[IC] Shadows Among Us

[Gowi]

Shadows Among Us
February 2014

[Roman]

It took about 100 meters and three turns from the Midnite Lounge for Constantine to find a suitable alleyway. The far side was a dead-end, blocked off by a low chain-link fence and several overflowing trash cans pressed up against it, and the three doors along the adjoining walls were dark and had collected dust on the handles. One was chained and padlocked. He liked his chances for privacy.

The Half-breed had followed him in. Of course he had. He’d followed John from the Lounge. John had been tempted to lose him (it wouldn't have been that difficult) but decided it would be more useful to pry some information from his horned skull. He knew that the Half-breed didn't know him – Midnite had said his name enough while he was listening, and he hadn't been recognized by face either, so this devil knew nothing about his accomplishments, or the First’s stake of claim upon him. But he knew Astra and Nergal, or at least their names…so that confused John. Astra was Nergal’s only real victory over Constantine (something inside him twanged as he thought and he had visions of a blotted black stain splashed across his heart), and it wasn't one he would soon let John forget about. So this Half-breed was either kept in the dark, found out information he wasn't meant to know, or just going on hearsay and rumors looking to make a name for himself, sucking up to some head Demon. John liked the first two. The third was idiotic, but it still allowed him some fun. John put his hands in his coat pocket as he walked up to a door, making it look like he was fumbling for keys as the half-breed rounded the corner into the alleyway.

“You’re asking about things that could get you in trouble, Mortal.” He said, and John suppressed a scoff. Big talk for a reject. Guess he didn't figure John was much for power. Guess he forgot who Papa Midnite lets in to the Other Room. He was a moron, then. John started to turn, look of innocence on his face – and pushed his head into a strong, leathery hand, which pushed his head into the hard metal of the door. John’s head rang. Christ, he hadn't expected him to be so quick. “And look where it’s gotten you. Into trouble.” John felt hands clamp down on his shoulders and turn him around, pushing him back and holding him against the door. He pulled his left hand from his coat and pushed it to his temple, eyes screwed shut in pain. The half-breed chuckled. “Head hurt?” He asked, and John felt the hold loosen slightly in confidence. He chose that moment to bring his right hand up significantly quicker than his left, knuckles wrapped in metal, and bury it heavily into the left side of the half-breed’s face, following through and sending him tumbling to the ground. He lowered both his hands.

“Not as much as yours, mate.” He said, and the half-breed snarled, and then looked at John’s fist and the knuckleduster he held. Pure silver. Engraved. Crosses carved into the raised metal. And a strange subtle blur as the enchantment re-bolstered itself after such violent expenditure. Then he lifted a hand to where he’d been hit as it started to burn in agony. “What do you know about Astra, you half-horned son of a bitch.” Constantine demanded, raising his fist again. The half-breed chuckled.
“You can’t do anything but bruise me with that trinket, you stupid hedge wizard. I’m not demon enough to die from silver.” Constantine smirked.
“That’s what I was counting on.” He muttered, and then punched the half-breed again, rifling inside his jacket with his free hand for a fragile vial – which he then threw at the devil, letting it smash on his forehead and splash its contents over his face. He started smoking, and soon screaming. John punched again, and skin cracked off, showing rotted flesh and vicious fangs beneath.

“Holy water, you magician bastard! You won’t get away with this, you can’t kill me, I can’t di-“ John cut him off with a knee heavily on his chest, and then put his knuckleduster away, replacing it with a small bible.
“Ever experienced redemption, half-breed?” He spat as he flicked through the pages. “Demon at the gates of Heaven, knocking on the door. Love to be the fly on that wall.” The half-breed looked at him, eyes wild and defiant, but John saw the smallest flicker of fear.
“You have no authority! No providence!” He spat back, and John chuckled, pulling a pendant from his jacket. A small silver cross, hanging on rosary beads. Authentic. Convincing.

