me. I looked about and it was just them, nobody else was in the room. Shit. Were those two taken, or-
The demon barrelled out of the office, blowing the doors off their hinges. The remaining guard fell to the floor as the demon paused, and manifested a third hand, thick as a gorilla's, from its side, tearing off its mask and pressing it against the guard's face.
The first demon grew a new mask, which emerged from inside the mass of meat, but the guard writhed on the floor, howling in pain, as the meat from his bones… grew. Splitting skin, expanding out and out, expelling bone and cartilage and everything else, letting them ooze out of the mass like toothpaste from a tube until all that was left was the mask and altogether too much meat.
"Jesus fucking christ!" was Cold's pithy response to that particular sight. Followed by a much more useful "Bring it down!"
Golden Glider and Captain Cold paired off like trained professionals. They didn't need to exchange words to come up with a plan of attack. Glider hit the larger demon from the front, twirling like a ballet dancer. With her glider extended every part of her body was sharp and deadly, and she cut into the meat until the demon reared back in pain… just in time for Cold to blast it in the face with a freeze ray, firing a glittering blue beam that sapped the heat from the room.
Ice particles formed around the edges where he shot, but everything at the center of the impact just… went dead, still. Meat freeze-dried in an instant, going desiccated. Though it was a huge demon and a small ray, that was only enough to hurt it, freezing parts of it, not the whole.
Ever the third wheel, Mirror Master took the small demon. He fired some kind of ray gun, and made a glassy surface appear on the floor, one on the ceiling…
And dropped the smaller screaming meat monster that had once been a guard into an infinite loop of falling.
He chuckled at the sight, toying with the poor bastard.
He was still laughing when the larger one grabbed ahold of Glider with a giant fist and threw her, knocking its companion out from mid-air.
"FUCK!"
Glider and the smaller one tangled. It was like trying to wrestle a hedgehog, the smaller demon was getting sliced to bits, but…
It kept growing back.
"John, get it the fuck off her! Mirror, slow the big one down, and try to get the others!" Cold called out, giving orders.
"What the fuck do you want me to do, talk to it sternly? I'm bloody unarmed, out here!"
"Something!" He screamed in reply, hard enough to strain the muscles in his throat, red in the face, the colour all the more obvious against the white and blue of his parka.
Mirror Master, meanwhile, seemed perfectly happy to follow his orders. He threw Cold a cocky salute and threw his arms open. "Okay, you big oul' bastard, gimme yer best shot, yeah? But make it a good 'un!"
It threw a punch that vanished into a mirror I hadn't even seen was there, which opened to a portal to what looked like one of the mansion's toilets. Mirror Master was doing both jobs at once, it seemed. He'd caught poor Weather Wizard on the john. The guy screamed, grabbed his staff (No, not that one!) and pulled his pants up, yelling out a "Jesus fucking christ!"
"That's goin' around, mucker!" Mirror Master grinned, before expanding the portal, swallowing the demon and himself whole.
Leaving just the small beastie, which had just grown a dozen hands with mouths in the palms and was biting chunks out of Glider. I saw severed hands everywhere, but she had more than a few chunks taken out of her flesh in turn. She was clutching a wounded leg, having lost part of the calf, and was doing her damnedest to disentangle from her opponent at this point, having given up on trying to hurt it.
"Get it the hell off!" She yelled, kicking at its stomach… which opened up a huge cavity full of teeth to swallow her leg. Fuck.
Cold couldn't shoot with her in the firing line. He was aiming, growling in frustration, looking for a shot, but…
Blood had spilled. Damn near everywhere, in fact. I could use that. I rushed over, daubing my hands in it. I didn't have any binding rituals that would work here memorised, per-se, but I started drawing some on the floor anyway.
"Help me, John, don't just stand there!"
"I am, dammit, give me a second. I don't know, punch it in the throat!"
"What fucking throat!? Get it off!"
Golden Glider stared at me in hate as I stood within arm's bloody reach finger-painting on the ground while the demon took another bite out of her side. She damn reached for me, tried to grab my leg to pull me in, but I kicked her off, and she didn't have the attention to spare to really fight me.
Besides, I really was helping. Way I saw it, it'd take a good minute or two to finish a proper runic circle. Way too long, useless in a fight… but could the beastie finish Glider in that time? Cleanly?
It didn't seem to think so. It grew two extra arms out from it's back, from what I think used to be it's shoulderblades. They reached, grasped, and I scrambled back, kept making the circle, ignoring it's efforts.
So it threw Golden Glider hard against the wall, and charged for me.
