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Grave Measures

Summary:

John's trip to the library accidentally involves him in an attempt to pull off an even bigger coup d'état than bringing forth Mammon: taking over Hell. Since this would also lead to massive destabilization including apocalypse, he has to stop it. Unfortunately, Gabriel Van Helsing's already working on that, and he prefers to work alone.

Notes:

Originally written and posted to LiveJournal in 2005.

Chapter 1: Satanic Studies

Chapter Text

John absently reached into his pocket. A moment later, he was irritably flipping pages and swearing under his breath, leery-eyed librarian in the corner notwithstanding. If she wasn’t going to let him chew on gum, then she could take a share of putting up with the withdrawal cravings. Jesus. It was almost worse than waking up hung-over and then remembering that not only had he beaten the devil, but he’d just guaranteed that Lucifer was going to personally lay out the welcome-mat for him, come that time.

The pages were sticking together, so he licked at his forefinger, then slid it beneath the corner. That earned him another dirty look, which he didn’t feel was entirely deserved. For one thing, he hadn’t come swaggering in with a brace of semiautomatics and a dusting of cocaine on his nose, which had to put him several notches above the usual regulars she saw here. For another, at least he wasn’t coughing all over the place like the man sitting next to him.

It’d only been three or so weeks since John had gotten his deus ex machina from lung cancer, so he had a little sympathy for the guy. A little bit, and that was currently stretched as far as it would go. If he hacked spittle John’s way one more time…

He was in his early twenties with a face that more than one person might love, but probably only his mother found memorable, and he was dressed like a thousand other shabby college students. The battered backpack slumped at his feet and the shaky hands—coffee fix—confirmed John’s guess. It must have been some paper he had due, for the stack of books at his elbow could’ve doubled as a blast-shield. And there was the fact that he was feverishly scribbling notes in his notebook despite the copious sweat dripping from his face, the wan skin and the deep, rattling cough that shook him every few seconds. It banged out of his chest like machine-gun fire, or poltergeist rage.

Pretty pathetic, but nothing too remarkable. John tried again to read his book, but he found himself jumping every time the other man cut loose. He finally gave up and stretched back in his chair, looking around for another free desk.

The public libraries had some unappreciated treasures hidden in their back-stacks. Old grimoires, obscure magical treatises mistaken for the ignorance of past generations, donated collections of knowledge from people who’d gotten too scared to continue, or who’d fucked up and needed to hide the evidence where the high level of people-traffic would confuse those tracking them. They weren’t Beeman, but they did pretty good. But one spot where they definitely slipped up was with furniture. There wasn’t another desk in sight, and John wasn’t going to stand and hold a book that measured nearly a foot and a half long. It looked like he was just going to have to come back tomorrow and hope that he didn’t get stuck with another candidate for the TB ward as a desk-mate.

Or he could get knocked in the shoulder when his current desk-mate flailed out of his chair. That went crashing to the ground, and John’s own chair went back on two legs as he tried to avoid the guy’s arms. For a moment, he thought the man was going to collapse, but the guy righted himself and took off for the bathrooms. Just in time, if John was any judge of the color of his face.

“Jesus Christ…” John checked his sleeve for any streaks of mucus, then pulled it straight and tugged at his collar. As he settled back to his own book, he glanced over at his neighbor’s things.

Actually, it looked like the man had been revising his thesis, or something long and weighty like that. A thick manuscript lay open on the desk, fine black print scarred over and over with scrawling handwriting in two different colors of ink. Three. Two.

He squinted at the pages, trying to figure out if the light was that bad or if now it was his eyes that were going. Or if it was entirely different. A sidelong glance at the books heaped around it made John’s stomach churn: demonology, cabbalism, alchemy.

When he checked, the librarian had bent down behind her desk to take care of something. John watched for her reappearance while he waved a hand over the manuscript. Or tried to, anyway. He’d barely gotten his palm above it before he was jerking it back, hissing at what felt like a near-burn. Great. Another grad student trying to hex his way to graduation.

“Oh, my God!”

Both John and the librarian bolted straight up at the scream. A second later, a man covered in blood came running from the bathrooms, face stricken with the kind of horror that usually meant John was about to ruin another suit. He waved and babbled incoherently about some explosion and brains on the wall, and then he ran up to the desk to shake the frozen librarian’s shoulders, begging her to do something about it. She promptly fainted.

John casually took off his coat and swung it over his arm so it temporarily swept across the desk. When it’d slipped off, the manuscript had come with it and was firmly wrapped inside the cloth. He thought about poking about the man’s bag as well, but nixed that idea when he heard other voices coming nearer. Instead he shoved his book into his neighbor’s pile and put on an appropriately shocked face. “Over here! I think somebody’s hurt!”

God, he needed a cigarette.

* * *

Gabriel solemnly assessed the scene behind the yellow tape two police officers were now stretching over the doorway. Ordinary public restroom that now looked like an abattoir. Blood was drying on the ceiling, the walls, the window…near the back, a blackish sludge smelling mostly of human shit coated the floor where a toilet had backflooded.

Judging from the stains, Carlos Gallardo had been near the floor of the stall when something had blown his body inside-out. Vomiting, perhaps. Before that he had been ill with a high fever, possibly coughing and…Gabriel stepped into a draft blowing from inside the restroom and took a careful sniff. He tried not to let his disgust at the stench show; Gallardo had been relatively innocent, from what Gabriel had found out, and didn’t deserve such.

And something had been wrong with his blood. It smelled of magic, which was to be expected, but there was also a whiff of sulfur. Gabriel frowned and edged a little closer, trying to be certain that it was coming from Gallardo’s blood and not from whatever had killed him.

“Hey. Move along—you got your eyeful.” A cop shouldered up to him and jabbed a hand at an exit door. “This area’s off limits. Sheesh, rubberneckers…”

For a moment, Gabriel was tempted to argue, but drawing attention to himself at this point wouldn’t do any good. He murmured some apology and walked towards the door. Interestingly enough, the sulfur trace grew stronger as he went in that direction. He smelled someone else as well…a Constantine, if that memory was true. And he’d thought all the magic had died out of that family, or been deliberately burnt out.

The trail was relatively easy to follow; whichever one this was, they cared enough to disguise what they were carrying but not who they were or what they were capable of doing. Just about how Gabriel remembered them.

What was not, however, what he remembered was a track leading to any sort of recognized authority. Yet there it was, taking him straight to an L. A. precinct office. Then again, it was the back door.

Gabriel stopped about ten yards away for a cigarette; nicotine had no discernable effect on him, but he appreciated how the simple act of lighting a smoke could excuse any number of strange actions. Such as evaluating whether a six-foot man in a brown trenchcoat sneaking into the building or scaling the wall would be more noticeable.

In the end, he opted for climbing. Whoever the Constantine was visiting, they kept their window open so it was easy to tell which room he was in. And if Gabriel climbed, then he needed to expend less power to keep himself from being seen than if he were inside and bumping into people—sight was simple to fool, touch and sound much less so.

He put out his half-smoked cigarette and ambled casually over to the wall, drawing the shadows around him as he did. The building was made of smooth concrete, which slowed him a little, but soon he was perched on the fire-escape outside the window. Inside was a tall, pale man who couldn’t stop tapping his fingers. He had black hair and appeared to be of mixed ethnic ancestry—appealingly so, if he didn’t also look like he’d just dragged himself out of a week-long hang-over. And he was the Constantine—anyone with an iota of talent could have seen that.

The woman he was with, to whom the office apparently belonged, also had a great deal of power, but she was suppressing it so hard that even Gabriel was hard-put to determine exactly what it was. She was sitting with one hand rumpling her hair, and she didn’t seem to be pleased.

“Look, John, I know I owe you—I’ll always owe you, but you can’t just ask me to run tests all the time. I have to give the lab guys some kind of excuse,” she was telling him.

He bent over the desk and roughly took something back from her; Gabriel straightened up and tried to see what it was, because it was screaming Ariel. But John stuck it beneath his folded coat before Gabriel could, sharply half-turning away from the woman. His fingers kept curling around some phantom shape. “Come on, Angela. That can’t be too hard. It’s even an open case this time—all I want is a copy of what you’re going to get anyway.”

“Is it going to get me two more bodies with wings in the subway? Two steps closer to the crazy room and the electroshock therapy?” Her voice cut silence through the room.

John was looking away from Gabriel and Angela so his expression wasn’t visible, but his shoulders tightened beneath his coat. He sucked in a breath, and at the desk, Angela was pressing clenched fists against the desk.

“That was uncalled for. I didn’t mean that,” Angela finally said.

“No, I think you did. Sorry to bother you, Detective.” And with that, John stalked out of the room.

Angela rose to follow, her hand going out and her mouth opening, but she stopped herself halfway out of her chair. She held the pose for a long, long moment before sitting back down. Her head was down and Gabriel smelled wet salt, but Angela wiped at her face before the tears fully came up. She took one deep breath, two, three, and then she slowly reached for a stack of papers. It didn’t take too long before she had lost herself in a work-rhythm that’d keep her occupied long past sunset.

History there, but as intriguing as it sounded, it probably wasn’t relevant to the problem at hand. Gabriel pivoted about to watch Constantine walk out the back door…and right into a group of waiting demons. He put up a good fight, but he’d been surprised and it was such tight quarters in the alley that they could trap him with little trouble. In addition, any curses or weapons tended to ricochet in unexpected ways, such as the rock that smashed through one demon’s head before deflecting into Constantine’s temple.

The man crumpled. The largest demon straightened his broken nose, then waved the others to stop. It took a moment, and Constantine probably received some badly bruised ribs in the meantime. Gabriel winced in sympathy as he took out his rifle, and then again at the rough way they bound Constantine’s hands behind his back. He wrapped a gris-gris bag around the rifle so the shots would be perfectly silent, waiting for a clear shot.

It took a while. He had to stay put, gnawing on his patience, until they’d nearly heaved Constantine all the way into an SUV that had pulled up. And then a second longer because John came to in the middle of that and didn’t appreciate being kidnapped in broad daylight.

The angle was still bad, but Gabriel decided he wasn’t going to get a better one. He raised his rifle and snapped off a shot.

“What the—” Damn. Even with the spell on, Angela had noticed something.

Gabriel spun on his toes and cracked her in the head with his rifle-butt. It threw him off-balance and he helped that along, continuing to spin until he’d fallen off the ledge.

He landed on his feet and had to beat aside one demon a split second later. The rifle-stock smashed through the human skin and exposed a gory mess of scales and bony crests; Gabriel flipped his gun around and shot through that one’s torso and the one coming up behind him. Then he turned and shot down the others; something clipped his wrist and blood splashed up so he missed his shot at the driver, who’d come roaring out.

He hastily dodged and went low, aiming to knock the demon off his feet. Instead he ended up clawing for the ground as his opponent was incinerated. Ash fell around him as he got up and put away his rifle.

“You’d think they’d remember to gag me,” Constantine gasped. He had propped himself up against the car. Most of the fighting had missed him, but a little bit of shiny green blood had splattered on his face, highlighting the somewhat inappropriate grin on his face. “John Constantine.”

“Gabriel.” Something bulky had dropped from the car to land by John’s feet, so Gabriel stooped to pick it up. He stood just in time to see a flash of possessiveness in John’s eyes, followed by a surprised look. “What?”

John shrugged, eyes flicking back to the…manuscript Gabriel was unwrapping from John’s coat. “I thought I’d already met Gabriel. She tried to bring on Revelations about three weeks ago.”

“Those are titles, not names,” Gabriel muttered. He held the manuscript up to his nose—yes, this was it. “That would have been my replacement after I…left.”

“Left. Is that what they’re calling it now?” The other man shifted closer, nodding at the book. “Look, thanks and all, but that’s mine. Not yours.”

Gabriel glanced at John, then slowly rewrapped the book and thought. He knew that claim wasn’t true, but if left loose, Constantine would make this affair more difficult than it already was. And anyway, there was the question of why coincidence would drop him and the book together into Gabriel’s hands, and that was a rather large one, considering that coincidence wasn’t friendly with either Gabriel or, if reputation was true, Constantine.

“Sorry.” He tossed the book into the car so it landed on the front passenger seat. Then he moved around as if to untie Constantine, but then Gabriel got his hands quickly beneath the rope and used it to leverage the other man on top of the book.

Predictably, Constantine cursed normally instead of immediately launching into a counterattack. That gave Gabriel time to get out the duct tape and take Constantine’s advice. Then he closed the car doors and walked around to get into the driver’s seat before the spells keeping people from noticing what was going on wore off.

Constantine was throwing a fit, but the tape held and so did the ropes. Gabriel ducked beneath a headbutt, then shoved the other man hard so Constantine’s head cracked against the window—on his bruised temple, Gabriel belatedly noticed. He felt a pang of guilt for that, since so far he didn’t have a great reason for doing this other than convenience. “Again, I’m sorry, but I’m in a hurry. I need to look up a friend of mine about that book, and then you can have it.”

Though he was dazed from the blow, Constantine still managed an impressive glare. Gabriel sighed and started the car, ignoring the other man’s muffled swearing.

* * *

“Spelled duct tape,” John muttered, slumping against the wall. So it didn’t rub as much as the ropes had on his wrists. It’d still hurt like a bitch to have it off his mouth.

As he tucked the roll away into that gigantic coat of his, Gabriel shrugged again like John was forcing him to do it all. Hypocrite. “It’s portable and less suspicious-looking than carrying around something like a blessed hemp cord. This should only take a moment.”