“Says you.” John said, and then held the pendant in his left hand over the half-breed’s head as he read from the bible in his right. He spoke in prominent voice, acting the part, and trying not to enjoy himself too much. "May God have mercy on you, and may He grant you pardon of your sins." The Half-breed strained his neck and tried to claw John's face, but he pulled his head sharply out of the way and pressed more weight onto his knee. "Whosoever sins You remit on Earth, they are remitted unto them in Heaven!" The devil protested, weakly pushing at Constantine's knee and croaking ignorance. Constantine continued. "Grant Your child into Thine kingdom, in the name of the Father, in the name of the Son, and in the name of the Holy Spirit!" The Half-breed writhed beneath him, and John reached to the sky, stretching his pendant toward Heaven as he finished the prayer: "AME-"

"Stop! Stop! I'll tell you, I'll tell you everything I know! Just please, stop!" Constantine stopped, pocketing the bible and slipping the pendant to dangle around his wrist as he pulled his knee from the half-breed's chest and stood above the prone figure, eyes raining fury down upon him. "I was born in Hell. Not many half-breeds are, but I was. My mother and father were human but Nergal was my patron. He slew my father and drew my mother into Hell, and gave his blood unto her womb so that I might feel his influence and serve him on Earth. I was born in Hell, in Nergal's kingdom." Constantine pulled the half-breed up by the collars. He almost snarled.
"Nergal doesn't have a kingdom. Rosacarnis usurped his throne and then they were slain by the First. I know. I was there. That kingdom isn't there anymore, and neither is Nergal." The half-breed just shook his head meekly, panting in pain and exhaustion.
"He lay dormant, gathered what strength he had, whispered into my ear as I grew. It felt like millenia." Constantine glared but he was starting to believe it. Time in Hell was not related to time on Earth. "He had some font of power, something pure and light and hidden away, something that didn't belong and he feasted on its energy. A direct link to providence, something of pure divinity. I followed him one night, only once, and I saw it. Pure white, beautiful. It saw me too. It...blinded Nergal, or held him back, and imprinted upon me a vision of a girl and a name. Nergal tried to slay me that night, to undo what I had learnt, but it stopped him somehow and I escaped. I was at the Lounge because I wanted protection, safety, a fucking witness protection program! Midnite didn't want anything to do with it. He's fucking neutral. And now, I'm going to die."

Constantine let go, and the devil slumped to the ground, despair welling up in his core. John straightened up, and then helped the half-breed up off the floor.
"No you're not. You're under my witness protection program now. And you're gonna show me where you saw that soul. What's your name, half-breed?"
The half-breed coughed and dusted himself down, wincing a little as his face ached and his veneer cracked a little more. He was wary of Constantine, but he didn't have another avenue left. John really was his only option. There was no point fighting back. He'd been shown that he'd lose regardless. He shrugged, accepting of defeat.
"Zziluhan." He said, and John raised an eyebrow.
"Well then, Zee, we better get going. New York ain't the place to be right now." They walked a few steps, and then Constantine stopped, turning to Zee with one hand pointed at him. "Oh, and for future reference - you have to ask for redemption to be forgiven. Asshole."

~

That had been a week ago. Since then, Constantine and Zee had headed back to Chicago to close the office temporarily and update Chas Kramer, who'd dutifully driven them around the city while Constantine contacted friends and associates and chased leads. A foray into Hell was not to be done on a whim, something to take lightly. They needed to prepare. They needed backup. They needed to restock. Constantine needed to contact an old ally.

They needed to go to Salem.

[Bounce]

| KRYPTONIAN COLONIAL SHIP MATRIX |

The behemoth traversed the space between stars with all the majesty and power as had borne it across dimensions both within this galaxy and without for more than a decade. It's passage was marked with neither sound nor fanfare, but merely a steady procession of those in search of a place to call home.

Once upon a time, they had been conquerers. In a different period, architects. Then philosophers, who had pled with their government to extract themselves from colonial wars spurned by passions of earlier times. Many of the survivors, those few who had escaped the destruction of the planet Krypton, had served in the Daxamite War. The last act of defiance from the last of the colony worlds that Krypton had still laid some claim toward. And then, on the eve of an interstellar peace, the unthinkable had occurred. Not without warning, but those who would have warned were silenced. Not without reason, but those who would speak up against the rape of the natural world were imprisoned. Not without blood, but those who had engineered the massacre of thousands of innocent inhabitants slept now soundly aboard the ship of their escape.

But it was their ship. And this was their people, their home, even if they had nothing else.

Such were the words that his father taught him.

The boy knew nothing of Krypton. It was a place of myth and legend to him, the setting of many bedtime stories, and folklore discussed across the dinner table of times now long past. The child had been born aboard the ship, after it had sailed from the remains of the planet. He was about two cycles older than any other child aboard, the first of what was hailed as the next generation. The new Kryptonians.

In truth, it all meant very little to him now.

