Chapter 21: The Devils Vinyl Part 5

Defensive, Jasmine holds her gun on John. Ian stares at his wife in disbelief. John is entertained, however, like he's living a good soap opera.

"Jasmine Fell. Off-key back-up singer and loyal spouse. You made the deal with your own soul. Ain't love grand."

"Who are these people, Jasmine?"

"We're not here to hurt you." Zed breaks in, trying to reign in the standoff.

"When has that ever worked?" Sara asked, thinking back to when she had used the line. It rarely worked for her.

John has other ideas, "Don't be so sure. Night's still young and Bernie's still dead."

"Really? I don't think that'll help the situation."

Jasmine, already wavering and wracked with guilt, lowers the gun. Zed eases over and takes the firearm from her. "Oh God, this is a nightmare…" She chokes.

"That's one way of putting it." Anne-Marie states,

"Tell me what's going on." Ian pleads with his wife.
John looks harshly at her, "Yes, tell him how you entered a contract you're now trying to break, at the cost of lives, just so this one could climb the charts."

"That's not it."

"'Course, the money didn't exactly hurt your own lifestyle, did it? Mega mansion. Shiny clothes. Did you even check the price tag of those shoes?"

"Ian was dying! He had cancer… leukemia."

"How hard is it to break a contract from other-worldly forces anyhow?" Sara wondered.

"Tale a wild guess, Sara." John deadpanned.

John is beat, "Didn't see that coming." He states.

"You sacrificed your soul for his life." Zed breathed.

In an ironic tone, Ian sums up what he'd just learned, "Lemme get this straight. My cancer went into remission because my wife sold her soul to the devil." The other three trade looks and nod. "Who are you people?" Ian asks once more.

"Seriously?" Rip deadpanned, "Out of all the things you say, you say the very words that will get you admitted to an Asylum."

"Consider us your counselors in the occult." John replies before turning to Jasmine, "Show him the contract."

Snart's eyebrow rose, "Seriously, hell uses paper contracts?"

"What would you expect, and iPad with a touchscreen to write up on?" John retorted.

Jasmine goes to a desk and pulls out the parchment rune seen earlier, but only a few symbols remain fully visible. "Remember your first stay in the hospital? They said you had a month, maybe two. We didn't even have medical insurance. A man came to me in the waiting room that night. He said his name was Anton." She explains.

"Something tells me that once those symbols are gone." Ray trails off at the nod he gets.

John frowns, "A soul broker, by the sound of it. They troll hospitals for the dying."

"I signed the thing. I didn't even think it was real. But then you went into total remission."

"And that's why you read the terms of service that always pops up." Jaxs commented in a strained joking manner.

Stein added, "What fool doesn't read the terms of service, present exceptions being excluded of course."

Mick and Snart looked at Stein for a bit, wondering whether to rob his identity to go on a purchasing spree or to just sell his future work online.

John takes the parchment and looks it over. "Etruscan rune. This Anton may have been a skeevy bloke but he had a toe in the nether-realm all right." He pauses, "take a look…" He holds out the rune. They stare as another symbol fades.

"That's really not good." Ray adds onto his earlier realization.

"Anton said that when the last words faded, the First of the Fallen would return to claim his prize."

"Why are you trying to break the deal, Jasmine?"

"Because she likes living? Sara threw out.

"It wasn't my idea. Anton got back in touch. Told me he could trade my soul back for the acetate."

"A Soul Broker never breaks a deal. He'd lose his right of parley with the underworld. This doesn't line up."

"What did Anton want you to do?" Ian asked.

"Find a music disc that protects people?" Ray said, trying to lighten the mood.

"Hunt down the acetate. He knew my husband's a rock star. With money and endless resources."

Zed added in, "He also knew you had motivation." She indicates a family photo with their daughter.

Len frowned. Using a child as leverage, even if not directly, did not sit right at all with him.

Jasmine looks at it and tears up. "When you're a teenager, twenty years feels like forever. You don't think about things… like children. I can't leave Julilah without a mother. It took a team of detectives, but we tracked down the acetate. I only brought it to Bernie for verification. I never wanted him to hear it…" she chokes out.