They were in some abandoned building on the second floor, in a room that was devoid of anything except a door, them, and the manuscript. John had the impression that Gabriel was getting ready to do a summoning, but he hadn’t even bothered to draw protection sigils on the floor. It might have been okay for him to do without those, but not for John. “Whose bell are you ringing? If I’ve got to deal with an old grudge, I think it’s only fair to have my hands free.”

“A friend of mine. He won’t hurt you.” Gabriel squatted down in the middle of the floor and laid the manuscript before him. He didn’t do anything else, but the corners of the room started to disappear and the ceiling rose into a smoking sky.

Right, and John was going to take the word of a man—ex-angel—who’d appropriated somebody else’s snatch-and-run. He almost didn’t scoot over to Gabriel out of sheer pissiness, but his sense of self-preservation had to point out that Gabriel did seem to have no trouble dealing with half-breeds, so it was probably safer by him. “Oh, I don’t know. You’d be surprised who wants to hurt me.”

“He won’t if I tell him…” Frowning, Gabriel stuck out his hand and waved it around in the air. The blackness got thicker and the air began to stink of sulfur, but otherwise nothing happened. The set of his shoulders and jaw tensed, and he began to mutter in a language that was…was…

…beautiful, John had to admit. It sounded like sunlight after a thunderstorm, and just by listening to it his aches and worries started to melt away.

“Angels’ tongue,” he realized.

“He’s not there,” Gabriel muttered at the same time, shifting on his feet. Then he stopped and stiffened, and suddenly the room convulsed. “Wait, he’s…you! Where is Ariel? Where—what happened? Why is there—”

Every word that Gabriel said reverberated louder and louder till the damn walls were quaking and fracturing. The earth groaned, growled, and something darted out of a crack to snatch at John’s ankle. He slammed himself back, hit Gabriel’s shoulder and grabbed for the man’s coat. “Maybe you should try calling back when he’s not busy tormenting the—”

The room popped. Like a soap bubble. One moment it was sucking part of hell onto the earthly plane, and the next everything was normal again…with the exception of the naked body that had been yanked up and dropped in front of Gabriel. A familiar body.

“Balthazar.” If John’s hands had been free, that little shit’s backbone would have been decorating the door by now.

The bastard shakily jerked out of his fetal curl and looked around. When his eyes saw John, they lighted up like goddamned Christmas trees. “Constan—”

Gabriel snarled. Not a snarl like a man doing his best imitation of his pitbull, but the real, genuine thing. Like a wolf. And the damnedest thing happened: Balthazar dropped to his belly and whined, craning his neck so the curve was towards Gabriel. His eyes glazed over for a moment, then cleared to show impotent anger and raw terror, but he didn’t move.

“Nice. Basic instincts got the best of you?” John said.

“Constantine, shut up.” It wasn’t what Gabriel said that made John obey, but the look he gave John. Like the snarl, it wasn’t the usual diluted posturing that John saw all the time, but the full-strength fury that wasn’t supposed to be allowed on this plane.

They probably made a pretty-looking tableau frozen like that, John huddled to Gabriel and frozen with pure fear that way, Balthazar silently begging for mercy and Gabriel acting like…God knew what. It wasn’t angel or demon.

Finally Gabriel stirred. “We’re going to see a bookseller friend of mine.”

“What about your other one?” John asked.

“He’s dead.” Gabriel got up and threw John’s coat over Balthazar. “Get up. You’re coming.”

Chapter 2: The Usurper

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Gabriel’s other friend, as it turned out, was still alive and well when they pulled up behind a discreet bookshop. John silently breathed a sigh of relief for that, because Gabriel had been nothing but seething fury since he’d found out about Ariel. It’d been a blessing in that Balthazar had kept his fucking mouth shut and had just sulked in the backseat, but it’d also given off the kind of vibe that really worked on John’s nerves. The fact that Gabriel smelled slightly like Virginian tobacco didn’t help.

Ariel. If John remembered right, he was one of the less unpleasant lords of hell. Interesting company Gabriel kept. “So…you left.”

“Contrary to popular belief, it is not a two-sided war.” The place was upscale so the parking was tight, and whatever Gabriel currently was, he still had manners. He spent an extra two minutes reparking so the doors wouldn’t scrape the cars on either side when opened. “At least, not until and unless Judgment Day arrives. Until then, if you tire of it, you can…walk off.”

Balthazar snorted. “Pardon me if I find that a little hard to believe…oh, sorry, have we been introduced?”

“Gabriel Van Helsing,” Gabriel told him, which was slightly more than John had gotten. That was a little insulting, considering that at least John wasn’t a piece of scum scraped off Lucifer’s boot. “Please shut up before I have to speculate about what Ariel was doing with you.”

John didn’t even bother making a comment. He just watched in the rearview mirror while Balthazar went and pushed his luck, leaning forward to hiss at Gabriel’s ear. His tongue flicked out longer than any tongue had a right to be, curling and coiling in the air like a whore crooking a finger. “Were you two friends? An angel and a demon? How utterly—”

In one smooth motion, Gabriel smacked the car into ‘park’ and turned to wrap his hand in Balthazar’s tongue. He yanked and Balthazar squealed…just like a stuck pig, John reckoned. Then Balthazar came awkwardly forward, since his wrists were taped behind his back like John’s were, and teetered while his tongue-tip frantically slapped at Gabriel. “As a matter of fact, Ariel and I were,” Gabriel said in a low, toneless voice.

He released Balthazar’s tongue with a flick of the wrist and Balthazar slammed back into the seat, pushing himself as far from Gabriel as he could get. Strands of his hair fell in his face and John’s coat flopped open to bare Balthazar to the waist. He hunched his shoulders, trying to get it to close again.

It was satisfying as hell to see him brought low, but John was surprised to find it a little disturbing as well. Actually, something overall was off with Balthazar…something with how he was registering on John’s senses.

“I was simplifying. But essentially, you do drop out of the fight. It’s not as easy as it sounds, but it can and has been done by members of both sides.” Gabriel was also simplifying that a lot, but he didn’t seem inclined to elaborate on what would prompt an angel or a demon to that kind of crisis of faith. He got out of the car and waved to a man who’d come out of the bookshop’s back entrance.

And him being a full angel too, John was beginning to suspect—not the half-breeds that he met. Not the other Gabriel, God knew where she was now. But there had to be a catch somewhere, otherwise they’d violate the balance. As shitty as that agreement was, it did exist and was enforced.

“Nice to see you again, Johnny-boy,” came a hiss right behind John’s neck. Something skinny and slimy squirmed at the back of his neck, making him jerk forward. “Got to say, while going home has its perks, I did miss watching your pathetic scramblings.”

John closed his eyes and quietly scuffed his feet back till he hit a metal bar. He ran one heel along it, making sure it was what he thought it was. Then he slowly pushed down on it, careful not to make any noise. “Yeah, I’m sure they gave you a real good welcome. Half-breed that plotted against Lucifer. Well, welcome back. And news flash—I’m still mad you killed my friends.”

He rammed his foot into the ground and shoved back with all his force, holding the lever down with his other foot. His chair skidded backwards and John was rewarded with an agonized cry and a thump.

“You know something else?” John said. “I’m beginning to think you came back a little less demonic than when you left.”

Balthazar suddenly rocked back up to hang his head over the seat; he laughed when John jerked completely off the seat in order to get away from him. Blood trickled from his nose and his newly-split lower lip. “I did miss our little fights. Especially how you always slipped up at the end.”

Then he actually tried to fling himself over the seat, his jaw unhinging to show fangs as long as John’s finger. John threw himself back again, but only hit the window. He saw the red of Balthazar’s mouth—

--and then he saw Balthazar get dragged out by his collar…by the collar of John’s coat, which he was going to burn if Gabriel ever gave it back to him. John gasped for air he hadn’t known he’d been missing and slumped against the window. After he’d recovered a bit, he started to lever himself up, only to nearly crack his head on the pavement when Gabriel suddenly opened the door. He tumbled out, saw the world blur into a whoosh and panicked, kicking out.

Something caught him under the arm, and then Gabriel yanked him up and onto his feet. The slimy fuck dangling from Gabriel’s other hand swung around, hissing, but John only had enough time to get in one head-butt before Gabriel threw them against the side of the car. “Stop that,” Gabriel snapped. “Whatever the grudge is—”

“He killed my friends, tried to kill me and almost got Mammon unleashed on earth,” John spat. He pressed his hands against the cool steel of the car and scooted his feet wide for balance, then bent over. Maybe the cancer was out of his lungs, but there had to be scarring left behind. Nearly a month later and he was still feeling like shit. “Excuse me if I just can’t help trying to break his goddamned neck.”

That shut up Gabriel for a moment. Just long enough for his friend to walk up and coolly look over Balthazar as if he were a side of meat, not even batting an eye when Balthazar snapped at him. “Did he and the other one come with the car?”

“The car’s not mine,” Gabriel said. He added an unidentifiable something to his voice that made the hair on the back of John’s neck rise, and Balthazar abruptly go limp.

“I know. You showed up driving it,” the other man said. He was about average height, dark brown hair going grey at the temples, neat goatee and moustache. Nice understated suit, wire rim glasses, and a face that reminded John of a handsome rat. “Don’t tell me about them. Just get them inside. And put some pants on the half-demon, would you? I moved to a nicer district to avoid that sort of thing.”

* * *

Dean was in a good mood, which meant he was doing his best to put everyone else in a bad one. Once he’d found a spare suit for Balthazar, they all settled in the room where he kept the more select volumes. He idled in front of his desk with a snifter of brandy and the manuscript while John and Balthazar warily eyed each other from opposite corners and while Gabriel tried for the umpteenth time to fathom Dean’s cataloging system. “Where is your damned copy of the Necronomicon?”

“First tell me what this is. Aside from being a badly-written thesis that just happens to have editorial notes written by Ariel, former earl of Hell.” The magnifying glass came out and Dean forewent the brandy for peering more closely at the sigils marked on the last few pages. “So he’s been masquerading as a college professor?”

When John wasn’t trying to rip out Balthazar’s throat with his eyes, he did a decent job of pretending he wasn’t trying to read every book title he could see. His eyes followed one row, then paused. Gabriel tracked his glance on a whim and found that the man had spotted the Necronomicon. He muttered the obligatory thanks, to which John muttered that his hands were going numb and could use a little less restraint. Ignoring him, Gabriel pulled down the volume and flipped through for his reference. “Yes. Taught Religions. He took on a brilliant student named Carlos Gallardo—so brilliant that Ariel couldn’t stand him and gave him what he considered an impossible task: write a thesis on a plausible way to dethrone Lucifer.”

“Not conquer heaven, or rule the earth?” Dean asked. His browsing had slowed, and he now appeared to be actually reading the manuscript. Little furrows began to appear between his eyebrows.

“No, just dethrone Lucifer and take over hell. What one did with it afterward was optional, apparently.” The line in the book was just as Gabriel had remembered it. Damn. He shoved it back and ran his fingers along the shelves till he bumped into Balthazar, who stiffened and hissed beneath his breath. Gabriel gave him a look, then plucked a book from just behind Balthazar’s shoulder. “I don’t know you and I don’t care to, other than what you have to do with this,” he quietly told him.

Hopefully that should convince him that Gabriel wasn’t trying to replace Ariel. The last thing Gabriel wanted at the moment was company he couldn’t get rid of.

“And so this Gallardo wrote an actual thesis on his proposal. Dear God. I wonder what he put in his coffee to produce this.” Dean let out a little chuckle, then looked at Gabriel. When Gabriel didn’t respond, the merriment on the other man’s withered. “Gabe, you’re not laughing.”

“Because Ariel read it, and he summed up the main points for me, and the upshot’s that it could actually work. There’s a loophole.” And that book didn’t provide any help for Gabriel either. He worked off a little frustration by slamming it shut and back onto the shelf. The little wince Dean made was a guilty but delicious extra benefit. “Lucifer is a fallen angel. So he’s still, technically, an angel of sorts, and angels were created with the intent to obey. Rebellion and free will don’t come naturally. But a human being—”

Constantine shifted from leaning against a shelf to slouching into a chair. He looked thoughtfully up at Gabriel. “We’re born with free will. So what are you saying? That there’s some kind of latent desire to obey still left in good old Lou? Come on. He’s a bastard, but he’s by no means a repressed one.”

“He’s still tangled up in a stalemated war with God. I would say that constitutes a deep attachment of some kind,” Balthazar purred. He ran his tongue over his lip, mocking Constantine’s disgusted sneer. “You’re never so blind as you are to your own faults.”

“I think I might have to side with Constantine here,” Dean said. He adjusted his glasses and squinted at the manuscript in his hand, then flipped it closed to peer at the stiff blue paper that served as its cover. “In all the eons that this battle has been going on, no one’s ever thought about how to keep someone from taking over Hell?”

John raised his chin to stare inquiringly at Gabriel, while Balthazar stopped reeking of fear and rage long enough to meet Gabriel’s eyes.

It was times like these that Gabriel missed being able to rely on divine infallibility, or even the blind faith that resulted from knowing without remembering. At the very least, it reduced embarrassment. “There are measures to keep others from doing it. Other angels, other demons. But…I think it was assumed that no human would ever be interested in taking over Hell.”

“Oh. Well. That’s great. That’s really great. You’re depending on our judgment to keep us from doing something that monumentally stupid and pointless? Have you checked the news lately?” John flopped deeper into the chair, letting his head rest on the back so he was staring at the ceiling. After a moment, he turned his head and started to jiggle his knee. If Gabriel turned the man over, he suspected he’d find John rubbing his fingers together.