It had maybe two metres space to close. Nothing at all really. It grabbed my arm, my shoulder, my midriff, thigh, hair…
And Captain Cold hit it in the back at full blast. It screamed. I screamed. My hair and eyelashes froze, ice crystals clinging to my stubble in screaming agony.
Of course Cold didn't mind shooting if I was the one in the line of fire.
It whirled on him, going for the greater threat, and then Captain Cold hit it again. And again.
I scrambled back, crossing myself. Rarely helps, but you never know. The demon surged, arms raging, walking like a centipede with too many legs and too many hands at it charged.
Cold hit it again. The blue ray of energy broke over its body, an ice slick forming on the floor. Its arms turned blue, froze as hard as rock and cracked, fell apart from the beast's body. At first just one arm, but then two, then three, then dozens of them. It tripped, fell, and skidded into a wall, cracking a hole into the kitchen, toppling one of those very expensive statues.
It curled around the statue, trying to use it as a shield. So Cold hit it again, and froze the statue too.
It screamed, looking at Cold with baleful eyes, before those eyes turned white at cataracts, froze over… and the monster went still, as screaming faded to wheezing breaths, which faded to silence.
And then Cold hit it again.
And again.
And again.
There was a moment's silence. The only sound in the air was hard breathing. I tried to steady my heartbeat, Glider tried to process what had just happened as she pressed her hand against the worst of her wounds, a huge bite-sized chunks taken out of her midriff…
And Cold just stood there, staring at the demon's corpse in silence.
Glider groaned in pain, and that seemed to be the signal for life to resume. Cold turned like a shot, rushing up to her.
"Shit. Love, are you okay? Pressure on your side wound, I'll take the leg."
Glider complied, shifting her shoulders. "I'll be fine, dear. Don't- nggh- I've had worse. I swear, you get like this after every fight."
"I worry, is all. How's the pain?"
"Fine." Glider insister. It was odd, seeing them reversed. In regular conversation, Glider was the casual, emotional one, while Cold had the stick up his arse. Seems when it gets down to it, though…
"Where's Weather Wizard?" Cold asked, interrupting my thoughts, looking around. "He's got the medical supplies."
"On the john, last I saw. And what, don't I get seeing to as well? Kiss my boo-boo's better, maybe? I have a real nasty one right on my-"
They only now seemed to remember I was still there. The dirty glares they both gave me were priceless.
"Shut up. And what the hell was that thing? What happened to the big one?"
I pursed my lips, not answering, looking up the stairs. I was wondering about that last part, too.
"Uh. What was it?"
"Oh, am I not meant to be shutting up, now?" I chuckled. "...Shapeshifter demon. Nasty piece of work, brood of Frakpuug. We may, ah, we may have a problem. Or several. It's not the only one."
"Right, the big one, where-"
As though on cue, there was a loud crash down the halls. A door smashed open, and the first demon, the one that had been Harry, careened through, chasing Mirror Master.
Mirror was running at a dead sprint, shooting wildly behind him without even looking, trying to trip the thing and failing.
"Captaaaaain! Hit it at the bottleneck, hit it at the bottleneck!"
It took me a moment to see what he meant. The corridor opened out into the main room floor, a tight bottleneck to trap the huge beast in. Cold lowered his cold gun and Mirror Master dropped into a slide, going under the ray of cold as it ploughed into the second demon.
It roared and staggered back, and this time when Mirror Master opened a portal beneath it and one in the ceiling, it worked. This demon had no buddy to save it.
Mirror Master dropped it into the middle of the main hall, and it hit the ground with a wet squelch, like a meatball dropping onto a kitchen floor. Cold blasted it, and for all its size, it died faster, if harder, than the child it had made.
It started to fall apart a little once it froze, jagged edges inside the flesh sliding and slipping. Mirror Master had cut it deeper than Glider ever could, somehow. Probably opening portals inside it and hoping that would take.
Fuck, I had no clue how that bullshit mirror gun stuff worked, and I had absolutely no intention of ever finding out, that shit was scary.
We stood there for a little bit. Holding a collective breath, hoping it was dead. But once enough time passed, once we were sure we were safe, I had some explaining to do. The fighting was done, so the attention turned away from the big bastards with guns and knives and bullshit advanced tech.
And all eyes turned to me.
Leaving me, all alone, to figure out just how to tell them all that several of their teammates were probably one of those giant meat blobs in disguise.
Notes: And let the games begin!
Hopefully that was a nice and hideous introduction to our beastie. Shame there's a few more loose in the house. Who's already been got, who's clean? The Rogues, Mandragora, Penguin? I look forward to the speculation in the comments!