Constantine The Laughing Magician Presents; Life in the Real World –
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Chapter 19: How to Fake a Death; to the Bowels of Hel and Beyond Her
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~Fake it to make it they say, right? Well, what if falsely calling yourself "dead" in another world was a death sentence in of itself? If I go to Drac's Transylvanian happy home, what can I be but an in – between? There in lies the issue and if a vamp gets a whiff of my sinner's delight of a drop of scarlet….well, Zee will have to drag vampire me out of there. Pronto. I have one more trick, so I won't run into danger without an emergency exit. I have…to talk to a very old friend. And no, It's no Nergal but a….sigh…nurse. ~
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Midnight nurse is baack!! Zee not gonna like -ey that.
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"You're looking into magical potions, John?"
She wears only what her sinner's kin did at the time of death, yet I know what she is. A formless being? Bloody, no. I see her right as rain and…Chaz has the right to tell you lot what she isn't to me.
"This?? I'm sorry, but she's our ticket into Dracula's realm??" Zee would be upset. She's not exactly magical aide material. "Will she be going with us, John? Tell me what else you've been up to since I went back to my father's too train my magic."
"I…did ask for her to help us stop Nergal and save an alternate Chaz's wife and child." I can shrug all I like. This Chaz won't know the bloke I'm telling either of them about.
"You summoned me, John." The midnight nurse put a hand to her hip and studies my crew, bothered by becoming a part of it.
"I'm sorry. We had a last second job that involves….dying, and you know how messy that one can be for me, Lov."
" Lov, John?" Zee is also standing, hands on hips. What is it with that pose these days? Wasn't that only in sitcoms about bloomin' happy families?
"She's just a friend, Zee –
"At one time, we were more. You needed me, so I allowed what I –
"She's just a demon, then?? Can you be that obvious??"
"I'm a magician of dark magical origins, Zee." I sigh. She hates it when I tell her that my ancestors were warlocks with a passion for mischief. "Her involvement in my line is genuine, so I gave my word we'd keep it professional since then."
"I agree. You want to be in a world where living cannot apply." The demoness brought it all together in one sentence. "I can help you, yet you must bring me along –
"No, way. We are going to seek council with the king of Vampires." Zee snipped at the other witch from hell this time. "We would rather not attract any attention from our enemies."
"I am already dead, so they will not touch me, and this appearance is only when I am needed in hospitals – where you'd taken me from just moments ago." She told the magician's daughter with a chuckle. "I'll help you to traverse and even keep your flesh. The fires that surround that plane are quite painful to the touch."
"See? Easy peazy, lemon –
"Suck on one, yourself." Zee huffed and left the room. She was for sure looking out for us yet I tended to dig my claws (in the past) into some rotting flesh of my own, I was just getting used to being sober for days. Even if I thought it was a good idea at the time, I had forgotten the nurse's real form and just shook on it before she followed us back to the library where the Romanian text still lay untouched atop my scorched circular rug from the time of Constantinople.
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"Dying won't hurt…will it?" Chaz had to ask before I'd entered the room; the fate awaiting me was far milder than in his mind what he'd pictured….
"I won't be gone the entire month like the last traverse to Hell, if that is what you'd been askin."
"Just, don't let Zee feel as if you need to reject her. I know how defensive you can get around –
"I am not –
Rubbing my temples, he does realize that she's young enough to be my niece almost?
"We never did it. She got mad because I fool around." Lying never does a bloke any good, yet in another universe, Zee completed that me too well…We, had to try to cut the connection and she was cross ever since.
(DC Universe joke.)
"Vampires can control hearts too; have her kept out of their claws –
"She's a big girl, Chaz." I grin at my mate as he gives me a condescending look.
"Is that right, could 'a fooled me." He just let it go, yet I knew that look was right and I had to stand by my mate. He had lost his wife and child to a memory he'd never have back in a universe where we still weren't fully made partners.
"I'll be back in time for tea." I hold up a dainty hand and josh with him. "Save me a seat at the table. Zee and the nurse, included. They'll be talking fashion and pop culture by the time this job is closed, like that book on my nice rug."
As sexist as I sounded right now, Zee was inside already and setting up. Keeping my voice to a whisper wasn't enough, so I took the liberty of meeting my fate.
With a tome to the face.
"Idiot!"
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Singing, "Kumbaya?"
Bloody hell, that was not this.
I knitted my brows and Zee chanted with the beat of a thousand moth's wings. Moths were corpse nesting things, so I imagine the spell the nurse had in mind was just as likely to steal away my last breath. We took in our last and chanted as before, only since my pallor was already losing its complex hue, it had to be working.
~Wither and cry, death be not the end of all life…~ Zee was shaking, yet I gripped her hand while the nurse took the other, leaching us both until we'd gotten our wish.
We looked as zombies. Crepe skin yet still with enough vigor to go about meeting with a war council in another dimension.
"We may now open the way…the gate?"
"Yeah, it's time." I feel hoarse, and not in the drunken way of a sandpaper tongue, mate. In fact, I can still feel my fingers and toes. Zee nods, just as weirded out by the idea of being a bit of both.
The nurse brings the vortex from the confines of that tome, and we brace primarily, for a sudden impact into a grassy knoll.
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I've landed off on soft grass….and…
It reeks of fire and brimstone. Zee drags my collar back as we rise. The nurse levitating right beside us.
"Duck!!"
~FIRE!!~
A war, and I had believed it a bleedin' ceasefire. The council head was not clear on that bit, as Zee drags my bewildered body towards a barracks made entire of stone and daub.
"Damn it! Did the vamp have to be so –
~ Aim! Steady…Fire!!~
Zee gritted her fists and came at me, collar in her grip as her own fire is only unmatched by how she still looks a feast to any count of his castle.
"Your informant, didn't say… ha! – that….the war…was still going on !?"
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I shrug. "He did mention it, actually. The council was going to collect themselves once we got in –
"And did the council not tell you where you'd be headed once you arrived." The nurse is dressed in a different outfit and I look at my own. Noble, and undead. A petty excuse to be half – alive right about here.
"Well, the castle has to be close, lov." I turn my head and spy an over reaching turret with vamps going kamikaze towards the other side. Wingless and winged beast are in a face off against those blood sucking ghoulies.
"We have to get inside the castle."
"What? And get our heads blown off or start another war on humanity if hey cat-
"You worry too much, Zee." I chuckle and she lets me up from the dirt. "I'm giving us code names for now. John is still who I am, yet we are here to keep a low profile. That….Zanzibar of the Southen Isles."
"Absolutely –
"Lady Shiva of the Eastern Deserts."
"You…. I …. why?" Zee hates playing games, yet the nurse is up next as I am raring to see her face when i-
"Elizabeth." She says, and my spirits droop.
"Like, the…Bathory?" Zee gulps.
"Yes. Is that a problem?"
She is a whole demon in a royal's robes. I'll give her, that….but not Bathory. It has to be a common name.
"Elizabeth was not born until the sixteenth century, while Vlad the impaler was alive in the fifteenth century of his conquests and trail of blood throughout the –
"Yeah, yeah. You are a walking encyclopedia."
"No, really…" Zee pushed me away to bat a few lashes wittily back. "Lizzie, tell me more about Vlad's history as a tyrant. We'll need all the dirt we can dig up."
"Said "dirt of his homeland," crap –
" John. We're talking, so you need to find a way into the castle."
I groan and don't protest. Zee's power is stronger than my own, and in this era, I'd rather not test hat theory very likely on the battlefield.