A little click and the fwish of a lighter signaled that Dean had noticed as well. He smoked without looking at how John’s head came slowly up so he could stare hungrily at the cigarette, but the slight smiling quirk of Dean’s lips said he knew exactly what he was doing. The manuscript flapped in his hand. “And if it wasn’t tied up in keeping souls in perpetual torment or thwarting God’s plan, then the power of hell would be something to worry about.” Sigh. “I hate giving up an example of Ariel’s writing, but I suppose we’ll have to burn this.”

Gabriel swallowed the urge to hit Dean for speaking so lightly of Ariel. There were more important matters at hand, and anyway, it wouldn’t bring back Ariel. “It wouldn’t do any good. That’s Gallardo’s copy.”

The manuscript stopped flapping. Dean went very still, eyes perfectly icy. “Copy.”

“There were two. Ariel had one—the working draft. Gallardo was still working on fine-tuning the practical section,” Gabriel grimly said. “We’ve got what should be the final version, but the draft will still have enough information for someone to make an attempt.”

“Well, hello, Gabe. I see you’ve just gotten to the part where you ruin everyone’s day,” floated a voice from the doorway.

Saying her real name on this plane would trigger unpleasantries such as earthquakes and plagues of locusts, so Gabriel simply greeted her with the name Dean had given her. “Nicki. This is John Constantine and Bal—”

“I know who that one is.” She swung her backpack off her shoulder and gave Balthazar a contemptuous look-over. He reacted by withdrawing further into his corner, teeth half-bared—much to John’s amusement—and as she walked over to Dean, Balthazar looked at her like he wanted to slowly peel the skin from her body, in a way that didn’t qualify as foreplay among demons. “I generaled besides his father for a bit. So did you miss me? How was Tibet?”

“Cold and out of the way. I’m starting to miss it, yeti aside. Let me see that.” Gabriel took the manuscript from Dean just as the man welcomed Nicki back with a prolonged kiss. He turned his back on those two and flipped to the section of the thesis where Gallardo began outlining the spells and rituals needed to reach what little residue there was of Heaven in Lucifer.

“Sounds like my last girlfriend,” Constantine muttered. It was a minor shock to find that Gabriel had wandered over in his direction, but only to Gabriel. John smiled briefly when Gabriel shook off the charm John had set on his feet, but didn’t look up from the manuscript. “So…you know, I do this kind of thing for a living. Take care of it, make it better. If you’d let me help.”

“He’s precious, isn’t he? Up for the highest bidder. Though I should warn you, he’s a bit…damaged.” Balthazar tossed his head to get his hair out of his face and snaked his tongue at Constantine, who’d abruptly pushed up against Gabriel’s shoulder in a futile effort to get at the half-demon. His eyes wandered speculatively around the room from Gabriel to Nicki and then back to Gabriel. Then they dropped mockingly to the floor. “Persona non grata in hell, so if you want someone who actually knows people…”

“Maybe I’d like to boot the both of you out that door,” Gabriel snarled. He let a little of the dark ripple out with his voice so Balthazar would genuinely cringe. It had the bonus of distracting Constantine so Gabriel could push him away. The man smelled a little like addiction, and Gabriel had already resorted to his blacker aspects more times today than he usually did in a month. He didn’t need to give it any encouragement. “I don’t need them, do I? I was checking to see if they’re connected, but—”

Nicki laughed. She pulled Dean’s glasses off and began to clean them with the tail of her shirt. “Gabe, honestly. Balthazar has ‘familiar’ written all over him. He’s the last one who saw Ariel—”

“—and I didn’t see a thing,” Balthazar hastily said. He hitched himself up the shelf, jaw working in rising panic. “I went out to play with the suicides—” sidelong glance at a stiff-shouldered John “—and got back right when you pulled me through.”

“—and no matter what he did or didn’t see, there’s still the point of why Ariel would bother yanking a half-breed free of eternal torture. There’s easier ways to get messenger-boys. And that one’s John Constantine.” Nicki jabbed Dean’s glasses at John, then carefully set them back on Dean. She took a moment to smooth back the gray streak at Dean’s right temple. “I know you avoid knowing anything about current power politics, but he’s important. Also, he now knows that it’s possible for someone like him to kick Lucifer out of Hell.”

John raised his eyebrows. “And why would I want to do that? I’ve been there, didn’t like the coffee.”

“You also need leverage with Lucifer.” She dismissed him and turned to Gabriel, her insouciance melting into a brisker, colder determination. “Speaking for myself, I like the status quo. God and Morningstar fighting means most of the power is locked up in the war. Make Hell a third-party player instead of the Adversary, and we’d have to go back to work.”

“Luckily for us, the procedure’s sufficiently complicated to rule out most suspects.” Gabriel reburied his nose in the manuscript and tried to make sense of the steps outlined there. Though it was written in English, he would have almost preferred that it had been in something like Syriac. Gallardo’s talents clearly hadn’t been in composition, and he’d crossed out and added in and scribbled over so many of the lines that deciphering it was like trying to breed a hippogriff. “Everything is obtainable…except the blood of an angel.”

Surprise suddenly tinged John’s scent, but when Gabriel glanced over, the man hadn’t seemed to react at all. Then Dean asked a question, distracting Gabriel. “Why not that one? You bleed a lot. Granted, you’re closer to a crossbreed than--”

“Angels don’t bleed,” Gabriel interrupted, not wanting to get into that in front of John and Balthazar. “Not unless they’ve lost their divinity. Before that…it’s not blood.”

“So it’d have to be a fallen one. Only not many go mortal instead of ending up demons…there’s you, but your blood is tainted—sorry, mutated.” Nicki flashed her dimples at Gabriel, as if that would make it better. In their respective corners, both John and Balthazar were eagerly listening, their heads up like hunting dogs on the track. “I think the last one was during World War Two…what was her name…anyway, she died.”

John coughed. When they looked over, he didn’t meet their eyes. Instead he pushed himself up in his seat and stretched his legs, one after the other. Rolled his shoulders.

Gabriel gritted his teeth. “Yes?”

“Gabriel.” Then John winced and shook his head. “I mean the other one—hey, if your name’s actually a title, then what does it mean that you didn’t pick your own when you left? I’m assuming you didn’t like the job, since you quit and all.”

“It means Gabe’s special,” Nicki said. She folded her arms over her breasts and shot Constantine a narrow-eyed look. “What about that one? I heard Lucifer killed her, and good riddance. Righteous bitch.”

Balthazar bridled, though not at her or, shockingly enough, at Constantine. He spoke as if he wished his words could macerate someone. “Oh, no. I went looking for her so we could discuss her double-cross, but she’s not in Hell. And she wouldn’t go to heaven.”

“God, that’s adorable. A demon wants payback for a little treachery,” John said, visibly savoring every word. “No, Lou just burnt off her wings. I figured it would be poetic if she ended up living in a cardboard box, so I didn’t bother killing her.”

“Well, she was on your side, so you can go find her. Dean and I need to start packing, since he’s got to move shop again—well, you would show up and I’d like for my lover to not end up as collateral damage.” Nicki pushed away from Dean’s desk and strolled towards the door. She bundled up her hair as she went, which she only did if she was going into a serious battle. “Oh, and Gabe, I suppose you can borrow the backroom for those two. It shouldn’t take that long to track her down.”

Damnation. Foolish as it was, Gabriel had been hoping she’d forgotten about that so he could discreetly shove Constantine and Balthazar into the nearest alley. He didn’t need the inconvenience, and obviously the two of them had issues between them that needed working out. Given Gabriel’s track record, he didn’t think it was wise to try mediating. But if Nicki said they had to stay, then they had to. Her choice of Dean Corso might not have been understandable, but she knew what she was doing more often than Gabriel did. She’d never forgotten who she had been.

* * *

Maybe Gabriel could growl Balthazar into paralytic shock and haul him into that damned room, but that trick wasn’t going to work on John. He locked his fingers around the stairway railing and put all his weight on that, kicking and kneeing at whatever parts of Gabriel that he could reach. “I…am not…going in there.”

His last blow hit Gabriel in the stomach and winded him long enough for John to stumble down the steps. But then John’s foot slipped, and he had to rush to get his other foot down so it didn’t go down where he’d wanted it to. His next frantic step hit air, and there was the sudden, sickening sensation of being airborne that came only before a big crash.

But that didn’t happen. Instead his tie snapped tight around his neck and he choked, twisting and snarling even as his feet and ass landed on solid wood. “Goddamn—”

Gabriel hit him. John rocked backward and cracked his head against the railing, bruised his elbows on the wall. He heard the sharp sound of the wood first, and then he felt the pain. Fuck. A hiss writhed out of his throat and he writhed weakly with it, only to be brought up short by a hand pinching his jaw.

“You are going in there. If everything goes well, you’ll be out and on the street before dinner.” Gabriel lifted a hand towards John’s face and John flinched. No surprise there given his experiences, but Gabriel seemed to take it to heart. Not that it stopped him for longer than a second; he dropped his hand to John’s collar and loosened it so it didn’t feel like John was breathing through a searing-hot pipe anymore. “This is for your benefit as well as mine. Whoever attacked you still thinks you have the book.”

“All the more reason for me not to be a sitting duck,” John muttered. A whiff of strong tobacco rose out of Gabriel’s sleeves and John’s body whined. He told it to shut the fuck up and pressed as far from Gabriel as he could, slightly turning his head so he could breathe…more stale but less painful air.

The other—man, angel…man, since John got a lot of power coming off him but no hint of wings—man twitched again. Something that looked like guilt flashed in his eyes before he went back to being stonefaced, and it suddenly occurred to John what this must look like, with him shoved up against the wall. Well, to hell with Gabriel’s tender feelings. If he was thinking that John found him repellant, then all the better. Things would’ve been a lot easier for John if that’d actually been the truth: Gabriel threw him, and not just into big solid objects.

“Up on your feet.” A heave, and then Gabriel was dragging John towards the door again.

John dug in with his heels. It didn’t stop him, but it slowed him down enough for him to think of a few stalling tactics. “What the hell are you? You aren’t like anything I’ve ever run up against before, and that’s saying a lot.”

Gabriel paused, then turned around and looked over John. His expression said he was nearly at the end of his tether, but that he was striving to be a good boy nonetheless. Perfect. “I’m an angel that spent a few weeks as a werewolf, then was cured. Along the way, I also…I killed Vladislaus Valerious, whom you’d know better as Vlad Tepes.”

Actually, John would’ve recognized the first name, but he was saving up all his irritation at Gabriel for the right moment. Plus there’d been a little scraping sound from inside the room, as if someone had jerked a chair over the floor, and John always found evidence that Balthazar was just a scumbag trying to backstab his way up the food chain endlessly amusing. “After he was made a vampire by Lucifer himself, I take it.”

“I swallowed a lot of his blood. And the werewolf cure was meant for humans, not angels.” The air was slowing around Gabriel, John suddenly noticed. It was the dust—all the dust from the books floating around so John could see, a little, how the air flow was being squeezed around Gabriel. “It didn’t change me completely back to how I was.”

“No kidding.” John’s mouth was dry as bone, and all the hairs on his body were stabbing straight out. He could feel chills running along his spine, and he’d thought he’d lost that reflex by now.

The only one he’d ever seen stop time was Lucifer. He guessed that God could do it too, but God never bothered and he didn’t let his heavenly foot-soldiers in on that trick. Granted, time hadn’t completely stopped…but Jesus. What the hell was Gabriel, with all that in his blood?

Gabriel shrugged one shoulder and everything went back to normal. He was still holding John’s arm and now he pulled on it. “Come on.”

“Have you ever considered that I might be useful? I know this town. I know Gabriel—the other one. You’ve been where—Tibet, right, and for how long?” John quickly said. All he got in response was a rough shake and another six inches towards the door, but he kept on with it. “Look, if you put me in there with that son of a bitch, I will kill him.”

“No, you won’t,” Gabriel replied. He sounded tired, the way John had back when the cancer had been snipping off pieces of his energy. Tired but dead certain.

Though you couldn’t tell it from how he banged John around, getting him into that room and then taped to a chair. Balthazar was already bound to a second one, the only other thing in the room, which was all concrete and steel and claustrophobia. And he was still wearing John’s coat.

John spat out a few more curses and jerked at the tape, but it held without giving an inch. “Bastard.”

And then Gabriel spun the chairs around so John and Balthazar were back-to-back. Their hands were smashed together and that fuck Balthazar instantly sunk his nails into John’s wrist. He drew blood before Gabriel figured out that John had changed the target of his cursing. Not that John had been waiting for Gabriel to do anything about it; he’d craned his own hand around and gotten his thumb right over the tendons in Balthazar’s wrist. Normally that wouldn’t do much to a half-breed, but if John had been right about why Balthazar felt…less threatening…

He wasn’t. When Balthazar’s fingers spasmed off of John’s wrist, it was because Gabriel had leaned down and…bit him, maybe. The chair plus Gabriel’s shoulder wasn’t letting him see all that much, but he could hear plenty. And what he heard was Balthazar’s breath suddenly ceasing.

It started up a moment later, but now it was shaky and thin and shallow, whistling through teeth so it moaned a little as well. Against John’s hands, Balthazar had gone stiff as a corpse, his fingers frozen wide apart. Then, so suddenly that John jumped and swore, Balthazar’s hand snapped around his wrist. And squeezed, for fuck’s sake, like the hellish bastard was looking for comfort from him.

In the same moment, Gabriel abruptly ripped himself off Balthazar. He staggered away a few steps, bent over so his hair and coat swung to hide his face. One of his hands groped at the air for support, and when it didn’t find any, flipped around to savagely rake at nothing.

Balthazar was wheezing like…well, like a terminal lung-cancer patient. He’d rocked sideways when Gabriel had thrown himself back and hadn’t yet pulled himself straight. He stayed that way while Gabriel stumbled out the door, while Gabriel shut the damned door with a brutal clang.