The young boy woke, though he wasn't certain just what had stirred him. He was tucked away in an antechamber of his parent's chambers. His bed recessed into the wall as a small bunk. A white furred canine shared the bed with him, the boy hugging his arms around the sleeping animal as he lay there in the daze between sleep and wakefulness, until it at last registered why he was awake. Pushing himself up on his arms, the brown-haired child slid out of the bed and made his way to the bathroom.

The boy had no concept of the ship's chronometer, he merely knew that he was still sleepy. Had he the maturity or foresight to have inspected the time, he'd have found it the middle of the night as the ship counted time. In either event, which was of little consequence to the boy so long as he could go back to sleep, the boy did not return to his own bed. Instead, he wandered into the private chamber shared by the two god-like individuals who were responsible for all good things -- such as breakfast and birthdays -- and much wrath, such as spankings. Into the den of these deities, who were known in this celestial pantheon as the god Dad and the goddess Mom, the boy crawled up on the bed that the two shared, moving on all fours to occupy the space between where the two lay. And there, in the valley of the shadow of parents, the child nestled down to go back to sleep.

The white furred canine lumbered inside of the bedroom a minute after, circling at the foot of the bed three times before settling down. With a snort, the pup sneezed and then set its muzzle atop its forepaws as it yawned and dozed off as well.

---

The squeals of playing children were like a thousand battlecries echoing off the metal corridors of the contained starship. As an internal airlock opened to permit passage through the ship, the brown-haired son of Zod was at the head of a troop of boys rampaging through the ship like barbarians in the frenzy. The white furred canine was looking haggard for the effort at keeping up with the energy level of the children, as they ran from one of the ship to the next in endless games that had few rules and even less sense to them.

They were playing soldiers and Daxamites, with Lor-Zod as the captain of the soldier team. Because he was a Zod. Zod's were soldiers. Like his dad, who was the captain of the ship. All the girls were Daxamites by default, because they were girls. This made them bad guys no matter what the game was. The boys didn't play with the girls, of course, but when they came across girls it was understood that girls were always it.

Coming around a corner, the young Kryptonian led a charge to ambush a group of Daxamites. They didn't have weapons of course, not real ones anyway. But with pieces of scrap, the boys fashioned their imagination into an arsenal beyond belief. With sound effects and loud squealing, the boys romped through the ship until they arrived at a chamber with a large viewing dome toward the bottom of the starship.

It was a place they often went, because it was far from where most of the adults worked, and the view of the stars was unlike anything imaginable. As the boys ran into the room, however, they quickly forgot the game that they were playing. Instead, one by one, they slowly moved to step up to the edge that peered down into the vastness of space. And, there, reflected in the glass was something truly amazing.

A planet orbited beneath the ship.

[Kingfisher]

Duela sat at her desk, muttering incoherent syllable after incoherent syllable, caught up in her own world. The surface of the old wooden desk was littered with used needles, a half empty glass bottle of Bacardi, and a metallic canteen, filled to the brim with strychnine sulphate.

Her latest project, a long wooden pole, wound in barbed wire, with a rusted sickle fastened to the end of it, stretched out in front of her, with Duela adding the finishing touches to her weapon, by fusing everything together with the random bits of junk she had managed to scavenge from the local skip.

Her phone-a pay-as-you-go Nokia that looked older than god, and served simply as a disposable means of communication-started beeping at her, pulling her out of la la land, and informing her that she needed to be on her way.

Duela snatched up her navy green superdry jacket and white silk scarf off of the back of her chair, flinging them on in a flurry of fluid movements, before making her way out of the apartment, locking the door behind her.

The air was cold and frigid, covering her flesh in gooseprickles, and a light breeze sent her jacket billowing back behind her. Despite the chilly temperature, bright golden rays broke through the sky above, bathing the scenery in a wash of white light.

The walk to Pedro’s coffee shop was a brisk one, the background textured with the hustle and bustle of the pedestrians and cars that shambled past, and soon Duela had made her way down the grimy pavement, and had arrived at her destination, silk scarf pulled tightly over her mouth.

Society tended to poorly view those who sort to conceal their appearances when entering shops, but Duela was a regular at this particular establishment, and the occupants had little to no desire to see her scarred likeness, so they made no complaints about the fact that she chose to disguise herself.