Julilah, awaked by the voices, comes down the hallway, concerned. "Mommy? Why are you crying?".
Hearing her, Ian goes into the hallway to meet her, "Mommy's okay, honey. Come here. You should be sleeping.". Ian picks her up, glancing back toward Jasmine, a look like "might be better if she doesn't see this." Jasmine remains with John and Zed.

"So when was this Anton expecting to lay his hands on the acetate?"

"I'm supposed to take it to him tonight. He texted me an address." Jasmine pulls out her cell, which is decorated with blue sky and sunflowers, to show a text, but John plucks the phone away.

"You could've at least asked." Len drawled.

"Let me handle this for you. I'm your only shot at ending this nightmare. Give us a hug, then." John suddenly leans close and gives the frightened Jasmine a totally out of character hug. Zed shoots John a WTF.

"Thank you…" Jasmine whispers.

"Don't thank him yet." Anne-Marie warned.

When Jasmine returns inside the house, John turns to Zed. "Well, that's a bloody mystery."

"That Jasmine loved her husband enough to sacrifice her soul?"

"No, that a blow dried zero like Ian Fell actually made it to the bigs all on his own. Call me a cab, luv, before I change my mind." John says before a scene change.

Que the amused and incredulous sounds from the audience.

He is in the Chicago projects. It is still night. There are busted cars and graffiti everywhere. John exits the cab, watches it peel away. He checks the address on the sketchy building against the one in the text on Jasmine's phone, then heads inside.

John comes off a landing into a corridor, illuminated by the blue light of bug zappers. buzzing and snapping as John moves to a door with a Satanic cross painted on the wood. He pushes that open, going into a large room.

Chickens cluck in hanging cages. Talismans dangle from the ceiling. John hears the sound of a TV evangelist and looks across the room to a sheet of white translucent plastic. The blue glow of the tv set on the other side. From behind the plastic steps Anton (40s).

"You must be Anton."

"Who are you?"

"Someone who knows that Soul Brokers are ambulance chasers, not original thinkers. Save a human soul? A wall licker like you don't have the power. What kind of con are you running on the lady?"

"It's no con. Give me the acetate, and i'll give her what she wants."

John steps forward and dives Anton against the wall, holding him firmly there. "She wants her soul. And it's not yours to give. You traded it twenty years ago for Ian Fell's life."

"Don't say his name!"

"Why not?"

Ray looked up, "What's wrong with saying his name?" he asked innocently.

"Names have meaning, and meanings have power." John stressed.

Anton angrily shoves John off him. "Thanks a lot! Thanks for nothing! You just blew my deal." From behind the plastic, John hears the melodic basso of low laughter. John instantly realizes the mistake he made. He strides to the plastic and yanks it down, revealing the back of a man in a chair watching a preacher on tv.

"Ian Fell. Thank you, Constantine. At least I know where to find the acetate now." The man says.

John glared at the screen.

John hates himself in this moment. The man stands and turns into the light to reveal Papa Midnite (30s), an imposing, bearded Haitian with a dandy but dirty suit. All the light and darkness of the world dances in Midnite's eyes.

"Papa Midnite. Didn't take you for a fan of religious broadcasting. Unless there's a Voodou Channel I'm missing in my basic cable package."

A chuckle rippled through the seated audience. Sara tilted her head, Len asking the question running through both their minds, "Papa Midnite?"

"Sounds like a pimp's name." Mick laughed.

"On the contrary, there's a lot these learned men can teach me."

"Like what? How to trick a desperate woman into using all her resources to obtain a deadly artifact for you? That recording in your hands gives you more power than I'm comfortable with."

"Name it and claim it."

"Come again?"

"It's the basic building block of televangelism. There are promises waiting out there for us, if we only have the courage to name them and claim them." Midnite looks past John and subtly nods his head.

"That's just the kind of backwoods thinking I expect from a cheating, drug-dealing voodou priest like -" But as John talks, two heavily muscles enforcers of Midnite's materialize like specters from the shadows behind him. These are Traylor and Creed. Coming up from behind him, Traylor cracks John across the skull with the butt of his handgun, dropping him mid-sentence.

"I should have seen that coming." John mumbled.

Anton, who has been watching the exchange, turns tail and races out of the room.

Rip scowled at the screen, "Coward."

End Chapter:

QOTC:

KG: What was that I said about kidnapping?