John discovered that he’d been holding his breath and did something about it. He sucked in air and slouched back as comfortably as he could, given the circumstances. All right, so much for trying to cooperate with Gabriel. Time to figure out how to go it alone.

But first, he needed to indulge his curiosity. So he twisted around to check out the side that Balthazar was apparently trying to hide.

Gabriel hadn’t broken the skin, but he’d done pretty much everything else. The teeth marks stood out as a livid white in the middle of a huge pressure bruise that was slowly going from scarlet to blue-purple, and they didn’t look like they’d be fading any time soon. “So…fresh meat, huh.”

“Constantine?” Very slowly, Balthazar lifted his head and pulled his shoulders straight. His hair was a lot longer than it’d looked when he’d kept it slicked back, and it kept falling into his eyes. Didn’t do much to obscure the seething rage there. “Shut up.”

“So how was the homecoming? Tell me something, Balthazar—what did you think Nicki meant by you having ‘familiar’ written all over you?” No, this wasn’t really a plan to get free unless pissing off Balthazar enough actually got the chairs broken, but John wasn’t exactly all roses himself.

Three weeks. Three fucking weeks and nothing had changed. He was still alive, and he’d beaten the goddamned Devil, and it hadn’t altered anything. Angela had hidden the Spear of Destiny for him, but as soon as her sister’s funeral had been over, she had gone straight back to sticking her head in the ground. Maybe he couldn’t blame her for that, but he damn well could feel a little annoyed at her ungratefulness. He’d put his neck on the line for her, and she couldn’t even look him in the eye anymore.

And then there was Chaz and Beeman and Hennessey all dead, and John trying to rebuild his life for the umpteenth time, only…this time he was still exhausted. Still picking at the old scabs, not quite able to pull off his old trick of moving on to the next booth once the curtain on this one had come down. It’d been different. It’d been too close, and no one seemed to be feeling that edge except him.

* * *

Balthazar opened his mouth, then closed it. There really was no point in giving Constantine the satisfaction. Any response, no matter how carefully crafted and withering, would only feed the bastard more encouragement, and the tape was going to hold. If he couldn’t break Constantine’s neck immediately afterward, he wasn’t going to spur the man on. He wished Gabriel had slapped a strip of tape over Constantine’s mouth while he was at it.

He wished he hadn’t ripped at John’s wrists, come to think of it. To be able to smell the man’s blood and even feel drops of it slicking his hands was a torture worthy of Hell.

“So what was Ariel like? Do you miss him? Or did you prefer the way I used to grind your face in the dirt?”

It seemed John was getting frustrated by the lack of response. Normally he didn’t mix sex and fighting, which set him apart from just about every other would-be Crusader. Even Gabriel, no matter what he said, couldn’t help indulging in his…well, they would be demonic, wouldn’t they? Neutral or not, he still had a trace of Lucifer’s blood in him via Vlad Dracul. Enough for Balthazar’s instinctive reaction to him to be roll over and show belly and throat, and damn it. If Ariel hadn’t been splattered all over one corner of hell, Balthazar would have found a way to have him eternally shredded.

“You know,” John was conversationally saying, “I remember on my trip down there—”

“Good. So you know.” The words came out before Balthazar come help himself. He clamped down on his lips immediately afterward.

His neck hurt. Gabriel had fangs. And it might have been easier if he’d just pierced the skin, because the bruising he’d left was just far enough below Balthazar’s pain threshold that it wouldn’t numb. Instead it ached and itched and generally told him he wanted Gabriel to come back and finish it. Which he didn’t. It was merely Ariel’s meddling.

John was temporarily taken aback, but he recovered soon enough. Once upon a time, Balthazar had secretly admired that about him, but now he wished Constantine would break his mouth.

“That bad? And I always thought you half-breeds were just dying to go home.” The sarcasm in John’s voice was so rich it could have been licked off. He tugged and twisted till he’d craned around enough to whisper in Balthazar’s ear. “Dying to go mash on the souls of the damned, get fucked raw by your Archdukes and Earls like the slimy little begging shits you are.”

Blocking spells had been poured into the concrete so Balthazar couldn’t even send himself out, or distract himself by tracking what Nicki was doing. Or perhaps figuring out how she and Ariel, though being full demons, had managed to carve lives on the earthly plane. All he could do was listen to John’s idiotic, clumsy verbal stabs. And the worst part was that they were working. “You may have seen a lot, Constantine, but your knowledge has gaping holes in it. No one wants to be in Hell. That’s why it’s Hell.”

“Well, don’t expect pity from me. You got what was coming to you,” John snorted, turning back around. He was still for a moment, and then he threw himself forward so hard that they nearly toppled over. Even after Balthazar had hastily rebalanced them, John continued to twist and fight at his bonds.

“They’re not going to give,” Balthazar told him. “Gabriel knows what he’s doing. And incidentally, what were you expecting me to do? Pat you on the back and give you a leg up to Heaven? I’m a demon. Even if I didn’t have a personal desire to see your guts strung over the pits of the traitors, I’d still want to kill you.”

“Really? Then how do you explain Gabriel if everything’s down to nature? Or Nicki, or your sugar-daddy Ariel?” John finally sank back, breathing heavily with nothing to show for his effort except a little bit of twisting in the tape.

That…actually was a good question, and Balthazar desperately wanted to know the answer to it. His gambit to win free of Hell had failed, and unless he came up with a new one very soon, he’d be taken back. And he did not want to go. If it was possible, he’d rather obliterate himself than go back and submit to that.

“Hey.” Apparently John was tired enough to be slightly less hostile as well. “Do you have any idea what he is?”

Balthazar started to tell John to save his friendliness for someone that wouldn’t rip out his spine given half a chance. Then a thought occurred to him and since it gave him an opportunity to ignore John, he took it.

Dean. Of course. Nicki and he were obviously lovers, and he still felt mortal. But he didn’t smell like it. Ariel had occasionally taunted Balthazar with hints about making him free of Hell, but Balthazar hadn’t put much stock in it. Out of the fighting or not, Ariel had still had a demonic mindset, and so Balthazar had fully expected to be tossed out when he was of no further use. But apparently there was a way.

And it would involve forming some kind of attachment with Gabriel, or at least tricking Gabriel into forming an attachment to him. Wonderful. Add on the handicap that Gabriel seemed to be unconsciously fascinated with Constantine, and Balthazar might as well do his hair in plaits and call himself Pollyanna. He needed a new plan. Maybe something with that manuscript…he might be able to barter a new deal with Lucifer—

“Shit.” John sat straight up the same moment Balthazar felt the wall-spells ripple. “Oh, shit. Shit. For my benefit, hell…those are for us, aren’t they?”

Something suddenly slammed into the door. Even though the door was steel and soaked in warding spells, it warped to show the vague outline of two clawed hands pressing into it. Balthazar nervously started to scratch at the tape around his wrists. “Gabriel took the manuscript with him. And we’re upstairs—”

“And I got the feeling that Nicki would cut and run with her boy-toy if things got really rough. What about you? Trust her any more than you did Gabriel—I mean the blonde one that—goddamn it.” John had started to jerk at the chair again, only now he was yanking and struggling so hard that the metal frames were actually bending. If he pulled hard enough, he might break them so they could twist free. “I’m—not—dying—again—because of--”

“Can you waste your breath afterward?” Balthazar snapped, wrenching at his arms and wrists as hard as he could. They weren’t going to have time at this rate; the door was starting to glow red and the smell of sulfur was creeping into the room.

The walls rippled. They moved like water from a hand thrust into it…and then the ripples came slamming back down. It jarred the whole room and skewed the chairs, then sent them over. Balthazar splayed his legs and slammed out with his heel, just barely stopped his chair from going over. But John’s kept going. It hung at a forty-five degree angle for a split second, then fell with a loud ripping clatter. A strip of silver tape flapped about in front of Balthazar.

He stared at it. Then he twisted around to see: John was on the floor, half-sprawling and half on one knee, mostly free of the chair. Cursing and panting, he heaved himself up onto his feet, twisting to let the chair slip out from between his arms as he did. His wrist were still bound to Balthazar’s and so that wrenched painfully at both of them. “Goddamned know-it-all angels. Almost dislocated my shoulder…”

“Whine later, you pathetic excuse for an exorcist.” Balthazar turned back to look at the door, which now had smoking molten steel running down its front. He felt frantically at their wrists, searching for some kind of weakening, something that he could use to get himself free.

He did find one, but his luck was still out: it was a rip in John’s bindings, not his. And the chances that John would be grateful were slimmer than a camel capable of passing through a needle’s eye. But whoever was on the other side of the door wasn’t about to spare Balthazar, and the tape was what was keeping John from retaliating just by spitting out incantations…

“Just so you know, Balthazar—fuck you,” John shakily said. His eyes had also fixed themselves on the door, which had melted so thin that they could make out shadowy forms behind it. “And I’ll not be seeing you—”

Because I’m still tracked for heaven, Balthazar filled in. He bit down on his tongue and tasted blood. And then he was suddenly fed up. With the stupid stalemate between Heaven and Hell, with his fate, with John’s goddamn mouth--

--he heard instead of felt his claws forcing out past the binding spells. He did feel the tape shredding and shoving up beneath his claws, but after that it was all pain. Agonizing pain as the magic in the tape recoiled on him and slashed at his tendons, broke his bones. Knocked over his chair so he only saw John leaping to his feet, hands spread wide as his voice poured spells between them.

It was actually quite beautiful, even if it was him.

* * *

Nicki walked Gabriel out to the car, her usual smile gone. A line of worry had grooved itself between her eyebrows, and she kept looking back at the bookshop as if she expected it to go up in flames at any moment. Sadly, it wasn’t a groundless worry.

“If someone succeeds, they’ll throw Hell into an uproar. You know half the reason demons stay in Hell is because Lucifer keeps them there,” she said.

“I know that. At least there’s only a handful of mortals that have these kinds of resources.” Gabriel leaned against the car and rolled up his sleeves. He’d rather have done this sort of thing inside, where he couldn’t accidentally be spotted, but Nicki was firm about not letting anyone but her work spells around Dean. “I’m beginning to think there must be an Archduke behind this as well, or else Lucifer should’ve caught wind of it by now.”

She rolled her eyes. “Maybe not. He’s gotten petty and personal lately. Which you should know, given that you’ve got enough of his blood to qualify as a threat. They really don’t do parting gifts like they used to…nowadays your exes just give you STDs.”

Once upon a time, Gabriel would have taken her head and strung it up with her tail for speaking that way about Vlad. But now he simply ignored her and took out the dagger from his boot.

“Constantine reminds me a little of Vladislaus, come to think of it.” Nicki didn’t seem to be joking, but then, she’d long since perfected the art of acting. She nibbled on a fingertip while she watched Gabriel make a shallow cut in his wrist. Her nostrils flared at the smell, but otherwise her interests seemed to lie elsewhere.

He raised his eyebrow as he turned his wrist over, letting the blood drip into the cup of his other hand.

“Just the coloring. Vlad was stockier, of course—more like Balthazar’s build. This Constantine’s the lankiest thing I’ve ever seen. Though very pretty,” she thoughtfully said. Her fingertip flicked in and out of her mouth, and her eyes glanced up at him in perfectly false innocence.

“Whatever you’re planning, please don’t. I like you, Nicki. I’d rather not fight you if I don’t have to.” When he had a pool a little bigger than a half-dollar in his palm, Gabriel lifted his arm to his mouth and licked the cut to seal it. Then he pulled his sleeves down with his teeth.

She shrugged and pretended to stare across the parking lot as if she weren’t interested in his reaction. “And oddly enough, I like you, too. I like you enough to not want you to end up on my side—or what was my side.”

The blood in Gabriel’s hand had been red at first, but now it turned clear as he blew over it. He watched cloudy swirls start to reform, letting his eyes relax so it’d go faster. “What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about you spending too much time in the wilderness, winding yourself tighter and tighter. You dropped out of heaven because you thought God was being unfair, and you stayed out of hell because you loved humanity.” Nicki suddenly touched the side of Gabriel’s face, tucking a strand of hair back into his ponytail. “You’re starting to forget that.”

“I am—” he started to say, but she was already halfway across the lot. Gabriel gave her words a little thought, then decided that could wait. He looked back at his scrying pool.

His successor was easy enough to find: a haggard face plastered over with filthy curls appeared in a hazy pile of newspapers and rubbish. Then it swiftly retreated and so did the vision, pulling outward so Gabriel could see the highway overpass. He recognized it as one only ten minutes’ driving away.

The picture faded, leaving him with a clotting puddle of blackish blood in his hand. If he wanted to, he could have used that to try and see if he could determine who was behind this, but Gabriel abruptly found himself wanting a shower at the very mention of employing the other part of his blood. Nicki was right, as usual. He needed to ease off on relying on his more demonic gifts. The scene alone in the room, and how he’d reacted to Balthazar lashing out at Constantine, should have told him that.

Gabriel got in the car and pulled into the street, still chewing over that reaction. Though Ariel had been a friend, he’d definitely kept his old habits no matter how much Gabriel had argued with him. And those, it seemed, included taking lesser demons as familiars and servants. It made a black sort of sense; Hell was large enough for Ariel to find himself a little niche of it to which he could occasionally retreat without Lucifer finding out, but if he wanted to do anything in Hell, he had to use others.