The queue was pleasantly short, and the woman working behind the counter knew Duela ‘s usual order, so before long she was sitting comfortably in a plush chair, with a medium hot chocolate gripped tightly in one hand, lowering her scarf now and then, in order to take tentative sips of her drink.

She was leisurely awaiting the arrival of a similarly aged teenage boy, and before her drink was half finished he had found his way into the coffee shop, and joined her at her table.

“Hi!” Ralph greeted her with a broad grin plastered across his spotty face, dark fringe covering his piggy eyes, as he slumped heavily in the chair opposite her.

She returned his greeting with an affectionate smirk, her white scarf now hanging loosely around her neck.

One of the many unfortunate downsides of her distinctive face was that it made it exceptionally hard for her to go about the place unnoticed, as everyone always remember the girl who looked like she’d been dragged backwards through a meat grinder. To combat this, Duela had begun branching out in the world, desperately searching for people that she could manipulate and bend to her will, pawns for her to move about the board.

She had found Ralph being beaten up by a bunch of trolls outside of some nightclub, whilst she was foraging in a dumpster for spare parts, and by managing to get the jump on them with her butcher’s knife she had ultimately saved the young boy from whatever fate awaited him.

Apparently watching her kick the shit out of some thugs had been a massive aphrodisiac, as Ralph had been smitten with her ever since, and was seemingly prepared to do anything for her.

“Can I get you something to drink?” She queered, gazing at him with mock fondness, fuelled by thoughts of all the wonderful things that she could get Ralph to do at her beck and call.

“I’m fine, thanks.” He said with a genuine smile, his cheeks slightly flushed as the pair made eye contact.

Duela giggled lightly. It was nice to know that someone found her attractive.

“So, are you ready, Hun?”

“I was born ready.” He remarked, only half joking. Then he leaned in close, and lowered his voice to little more than a hushed whisper. “I can’t wait to light the fuckers up.”

Ralph had been the victim of bullying for the entirety of his brief life, picked on for being the chubby spotty kid, and as such had grown to detest school, and had developed a seething animosity for his peers.

It had been more than easy to coax him into doing what she wanted.

“Just drop your bag off near the front of the bus, and then you’ll be fine.” She lied effortlessly, in that same hushed whisper.

“And then we’ll be together?” You’ll bed dead, you fucking idiot She mused inwardly.

“And then we’ll be together.” She assured him. In truth he repulsed her-his body was covered in rolls of fat and he was and spotty and ugly-, and he was little more than a means to an end, a method by which she could achieve her next objective.

“I’ve calculated everything precisely; just make sure you’re at the back of the bus, and then you’ll be well out of harm’s way.”

That seemed to convince him. They spent the rest of the day chatting pleasantly in Pedro’s coffee shop, with Duela counting the seconds until she was rid of him.

*

The school was buzzing with life, like an ant hill on a summer’s day, with students, parents, and teachers swarming in through the front gates-one massive horde of bodies pressed tightly together-.

Duela lulled nonchalantly about, concealed by the blanket of shadows that enveloped the alleyway which ran parallel to the school.

She leaned casually against one sturdy brick wall, keeping both eyes fixed firmly on the front gates. One hand was stuffed into her coat pocket, cradling what looked like the remote control for one of those keyless cars.

The arrival of the school bus sent her springing to life, a warm sensation flooding her stomach as she watched the big yellow vehicle with its grubby windows and round tires come rolling slowly up to the front gates, decreasing in pace as it neared the crowd of people that was still flooding into school.

A wide grin spread from one corner of her face to the other, as a single skeletal finger pressed down on the remote detonator’s little black button.

There was a brief pause as it took the signal a moment to travel from her to the semtex/fertiliser combo that was stashed in Ralph’s backpack.

Suddenly, the school bus erupted in a glorious roar of crimson flames, the explosion blowing out the glass windows, and sending huge metal splinters flying in every direction. The back doors were blown off by the sheer force of the detonation, screeching across the floor with a trail of bright red sparks leaking behind them. Debris rained down upon the unsuspecting victims of the explosion, as body-sized chunks of the vehicle were sent spiralling across the courtyard.

Screaming rang out, as chaos ensued, with those who had managed to avoid the blast clambering all over each over in order to simply escape the scene of the explosion.

By the time the blast zone was empty, all that remained of the school bus was a burnt out husk of blackened metal, licked with waves of crimson fire that shimmered in the wind.

A plethora of blackened corpses criss-crossed the school’s courtyard, littering the concrete floor.