That of course begged the question of why he had picked up Balthazar, who was rather young, as half-breeds went, and who didn’t appear to have any outstanding talents. But he had been involved in this business with Mammon and the Spear of Destiny…and wherever the Spear went, trouble followed. Or perhaps it was his connection to Constantine. Or maybe Gabriel was drawing connections at nothing to explain away why his pulse beat hard and the blacker elements of his blood moaned their cravings around either of the two. Balthazar was somewhat understandable: Ariel had made him into some sort of familiar, but not exactly like any Gabriel had ever felt, and it was possible that Ariel had left the job half-done. The claim wanted to be completed and it was pulling at anyone it felt was suitable—Nicki had picked up on it.

Constantine was less explainable, unless Gabriel wanted to fall back on the old gossip that the Constantine family tree included a sizable dollop of divine but tainted blood. The favorite candidate being Sammael, fallen Angel of Death. Though Gabriel didn’t think Sammael had been lying about not being the one.

His thoughts were interrupted by the rise of a chain-link fence before him—he’d arrived. Gabriel parked the car and looked casually about for bystanders while he lighted himself a cigarette. There was one homeless man in the distance, but he wandered off before Gabriel had finished his smoke; Gabriel put out his butt and lightly hopped over the fence.

The area beneath the overpass seemed to have become an informal junkyard. He had to pick his way past a mountain of used baby diapers and an old car that was a popular devirginizing site before he finally spotted the pile of newspapers he’d seen. It was rustling, and the nearer he came, the more it shook.

He stopped ten yards short. “Gabriel?” he called, keeping his voice as soft and low as possible. “I’m not here to hurt. I know I feel like…but I used to be one of your kind as well.”

The rustling abruptly ceased, and he had the impression of someone coiling tightly up on themselves. Gabriel shook his hands free of his coat’s sleeves to show that they were empty and slowly began to crouch down. “I’d just like you to listen for a moment…”

A sudden breeze sprang up, and whoever was under there snatched at the newspapers, but it was too late. He smelled the sulfur and he leaped backward, hand going for his rifle.

It roared out teeth-first, nothing but great red mouth and rows and rows of snapping fangs that smashed a hole out of the concrete wall. Having barely ducked in time, Gabriel kept running. He turned once when he felt burning drops of its acid saliva hit his cheek, only to almost lose his face to it. A bashing with his rifle-butt held it off for a moment, but then the enormous worm reared up and smashed into the top of the overpass so dust and chunks of concrete rained down. It blinded Gabriel.

A hunk smashed into his hand and knocked his rifle from him. Gabriel reflexively stumbled back. He tried to leap as well, but his foot caught on something and he fell to his hands and knees. Something slashed his palm and he hissed at the pain.

The wind whistled over his back. He whipped his head up just in time to see the worm’s gaping maw smashing down on him; Gabriel howled and threw up his hands. An arc of blood lashed out from one, a fragile red line that just grazed the demon.

Time slowed. The demon suddenly stopped six inches from Gabriel, so close he could see the grain of its scales. And then it was flung backward into a shower of steaming, reeking rot.

Gabriel fell back on his hands and knees and took a deep, deep breath. His sight was tinged with red and he had a growl clawing at the back of his throat that wanted more. Wanted to take those piles of shit and feed them back to whoever had sent the demon, had blurred his sight, wanted to rend flesh and drink blood and—

No.

He willed it down, shoulders shaking with the effort. Slowly the tremors disappeared from his arms, his legs, and he could stagger drunkenly over to retrieve his rifle from a heap of dirty clothes. And then he turned towards the car, and he broke into a dead run. Because if the mortal Gabriel was not here, and someone had expected him to go looking for her…

…then afterward, he needed to sit down with the manuscript and determine exactly where Constantine and Balthazar fit into the puzzle. After he’d killed whoever had gone after them.

* * *

John fell so bonelessly that he didn’t even feel it when his knees cracked on the ground. His head was swimming and he could hear himself breathing, but couldn’t sense the air going into his lungs. He willed himself not to panic, telling himself it wasn’t the cancer coming back, it would pass in a moment.

It did. His sight cleared to see the door fused shut again. Someone was still banging on it, but at least they’d been set back so he could think.

“That’s the best you could do? I thought you were John Constantine, asshole.” Balthazar’s chair had broken when he’d fallen over, and he’d wriggled free. Now he was pulling his wrists under his legs to get them in front of him, only he seemed to be having a problem. Namely, he seemed to be in a hell of a lot of pain.

“Well, do you see me with anything on me? Gabriel frisked me before we picked you up. And don’t tell me you could do better. I mean, look—you can barely peel the tape off of yourself.” Whatever was outside was hellish, but somehow John had a feeling that the usual exorcisms wouldn’t work on them. Maybe it was the fact that he was muttering a snatch of the Bible beneath his breath and they were laughing.

A last ripping sound, and Balthazar had finished tearing the tape off with his teeth. His face was pale and sweaty, and when he was done, he fell onto his elbow to simply pant for a few moments. “You broke my wrists.”

“Oh.” Well, John couldn’t really say he was sorry about that, though he belatedly realized that put a crimp in the idea that they try beating their way out with the pieces of the chair. Annoying as it was, he could’ve used Balthazar’s supernatural strength. “Come on. That’s not that bad for one of your kind. Hell, you aren’t bleeding on my coat, are you?”

“Shut up,” Balthazar gritted out. He got up into a squat, but kept his hands tucked close to his chest. Maybe he was too proud to point it out, but it was obvious anyway that he’d come back more…delicate. “They’re phenex.”

John blinked. Then he nearly fell over when something rammed the door so hard a screw dropped from the top hinge. Shit. No time to fuck around. “Later we’ll take up why the fuck you couldn’t say so earlier. How do you get rid of them?”

When he didn’t get an answer, he turned to yell at Balthazar, but instead froze in sheer surprise. Balthazar really didn’t look well; he’d gone glassy-eyed and he was swaying on his feet as if his sense of balance was off.

After a moment, John figured out that Balthazar had gone into shock. “Fuck.”

He scrambled over and smacked at Balthazar’s face, but then had to grab at him when he started to fall over. That snapped Balthazar out of it, a little, and the stupid bastard actually tried to shove at him. Of course, then the broken wrists kicked in and Balthazar snarled, burying his teeth in John’s shoulder and pressing his hands to John’s chest.

“Get—off!” John hissed, yanking at Balthazar’s hair. “What the fuck is wrong with you? You just came from Hell!”

“Yes, and pain works differently there! They want you conscious for all of it, so there isn’t this—this—” Balthazar started to gesture, but crumpled again. This time he at least had the grace to do so away from John.

John rolled his eyes and pushed up his sleeves. “It’s called passing out. And welcome to mortality.”

“Don’t do that. Phenex—fire—light isn’t going to do anything but make them stronger,” Balthazar snapped. He curled around behind John’s feet, a lot like a snake. With a mouth that John was going to kick in, as soon as he had a free moment.

There wasn’t time to tell the asshole that that hadn’t been what John had been planning, anyway. No point in wheedling summoning tattoos out of Midnite if they only ever did one trick.

He spread his feet far enough to brace himself, then put his forearms together. The power rushed around him in two great circles, then slammed into his face so he could barely get out the words. “Into the waters of heaven I command thee. Into the waters I command thee--into the waters I command thee--”

The forces bent him over till his forehead was nearly banging his knees, but he could hear the demons behind the door start to scream. He went through another triple repetition, voice growing hoarser so he had to shout louder, and he started to feel them push away. A third triple sent him to one knee and ground his teeth together so hard he thought they’d crack, but he squeezed out the last word. All the power crested in him, then suddenly flooded towards the door.

He broke it open. John toppled back on his ass, then grappled for a strut from the chair, but nothing leaped out at him. With a sigh of relief, he slumped to the floor. Balthazar was groaning up against him, but John couldn’t even muster up the energy to shove the bastard’s face away from his ear. “You know, even demons usually say thank you when I bother saving them.”

“I’m thanking you by not thanking you,” Balthazar muttered, obviously having some gory show of gratitude in mind. He slowly pushed himself into a sitting position, then twisted out of John’s coat.

While Balthazar was looking at his wrists, John took the liberty of taking back his coat and putting it on. “So what was Ariel doing with you?” He grinned nastily at Balthazar’s glower. “Gabriel doesn’t know you. I do. You did hear something, or see something—anyway, you know something.”

“What difference would it make to—what are you—” Balthazar tried to pull away, but John was quicker. The bones snapped in place as John yanked and Balthazar twisted, and then John had a half-fainted demon lying over his legs again. The bastard took a bite at John’s knee. Snickered when John smashed that knee into his face.

Great. Hopefully Balthazar still healed quickly, because John wasn’t in the mood. He jerked Balthazar up by the hair, then splinted that wrist with pieces of the chair and strips from Balthazar’s shirt. Then he grabbed the other wrist just as Balthazar was starting to come out of his daze and pulled hard. Screaming, Balthazar toppled back over and stared up at the ceiling, mouth half-open as he took great gulps of air. A fresh trickle of blood decorated his swollen lip.

“Excuse me if I can’t help enjoying this a little,” John told him. He did the other wrist, then shoved Balthazar off of himself and stood up. “Now, what do you know? And don’t make me explain why it’s in your best inter—”

John whipped around, but not in time to keep from getting slammed to the floor. He got up his arms to block the snapping, slavering thing on top of him from tearing out his throat; the beast got a bit of his coat, but mostly missed his arm. Still, the pain from that tooth nicking him wasn’t exactly small, and his head was ringing from where it’d hit the floor, and his back and hips were not going to forget today any time soon.

He lashed out with his foot and caught it in the side, but that only jerked its head loose of his sleeve. Then the thing reared up for another go at him, all white teeth and stinking fur. Claws slammed into John’s shoulder as he flailed for something with which to hit it. “Balthazar, you—”

Something else hit John. Hit the monster on top of him, actually, but for a second it was double the weight crushing him. Then they went off to the side and someone was jerking him out of the way—Balthazar, chewing on his lip. The moment John was clear, Balthazar curled up around his wrists, grinding his teeth. Under that sound, John could hear the clicking of bones being reset. “You have no idea how much I detested doing that.”

“I love you too. Same way I love my job,” John coughed. He could feel a bit of blood soaking through his sleeve, but when he pulled it up, he was relieved to see it’d missed his tats. Needed disinfecting, but it wouldn’t take more than a couple stitches.

Then he decided to look over at whoever had saved his ass, and thought dropped right out of John’s head.

Gabriel sat up from the corpse, body shifting slightly so he looked all human again. Blood was splattered over his face and smeared all down his front as far as John could see, and he had gobbets of flesh dangling from his hands. Someone made a sound and he turned his head; his eyes were solid black.

Balthazar whined. A glance over showed that he’d gone glassy-eyed again, but not from pain or…anger. Figures. Demons were so predictable about what got them off.

“Gabe, did you—oh.” Nicki leaned against the door, hot speculation flashing over her face. Then she apparently remembered she was already taken and snapped her fingers. Which were also thickly coated in blood, and so was the rest of her. She’d been busy after all, which made John feel a little bad about what he’d said earlier. Not much, because there’d been no way he could have known.

Gabriel slowly blinked. Then he shook himself like a dog and spat out a chunk of flesh. He leaned over further, starting to hack, and threw up some purplish blood. “Did you take care of the rest?”

“Yeah. By the way, I think you’re on your own now. I need to get Dean out of here.” She looked apologetic, but it was fifty-fifty she was faking it.

Well, Gabriel was taking her at face value, for he just waved her off. “Do what you have to do.”

John waited a couple minutes, but Gabriel was worrying about the mess he’d made and Balthazar still looked like he was torn between running like hell and jumping Gabriel. “Hey. I think this proves my point that it’s a bad idea to keep me out of the loop. I’m in this too damn deep to not be able to defend myself, and you’re not exactly great at it.”

Gabriel stared at the corpse before him, then wiped at his mouth. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, shoulders relaxing. Then he got up and started dealing with the bloodstains on his clothes. “True.”

And then he pulled out a five-foot shotgun from his coat. From his coat.

He caught John staring, and while he didn’t quite smile, he definitely looked amused. “Trick I picked up from a Scot. Though he liked broadswords. Here, you can borrow this for now.”

“I’m guessing you didn’t find Gabby,” John said, taking it. The damn thing must have been blessed by a pope, considering how it made his palms tingle. He absently swung it towards Balthazar and Balthazar flinched out of his stupor—yeah, very good stuff. “I know a guy that knows everything that goes on in this city. Though first I think we should get washed up. He’s kind of particular.”

“I don’t know about that. Midnite let you in,” Balthazar muttered.

John ignored him and watched Gabriel. After a long, long moment, Gabriel nodded. But when John held out his hands for the car keys, Gabriel turned and walked out the door. Controlling asshole.

Notes:

Dean Corso and Nicki are from El Club Dumas by Arturo Pérez-Reverte.

Chapter 3: Night Scene

Chapter Text

By the time they got to John’s place, it was dark so Gabriel could walk up without anyone noticing how splattered with blood he was. Then again, that might not have been necessary. Whatever the hell that last thing had been, its blood dried purple and smelled like…grave-dirt, John decided. Mud with a little bit of dead flowers mixed into it.

Much as it pained him to do, he ended up putting more of his clothes on Balthazar. The shirt was fine, but the pants rumpled up around Balthazar’s ankles in a way that made John snicker. He scrubbed the last of the water from his hair into the sink, then did up his tie. “Not so much the dandy now, are we?”

“No, we certainly aren’t,” Balthazar coolly replied. He was sitting on the kitchen table, well away from any knives, amulets or other potential weapons, and trying to do up his sleeves. Only his fresh wrist-splints were getting in the way, and apparently that tongue of his wasn’t quite flexible enough to do the job. It was getting better and better by the minute. “Do you shop solely at the Salvation Army? Which is an appropriate name if I ever heard one…”

“I wouldn’t speak so lightly of salvation if I were you. There’s not that much keeping me from deporting your ass back there.” John began to turn, winced because his bruises were stiffening up, and made himself keep going. He opened cabinets till he found a fresh roll of bandages. Plus a dead fly, which instead of merely disgusting him made his throat briefly close and his hands clench on the cabinet door.

No, not now. Beeman and Hennessey and any other losses whom John hadn’t found out about in time could rest in peace. Though John might need Balthazar around on the earthly plane, he had no intention of letting the bastard get any peace. He’d take back his debts from Balthazar’s hide the way Lord God himself did it—one drop of sweat, one drop of blood at a time.

In the meantime, he really needed to get his arm bandaged up. Gabriel had been nice enough to do a hasty stitching job before he’d disappeared into John’s shower—John idly wondered if that would purify or curse it—but now that the bite was closed, the flesh around it was starting to turn red and tender. Last thing John needed was an infection from Hell. “So what’s with you and Gabriel? Should I bother setting up two extra mattresses, or just the one?”

“Why, John, I’m touched. I never knew that you gave a second’s thought to my personal affairs.” Balthazar finally gave up on the cuffs and rested his arms in his lap, eyes narrowed into contemptuous slits. He leaned forward, dropping his voice into just plain lech for the punchline. “Or that your tastes ran so low, for a self-proclaimed champion of all that’s holy. Do you just like to watch, or did you want to direct as well?”

“Very mature of you. What, do you miss Ariel? Looking for a big, strong substitute?” A spare holy water grenade turned up in another cabinet; John took it and set it on the counter. He pulled up his sleeve a little farther, making sure it’d be clear, and then held his bitten arm over the sink. The grenade cracked nicely when he smacked it against the counter’s edge, leaking slowly enough for him to get it over his wound before squeezing.

The water splashed down and pain splashed up. For a second, John thought he’d gotten acid in his eyes and that that was why his sight was blurring. But no, that was just the steam rising from his arm that felt as if he’d just dipped it in molten lead. He slipped a little and grabbed for a cabinet-handle overhead, gritting his teeth against the burn.

It wasn’t too bad after the first second, and he was just letting out his breath when he suddenly remembered.

But Balthazar had already taken the opportunity and gotten himself across the floor, body slammed up against John’s hip. His teeth clicked just a hair short of John’s ear every time he spoke, sparking adrenaline into John’s blood so every muscle tensed and every nerve snapped tight.

“You have no idea, you pathetic piece of trash,” he cooed. “No idea, and you think you’re the top of the world behind the world. Lesson for Johnny: wise up.” Tongue dragging along the curve of John’s ear so he twisted away. “You think Lucifer just wants you as a punching bag? You think that’s all he’d use you as? And you look down your nose at me—I know you, too, Johnny-boy. I know you’re planning to game your way around Gabriel, around Lucifer, and I know you will, as you invariably do, fuck. Up.”

“Didn’t exactly the last time, did I? Not like you.” John abruptly relaxed. Just long enough to catch Balthazar off-guard, and then he pivoted to slam his arm in Balthazar’s face. The one soaked in holy water.

Balthazar was getting back some of his old stamina, for he hissed instead of screamed. But he definitely went flying back into the table, one arm instinctively going out to catch himself. The jolt to his wrist was what made him stagger, but a moment later he was up and slashing claws within inches of John’s stomach. John jumped backwards and scrambled for the last cabinet where he kept the blessed gold knuckledusters.

He didn’t get there. Someone caught his wrist and wrenched him out of the way so he skidded into the fridge. The impact rattled his already aching back and sent him down to the floor, head dizzy and knees sprawling.

When his sight cleared, he began to look up only to have that nervy shudder go down his spine. He hesitated so he could only see feet, then slowly lifted his head the rest of the way.

Gabriel must have just finished since his hair was dripping on the floor and his shirt turned translucent with moisture wherever it touched his skin. He carried his own spare clothes—John idly wondered if they went wherever the hell Gabriel kept that shotgun—and they fit him well.

Stupid thought. But then, John wasn’t exactly used to seeing Balthazar looking like he was about to cry, either. It looked like Gabriel had caught Balthazar by the forearm as the demon had went past him, then had yanked up that arm behind Balthazar’s back, neatly forcing him flush up against Gabriel’s. He had his other arm around Balthazar’s chest to lock Balthazar’s free arm there, and his head was buried in Balthazar’s neck. One guess what he was doing there. It was making Balthazar squirm and whimper, face screwed up like he was in extreme pain, or…

John dropped his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. He spread his fingers to hide the flush in his cheeks and refused to think about why that was there. “Do I need to give you two a moment?”

Gabriel jumped. Literally—he jostled Balthazar and given how he was holding him, it wasn’t surprising that Balthazar twisted hard and away. The oddest look, like shame or something like that, passed over Gabriel’s face. Then he released Balthazar so quickly that Balthazar nearly fell on his ass. “Can I leave you two alone for more than fifteen minutes without a fight happening?”

“Nope.” John slowly pulled himself to his feet, swallowing back all the complaints his body made. His shoulders were still screaming from earlier, and his hips felt like someone had taken a sledgehammer to them. He was just trying to pretend he didn’t have a back to get banged up. “You…uh…ready to go?”

“Give me a moment.” Well, Gabriel wasn’t much for excuses. He just spun on his heel and walked over to the windows, where he rested his hands on the sill and lowered his head as if praying.

Balthazar had fallen bent over the table and still hadn’t risen. He didn’t breathe till after Gabriel had crossed the room, and even then it was a faint, shaking breath that irritated John. This wasn’t the half-breed he remembered. Hell, even his nemeses were letting him down.

Mostly out of curiosity, John went over and tilted Balthazar’s head so he could look. Still no breakage of the skin, but…“World-class hickey there. I don’t know whether this’ll be more shocking, or the fact that you died about a month back, or hell, that you’re walking in with me.”

“Save your pity. You’re not in a much better position,” Balthazar snorted. He stayed hunched over for another moment, then knocked John’s hand away and stood.

John let him alone, more interested in what had come off on his fingers when he’d touched Balthazar’s neck. Spit. So…licking? Gabriel had said he’d been a werewolf and never quite gotten over it, but what had been going on here felt a little more universal than that. Interesting. Balthazar had had a point—John was somewhat in the dark when it came to the higher levels of Heaven and Hell, the ones that didn’t bother with individual souls, and obviously he needed to learn fast.

He twitched. Then he lifted his head, trying to figure out what the hell that was. It prickled insistently at his skin and begged at his nerves, tweaking them so his fingers restlessly worked around each other. It…Gabriel was smoking. Fuck. John abruptly turned to the counter and furiously bandaged his arm in an attempt to ignore it, only he forgot to wash off his fingers first and he accidentally touched the spit to a crack that’d opened along one scab.

Burn.

Christ. He sucked in air as quietly as he could and tried to wipe it off, only it’d…already dissolved into his blood. At least, he couldn’t feel it anymore. Shit. Shit, shit, shit.

“All right, where’s your friend?” Gabriel came back over, much too calm, and breezed out the door without even looking at them. It was a toss-up whether Balthazar’s expression was relieved or insulted.

“You know, Johnny, something you learn once you’ve been in hell awhile—at a certain level, it’s not playing around anymore. Not…bargaining for your retirement. There’s a reason why they call it war.” Balthazar actually sounded like he was talking seriously, and not trying to lead John into some horror’s gnashing jaws.

“Not sure how good your advice is, but I’ll keep that in mind,” John said, more dismissively than he felt. Little bubbles of aggravation simmered and burst in his throat again, and he wished once again that a second chance had really meant a second chance—at his old life in his old world. Instead, he’d just been bounced into another game, and now he had to learn the damn rules all over again.

* * *

Midnite’s club hadn’t changed much, which was less reassuring to Balthazar than it should have been. He didn’t like following, but given a choice between standing on Constantine’s side or getting any nearer than four feet to Gabriel, he opted for the one that wouldn’t see him fucked rawer than a raped nun within five minutes. And Constantine hated sharing the sidewalk, so that was why Balthazar loitered behind.

His neck had long since passed from itching and now throbbed, low and deep and insinuating, and every time his collar rubbed against it, he nearly twitched out of his—out of John’s clothes. Which interested him since they smelled deliciously of fear and despair and sickness, but even that wasn’t enough to distract him.

Power just rolled off Gabriel. Normally that would excite Balthazar but not make him lose his mind, but this particular power was a devastating mix of heaven and hell—corrupted good, mitigated evil, it was all twisted up together and it was possibly the most intoxicating sensation he’d ever come across. It gave Constantine’s unique ability to inspire infuriation a run for its money. It was enough to make Balthazar want to give in, and not only because Gabriel had something of Lucifer’s presence. It was enough to make that appealing instead of humiliating and vengeful, which had been about the best Hell’s strictly-enforced hierarchy had offered Balthazar.

The bouncer looked up and then stared when they came forward, head swiveling back and forth, back and forth. Constantine shoved his hands in his pockets and clucked. “We don’t have all night.”

Gabriel didn’t even wait for the bouncer to pick up a card. “She faked it. And he wasn’t jealous of you, but of her.”

John shot Gabriel an inquiring look, but Gabriel turned a cold shoulder to him and instead concentrated—too hard to Balthazar’s eye—on prying the cord from the bouncer’s hand. He had them past the rope before the bouncer had even begun to stammer a question.

Inside it was dark and smoky, which had to be giving John the twitches. Half the crowd was all new faces, which Balthazar took to mean that John had been busy, but enough familiar half-breeds were around to make Balthazar step a little closer to the other two. He tugged his sleeves further down to hide the splints.

“How did—” John asked, but Gabriel was shoving hard through the crowd and apparently didn’t hear. With a disgusted sigh, John dropped back and glowered at one group lounging by the bar. “You’d think a little demonic blood would loosen him up.”

“He smelled it on the man,” Balthazar dryly explained. “The bouncer’s having an affair with the wife of the singer up there because he doesn’t think he can have one with the singer.”

John glanced sharply back, then slowed to avoid a waitress. A slight smile crept onto his face. “Werewolf, huh. Is that the deal with him and your neck, or would that be the vampire coming out?”

“I don’t really feel like telling you.” The next time they passed a waitress, Balthazar snagged a glass. She swore and grabbed for him, but he pivoted too quickly and too many people flowed between them for her to follow. He gratefully downed half the drink while scanning the room—Gabriel didn’t seem to be needing directions anymore, for he’d made a beeline for Midnite’s office. “You aren’t making a very good guide. Better watch it or Gabriel might not bother shielding you anymore.”

“Thanks for the concern, but I think I can take care of myself. Unlike some people, I improve after coming back from the dead.” Something or someone had caught Constantine’s eye, and he was trying to make surreptitious gestures. When those didn’t seem to work, he smacked his coat out of the way and started to push through the crowd, moving away from Gabriel.

It was a stupid move, and especially since they didn’t know who was backing the attacks. Balthazar checked the distance between himself and Gabriel, then gritted his teeth and went after John. As soon as his wrists were healed, he was going to work out some of his frustration by beating Constantine to a pulp. “John—damn it, Constantine—”

The music drowned him out. John kept going, eventually ending up by a pillar where he fell into intense conversation with whoever was standing behind it. The dancers surged and receded before Balthazar as he made his way over, shoving and elbowing when he had to. His bones were beginning to mend together and he didn’t want to snap them again, so it took a little longer than he’d expected. He emerged just as a hand fell on his shoulder; Balthazar instinctively spun out from under it and leaped backwards, knocking up against John as he did. His glass dropped to shatter on the floor.

“…stop teasing and tell me, Ellie. What do you mean—what the…Balthazar, for—” John lifted his arm and turned from Ellie, who was looking beautiful and cruel as always, to glare at Balthazar. Only he froze once he saw who’d pushed his way into the corner.

He didn’t personally know Arioch, but he knew an evil when he saw one. And a Duke of Hell certainly counted as one.

“John Constantine,” Arioch said. His voice was like rocks grinding flesh into a shapeless mass, and though his shape was that of a well-dressed, burly giant nearly seven feet tall, his true form rose in a menacing shadow behind him. “Your reputation precedes you.”

The muscle in John’s jaw was ticking and fear suddenly rose as the strongest of the scents that clung to him, but he managed to meet Arioch’s gaze with equanimity. His hand dropped to his coat, then kept going to tap by his hip; Balthazar had to admire a man who could have a cigarette craving when threatened with instant annihilation. “Thanks.”

“I’ll just be going…” Ellie sing-songed. She gave John a wink when he looked at her, then dashed off.

Balthazar made a note to string her guts over the bar when he got a chance. She’d probably marked them when they had walked in and called over Arioch. Ellie was—all right, at the moment she’d beaten Balthazar for ability to go with the winner, and she therefore desperately needed to be removed from the scene.

“You have something that my lord Lucifer wants,” Arioch went on. His shadow curled hungry mouths over his shoulders that snapped with a little too much substance for Balthazar’s taste. Balthazar edged backwards and Arioch’s eyes slid to him. The Duke’s smile widened to show yellowed teeth dripping with black froth. “And you, half-breed, are due back in hell.”

“If Lou wants something, he can ask for it himself.” John stepped forward, partially inserting himself between Arioch and Balthazar as he did.

Arioch marked it, amusement gliding over his eyes like an oil veil. “I didn’t know you’d developed such a taste for our kind. Changed your mind about where you’d like to end up?”

It was more than a little grating to hear that lascivious tone in Arioch’s voice and know exactly what the bastard meant, but Balthazar pushed that away for the moment. Constantine’s stubbornness at letting someone get to what he considered his, whether that be friend or enemy, before he did was buying Balthazar a little time. And though it was the height of insanity to challenge a Duke of Hell, there were other ways. Ariel had at least done that much for Balthazar.

“First things first. I’ve gone through a hell of a lot of trouble for that, so you can’t just expect me to give it up to you.” A little bit of cockiness was sneaking into John’s smile. He tugged at his lapels and then straightened his tie, looking up at Arioch. “Not to mention it’d be doing Lou a favor.”

“You do not do favors for the ruler of Hell, you insolent waste of flesh.” The way Arioch spoke should have been warning enough: his voice was smooth and unruffled, beautifully modulated. “Tell me where the Spear is before I rip that knowledge from your brain.”

John blinked rapidly, opening and then closing his mouth. He dropped back a step. “The…Spear?”

Arioch smiled again. And quick as damnation claiming a soul, the mouths of his shadow darted forward at both of them. Balthazar cursed inside and hastily released the spell, though it hadn’t yet been properly tied off. Then he was slammed backward as John dove for the safety of the bar. His wrists twisted and Balthazar bit down on his lip, trying not to cry out. His knees hit the floor, and then he had to deal with John’s limbs flailing all over.

The light had blown through Arioch’s shadow and torn it to shreds, as well as sent most of the club into fits. He hit a table on the other side and knocked it over, howling and clawing at his face. Then he abruptly straightened to show that the shadow had become the substance, and the substance fixed enraged red eyes on them.

“Great. Great idea,” John panted. He was starting to roll down his sleeves.

“Constantine, that is the Third Duke of Hell. You can’t do a damned thing.” Balthazar felt at his wrists and was momentarily relieved to find they hadn’t rebroken. Then he flinched back as Arioch leaped at them, futilely throwing up his arms.

Crunch.

Then the floor shook as if an earthquake started. Balthazar dropped his arms, a little shocked to find that their bones hadn’t been what had just been smashed, and looked out to see that Gabriel had slammed Arioch aside. Now he jumped nimbly up and snarled open-mouthed at Arioch, who had reverted further to become an angel with wings of hissing snakes. Gabriel’s jaw—changed—to let him bare huge fangs, and the shadows piling up behind him were shaping themselves into…wolves. A pack that wound themselves around his legs, snapping and growling. Occasionally a snake would lunge and they would tear its head to ribbons.

“What the hell is that?” John breathed.

Gabriel responding to Balthazar’s…call. Balthazar bit down on the side of his mouth and tried not to think about how he was going to end up paying for that. “How they settle issues of seniority in Hell.”

“Really.” John’s eyes were still wide with mingled terror and shock, but his fascination with anything that could kill him in abnormal ways was beginning to kick in. He went up on one knee to watch as Gabriel rumbled something at Arioch. Arioch hissed back, laughing, and flared his wings so the serpents formed a deadly halo around him. “Must make you all warm and fuzzy inside, knowing they want you that badly. Nothing but the best for you, darling.”

“It’s as much for your benefit as it is mine,” Balthazar muttered. His head cleared a little, and he began to process the last few moments. “Why is he asking about the Spear?”

Shrugging, John used a stool to pull himself up and grab a drink from the bar. “Damned if I know. It’s not his, and he can’t touch it so I don’t know why he’d want it. If he had wanted to get it, he could’ve taken it while he was dragging his kid home.” He took a sip, then put the glass back on the bar. “What do you mean, for my ben—”

Arioch explained for Balthazar. “Constantine is Lucifer’s,” he snarled at Gabriel. “Stay out of it, archangel.”

Gabriel’s reply was to slash his hand—now clawed—at Arioch’s throat. The snakes instantly retaliated, and then both of them went down in a swirling storm of snapping teeth and tearing flesh.

Balthazar never prayed, for obvious reasons, but right now he wished desperately that Gabriel came out on top.

* * *

Gabriel came back to himself with a piece of artery dangling from his teeth and hands overflowing of rent, smoking flesh. His belly felt full and his blood was over-warm, sizzling in his veins. The blood in his mouth tasted like the finest champagne mixed with exquisitely rare steak.

He leaned over, pushing aside something that snapped, and threw up. Not all of it was going to come up; what the wolves had swallowed for him was going to stay, and that made him sicker so he more easily could get rid of what he could. It ate at his throat like acid as it came up, but he forced himself to keep vomiting till he was coughing up nothing but blood-laced air. He lifted one hand to check on his nerves, then smashed it back down into pulped flesh when he saw how badly it was shaking.

“What on earth—Constantine?” A man with coffee-colored skin had appeared, smelling of Haiti dust and generations of magic. “What have you done?”

“Me? Hey, I wasn’t the one who had a…what’d—Third Duke of Hell sitting at my bar.” Whoever had said that smelled both stronger and weaker, and certainly more suitable. And he was moving towards Gabriel. “You’re really helping to restore the balance, Midnite.”

A surge of hunger smashed past Gabriel’s defenses and he reared up, snarling. He had the vague impression of someone slender and pale jerking backwards, but then a wave of magic came slamming at him. It was by no means a weak spell, but he wasn’t in the mood and he simply snapped it.

The recoil slapped Gabriel back to himself; he shook his head hard, and when he thought he could remember that there were mortals in the room and he had no grievance with them, he sat back on his knees. The artery was still hanging from his mouth and he pulled it out, then did his best to shake the gore off of his hands. “Are you Midnite? I’d like to request a private interview.”

Constantine’s friend stared at him, but responded to John. “What have you brought into my house? The balance doesn’t allow for Dukes of—”

Gabriel bit back on his exasperation and stood up. Everyone instantly jumped back several steps, which was such a familiar reaction that he almost laughed. He might as well be playing the Vatican’s hunting dog brought to bay again and again by fearful, ignorant townspeople.

But these were, he hoped, modern times, and if he had any chance of laying the matter of the manuscript to rest, he needed local cooperation. “Sir, I am Gabriel Van Helsing, and that was Arioch, the Third Duke of Hell. Now--”

“Impossible,” Midnite breathed, raising his hands. The fingers were curled up and…

…a shadow-wolf snapped out before Gabriel could help it. He yanked it back just as John started forward, forcing it down beside his feet. But he couldn’t force it to dematerialize—every time he tried, bile rose in his throat and his nerves began to hum, screaming that they couldn’t take that stress. In the end, he had to settle for letting it lick off the blood on his pants and coat. “That was Arioch. Don’t presume to tell me what I just ate. Now, I apologize for the state of your club and I offer compensation, but I need to speak with you.”

Midnite was still staring at him, but the shock had been swiftly replaced by wary judgment. His eyes went up and down Gabriel, then shifted to Constantine, restless by the bar, and Balthazar, who made the man briefly flinch. Balthazar shrugged and made some gesture with his right hand, to which Midnite gave a noncommittal grunt. Then Midnite half-turned, waving Gabriel towards a door in the back wall, and behind Gabriel, oddly silent servers rushed forward to clean up the mess.

He started to follow, then stopped and turned around. If the point of Gabriel’s efforts was to reduce the chances that Judgment Day would come, then he shouldn’t leave something like Arioch’s heart out in the open. He stooped down and delicately began to free the mangled organ from the crushed ribs. When Constantine stopped beside him, he nodded towards Midnite. “I’ll join you in a moment.”

John pursed his lips, then replaced whatever he was going to say with a, “Fine.”

Balthazar didn’t pause, but he did cast a ravenous look at the heart in Gabriel’s hand. Then he noticed Gabriel was looking and dropped his eyes. A moment later, he straightened his shoulders more than strictly necessary and stalked after John.

The wolf butted Gabriel’s leg, then sat on its haunches and grinned, tongue lolling. Gabriel snapped it apart in a fit of anger, and almost crushed Arioch’s heart while he was at it. He froze. Took a deep breath, and then he willed his hand to relax. “No, I won’t,” he muttered, getting up.

Past the door was an office decorated to suit a houngan of the top level, but it was empty. A door in its side-wall led into what looked like an underground crypt, well-lit but so crammed with relics that it still gave off an air of closing in on whoever walked inside.

The door softly swung shut behind Gabriel. He didn’t whip around, but it took him a moment to recollect himself before he could follow into the room behind the office. Zombies. That magic wasn’t necessarily as black as commonly assumed, but he still disliked it.

Vlad Dracul, a little voice reminded him. He shoved it away and made his way into the crypt, listening for Constantine and Midnite’s voices up ahead. A sniff told him Balthazar had wandered off into a small side-hall, so when Gabriel reached that fork, he stopped to consider the situation.

“…archangel, only he ended up part-demon. I think he’s got Lucifer’s blood in him, if you can believe that.”

“I find I have to believe many unpleasant things when you’re involved.”

“Midnite, honestly. I told you, I didn’t do it on purpose. This all fell into my lap—he would’ve come here sooner or later. You’re not exactly unknown. Even if he’s been in Tibet for who knows how long.”

Old friends. The hostile banter and the underlying regrets were unmistakable. Gabriel let them be for the moment and went into the side-hall, warning himself not to lose control. That was, not to lose any more than he already had. When the shadow-wolves came out, then he knew he was inches from tipping over the precipice. Usually he dealt with it by retreating to somewhere isolated and cold, letting it freeze the fiery rage till he could stand company again, but that wasn’t an option now. He needed to stay and track down that second manuscript. His hands were shaking again. He still tasted that blood in his mouth and he wanted more from somewhere, and damn this. Every time he turned around, something came at him that only fed the black fury inside of him.

Balthazar had his back to Gabriel, apparently studying an elaborate wooden crucifix that hung on the wall. He ran his fingers over Christ’s toes, then looked up as if he’d been expecting the agonized grimace on the Savior’s face to change. His hand wasn’t quite steady; it jerked once before he dropped it to a chest of drawers shoved up against the wall, fingering the bone-shaped handles.

“…John, I thought your plan for stopping Mammon was insane, but at least it had a point. What are you trying to accomplish—no, do not smile like that at me. Stopping Mammon gave you a chance at salvation. Which you won. You don’t need to move in this world anymore. If you still do, it’s because you want to.”

He knew Gabriel was there, and he was planning something. Every step Gabriel took stiffened Balthazar’s back and shoulders another fraction, until when Gabriel finally feathered a bloodstained fingertip across Balthazar’s nape, it felt as if he were touching silk-covered steel. Balthazar reeked of spicy, sharp fear and lust, cut with a note of jangling smoky nerves.

“Ariel said he could get me out of Hell, and back here,” Balthazar abruptly said. “And he also said he needed me because I’d found the Spear of Destiny once. He wanted me to do it again.”

Gabriel froze where he was, a thread of reason needling through the miasma of fight-heightened craving that clouded his mind. So that was why Ariel had bothered. It had to be the truth because Gabriel hadn’t mentioned that the Spear was also necessary for the spell to topple Lucifer.

“That’s needed too, isn’t it? Ariel had me tracking down things for his other projects as well, but Arioch wouldn’t have been asking unless it concerned this. Constantine would have been the last one to have it.” Balthazar took a deep breath so quietly that even Gabriel’s keen hearing didn’t pick it up; it was the rise and fall of Balthazar’s shoulders that betrayed him. “He hid it, but I could find it again. I have a…knack for that.”

Down the main hall, John was angrily pacing. “So what, I should let myself get chewed to bits for the sake of being normal? I can’t be normal if I’m dead.”

It was obvious what would come next. Obvious and enraging, for there he was, thinking he had a playable hand when he was sitting at the wrong table. The games were behind them, and right now they were in the middle of a real apocalypse, with no room for personal gain. With no meaning to justify personal bargains.

“I don’t want—” Balthazar started. Then he stopped, and this time the breath he drew was audibly sharp. His shoulders jerked and his throat tensed as he swallowed hard.

Gabriel took the last step and reached around Balthazar to drop Arioch’s heart on the chest. He drew his thumb over the bruise he’d left on Balthazar’s neck a second time, pressing in to feel the faint but still-present impressions that his teeth had left. Then he wrapped his hand around Balthazar’s jaw and yanked it up so he could watch Balthazar’s eyes widen. The boiling, itching need to slaughter had calmed somewhat, but instead of cooling, it had transmuted into something else. Something slightly less likely to see him finish his fall.

“I’ve lived my whole life this way. I—” John tucked a sob into his laugh “—I can’t change now. Saved or not, I’m in this trade. And as long as I’m here, I might as well be all that I can be.”

“You don’t want to go back to Hell,” Gabriel murmured, letting his breath tickle Balthazar’s ear. He lifted his bloody hand and danced it in front of Balthazar’s nose, feeling how the smell of it seeded a moan in Balthazar’s chest that he couldn’t quite crush. When he raised his fingers, Balthazar couldn’t help trying to follow it, mindlessly licking at air. Gabriel tightened his hold, finally getting Balthazar to grab at his wrist, and lowered his hand again. He stroked his finger over Balthazar’s forehead and nose, keeping it a hair from touching the skin. “And you think you can buy your way out. What, exactly, is keeping me from merely making you help me?”

Balthazar tugged weakly at Gabriel’s hand, choking and twisting. He started to squeeze out a few words, but Gabriel shifted his hold so his fingers pressed into the bite-mark and Balthazar gurgled into silence. Then Balthazar suddenly clawed behind him, nail almost catching Gabriel in the eye. Stung by his carelessness, Gabriel seized the demon’s wrist and squeezed till he could feel the fragile bones start to creak. They were barely healed. It wouldn’t take much.

“It’s just a little favor, Midnite.”

Not much. Not—

Gabriel all but flung Balthazar’s wrist away from him. Then he dropped his hold on Balthazar’s neck and stumbled back a step, gut clenching at how close that had been.

“Because of that,” Balthazar gasped, clinging to the chest. He rubbed at his neck while staring at Arioch’s heart. His tongue flicked out to touch it, then snapped back. His hands clamped down on the edge of the chest as he steadied his breath, his eyes closed.

Then he turned around and stepped forward so quickly that Gabriel raised his arms to block. But that wasn’t Balthazar’s intent; he abruptly grabbed Gabriel’s bloody hand and brought it to his lips, tongue curling out to swipe the clotting stuff from Gabriel’s knuckles. It teased and swirled ahead of Balthazar’s hot mouth, offering a hint of warmth and cleanliness before Balthazar engulfed the deceived bit of Gabriel’s flesh in decadent fire.

Gabriel ripped his hand away. Then he took Balthazar by the throat again and had him slammed against a cabinet before his mind could catch up. And it never quite did; his fangs came down and buried themselves in Balthazar’s neck so sweet hot blood pooled in his mouth, and his hands shredded past clothing to luxuriate in writhing, lean muscle. He was barely aware of nails digging into his shoulders, all his senses taken up with the black pleasure of having fire instead of ice for once.

The spicy blood flooding his mouth began to taste dangerously strong in death so he pulled away, not quite wanting that. No, better to leave some warmth in the flesh his bloody lips caressed, some faint pulse to leap against his teeth as he licked the wounds closed. Licked and sealed, ended that low incessant whine. His hands moved lower, pressing muscle and skin to where he wanted it, stroking and petting till he found the ridge rising along one squirming thigh. Then he ground the heel of his hand into it, slowly working from base to head and then back before he deigned to deal with their pants. He bit into the line of Balthazar’s jaw, not deep enough to draw blood but enough so that every groan vibrated against his teeth. The hands on his shoulders flexed; Balthazar hissed as that stressed his healing wrists, but then forgot all about that when Gabriel took hold of his prick.

One long squeeze up it, and then Gabriel let go. He raked his nails viciously down the inside of Balthazar’s thigh when Balthazar whined in protest, then spun the demon hard so Balthazar rattled the chest with the impact of his hands. Gabriel pressed immediately up behind him, grabbing for Arioch’s heart as he did. Heart’s blood, viscous and tingling, oozed into his hand. He dropped it back on the chest and shoved two fingers into Balthazar’s ass; Balthazar sucked a breath that began rasping like hooves pawing the ground and ended in begging silence, head dropping forward.

He satisfied himself with scoring his teeth over both sides of Balthazar’s neck while his fingers worked open that clenching passage, forcing the muscles to spread. Ariel had refrained from this, Gabriel realized. Dimly, half-consciously, the way a beast knew danger in man even if they’d never seen a human being before. His jaw spread wide and he thought he was laughing a little.

Then his mouth had slammed shut, molars grind-catch-grinding past each other as he pressed into Balthazar, shoving harder and deeper till their thighs were smashed together. Balthazar whimpered and bucked upward, knees trying to scrape farther apart. Some of the drawer handles were blocking his way, and Gabriel was too far gone to think about moving back so that was no longer a problem. He forced Balthazar back down and licked hard along Balthazar’s hairline, occasionally letting the point of his teeth graze the skin. His hands kneaded Balthazar’s hips, slipping on sweaty skin till one of them finally touched the tip of Balthazar’s prick. Some fragment of Gabriel’s old self spoke up then, and he reached around to take firm hold of the cock, squeezing and drawing his fist up it till Balthazar’s moans took on a different quality. A sweeter note, tangled in the harsh panting and the thuds of flesh against wood, and the slap of flesh against flesh.

“Because I thought you gave a damn about me!”

John’s voice jerked Gabriel’s head up and his mind out of its haze just as Balthazar came, thrashing and keening. The whiplash as Balthazar clenched Gabriel’s own climax out of him yanked his head back, and so when he got hold of himself the second time, he was dizzy from that. He awkwardly got off of Balthazar, who was limp as a ragdoll, and turned to lean against a nearby cabinet. His pulse seemed abnormally loud, but it was a good deal calmer than it had been since…possibly before he’d met Constantine.

“You have to love how self-absorbed Johnny-boy is,” Balthazar snorted, slowly pulling himself off the chest. His pants had rumpled around his knees and mostly avoided staining, but his thighs were splattered in a mix of whitish come and blackish demon blood, and his shirt was smeared with more black stains. “He hasn’t even noticed we didn’t catch up.”

Relaxed as he sounded, his hand had a slight tremor that was particularly noticeable when he reached up to brush his hair out of his face.

Gabriel almost rubbed at his own forehead before remembering what a mess his own hands were. He squeezed his eyes shut, decided that wasn’t going to undo what had been done, and opened them. He lifted a hand towards Balthazar only to have the demon flinch from him. A second to quash the guilt, which could wait till Gabriel had time, and then Gabriel tried again. This time, Balthazar let him touch the base of his throat.

“Hold still,” Gabriel said, just before whispering. Smoke curled around both of them, rising to the level of their throats before evaporating away. With it went the stains—most of them. The smell stayed, which was why Gabriel didn’t do this very often, but at least he could look without flinching.

Balthazar raised an eyebrow. “Useful.” He started dealing with his clothes, then paused. “So—”

Gabriel almost laughed. So damned young compared to him…a little bit of the dark rose in his smile to make Balthazar freeze and remind him that it was only quieted, not eradicated. He pushed it away and fixed his clothes, then picked up Arioch’s heart. “Try to manipulate me again and I’ll not only leave the stains on, but I’ll send you back to Hell like that.”

With his nail, he sliced off a piece of the heart, then offered it to Balthazar. After a long moment, Balthazar leaned forward and delicately took it, his lips brushing at the tips of Gabriel’s fingers. He didn’t meet Gabriel’s eyes.

Footsteps at the entrance of the side-hall signaled the approach of the others. Gabriel hastily dug a rag from his pocket and wrapped up the rest of the heart as he turned.

* * *

It was obvious what Balthazar and Gabriel had been doing. Jesus. John started to comment on it, but Gabriel just walked past him as if he didn’t exist. The bastard didn’t even apologize for knocking into John with his shoulder, though maybe that was a good thing. At least that way he didn’t notice when John hissed and grabbed at his bandaged arm through his sleeve.

Midnite looked less than thrilled himself, even though any witch-doctor would’ve been dancing at the opportunity to get his hands on angel spunk. Then again, if that was as fucked-up as the rest of Gabriel was…

“I’m looking for the half-breed Gabriel. I’m sure John has explained to you why,” Gabriel said, shooting a dry look John’s way. It said a lot, and suddenly John began to wonder how good Gabriel’s hearing really was. He looked away, rubbing at his arm.

He started to worry, too, because what he’d been discussing with Midnite could be taken to…well, fine, he’d been trying to feel out a way to turn the situation around to where he didn’t have to rely on Gabriel. Convenient as it was to know someone capable of taking down an Earl of Hell, it jerked on John’s chain to give up control of the situation in exchange for that.

“Yes, and I apologize for my earlier behavior. Everyone believes you are a myth, even the half-breeds…” And Midnite diverged into various little politesses while Gabriel nodded and occasionally put in a word to show that he hadn’t been sidetracked. Eventually Midnite got around to business, but he was so wary about revealing any of his secrets, and Gabriel was so patently irritated by that, that it was going to take forever for them to work out a deal.

Fun as it was to watch, something more interesting was limping up to John. He kept an ear on the discussion, but since it didn’t seem like an advantageous time to jump in, he watched Balthazar instead. “Well, used meat now.”

“At least I’m paying attention. You still think these are the old good times.” Balthazar had rebuttoned his shirt, insofar as he could given that half the buttons were gone, but he hadn’t tucked it in or done the sleeves. The bruise on his neck was no longer small enough to be hidden by a collar yanked a bit high, but he didn’t seem to care much. “Got something to trade, Constantine? Or is it just the same old smoke and mirrors?”

“If these were the old days—” I’d have a cigarette, and my arm wouldn’t be burning every time Gabriel looked at me “—you wouldn’t be in my clothes. Next time you get roughed up, better have your own damn wardrobe, because I’m not giving up any more of mine.” God, John was standing five feet away and the smell of sex and blood coming off of Balthazar was so strong that it was choking him. Twisting at his arm, he looked Balthazar over and tried to figure out what the fuck was there to get Gabriel’s attention.

A little too late, he remembered how else that could be taken. But Balthazar was already easing up to John, a mocking glint hardening his eyes. “Oh, really, Johnny-boy. Aren’t you a little curious? Want a sniff?” he purred. “I thought this would be right up your alley.”

John glanced at Gabriel, but he and Midnite had wandered down a little to look at…the Chair. Which was the obvious solution, but Midnite could see what anyone using it could see, and John wasn’t sure if the mortal Gabriel or the Spear of Destiny would be the stronger draw. He didn’t want anyone knowing where that damned thing was until he got a few things straightened out.

He moved his gaze back to Balthazar, who’d crept closer. “Yeah, being a pet’s really my idea of a great life.”

Balthazar stopped when there was barely an inch between them, picking at his splints till the right one started to peel off. His color was a lot better than it should have been, and his wrists shouldn’t have healed that fast. He leaned forward, head tilting as he crooned; something red and stringy was stuck between his back teeth. “Like you haven’t spent the past twenty years begging for God to take you up? How about a taste of the other side?”

That tongue of his snaked out, pink tip flicking about in front of John’s face so no matter how he turned, it was there, zeroing in on him. He tried snatching at it, but that just got him a wet thin slap on the cheek and Balthazar laughing low beneath his breath. It sounded…hysterical.

“Johnny—”

John stepped back, then slid past Balthazar before the demon could finish. He had a hunch, and it paid off when Balthazar refused to follow him over to Gabriel, but instead loitered around the back of the Chair. Occasionally Balthazar would reach up to touch at his neck, but at the last moment, he’d jerk his hand away.

Gabriel noticed. He broke off talking about possible candidates for the prime mover this time around to track Balthazar. Then he jerked his head a bit, as if his collar was too tight, and glanced at John. “Midnite says you’re the only one who’s ridden the Chair multiple times without dying.”

“That sounds about right. I don’t think it’d help, though. I mean, you did something to see where Gabby was, and whoever’s behind this managed to fool you.” The downside of standing near Gabriel was that John had to take the lingering fragrance of smoke wafting off the angel. He dug around in his pocket, but turned up no gum. Damn.

And then Gabriel took out a cigarette and lit it up without so much as a warning. His eyes flicked over when John winced away; across the room, Balthazar badly muffled a snigger. “What?”

“I quit recently. Didn’t know angels smoked.” God, that smelled good. Strong and harsh, unfiltered so it could properly fuck John’s lung cells to death. He found himself unconsciously turning back and jerked himself into a walk, pacing around and behind a bemused Midnite. “C’mon, Midnite. You’ve got no clue?”

“We don’t smoke. Nicotine doesn’t affect us.” Though that couldn’t be all true, considering how practiced Gabriel was at putting out his smoke on his shoe. He made it look graceful instead of clumsy and makeshift. His fingers were still bloody. Beneath the smoke, he smelled like Balthazar and sex and fight and light.

Now John was missing his gum, because then he would’ve had something to grind between his teeth. The burning sensation in his arm didn’t help—was it broadening? He thought it was. “There’s got to be someone local helping out.”

Ellie. Shit, she’d known Arioch was coming; she shouldn’t have expected a demon lord in the club any more than John had, but she hadn’t looked shocked in the least. John started to say her name, then thought better of it and waved at Midnite. “Sorry. What were you going to say?”

The apology put Midnite on his guard, but he nevertheless answered. “Local, yes. A regular of my bar, I doubt. Everyone’s walking lightly until equilibrium is achieved again, and especially around you. If someone wanted to keep this quiet, they would avoid where you went.”

“They have no reason to hide now that they know I’m hunting them,” Gabriel said. His eyes swept up towards the ceiling and his fingers lifted slightly, rippling as if he were petting something’s head. Then he shook his hand and blinked hard; the lighting abruptly brightened. “Nor do they have a reason to play nicely—the balance that you speak of never was a static matter, and now it may be shifting permanently. I suggest you keep a keener ear to the ground.”

Midnite’s eyes narrowed at Gabriel’s rudeness, but before he could say anything, Gabriel had plopped a small, smelly bundle into Midnite’s hand. A constant drip of purple ran from a corner of the rag—Arioch’s heart, John realized.

“Crush that and smear it around the doorways. Good evening, sir.” Gabriel pivoted on his heel and strode off, coat fluttering behind him like a broken pair of wings. The hem snatched itself down a few times, like a…wolf was toying with it, maybe.

“It’s nothing personal. He’s always like that, even to his friends,” John muttered. He checked on Balthazar, but the demon was still rounding the Chair and wouldn’t hear if John whispered low enough. “Tell me you’ll think about it. Just think.”

All Midnite did was tilt back his head and peer at John the way he did people he was about to curse into the grave. Ungrateful bastard. He had absolutely no room to chide John about only looking out for number one when he acted like this.

“Johnny-boy, you’re going to miss your ride,” Balthazar leered, walking past.

And that was enough from that corner. John spun about with his elbow parallel to the ground, slamming it back as soon as he caught a glimpse of Balthazar. He caught Balthazar in the shoulder, which didn’t hurt the demon much but did throw him off-balance long enough for John to grab Balthazar’s neck, and the bite there definitely was a weak spot. Balthazar hissed and ripped three long cuts across the back of John’s hand, but he’d lost too much strength to resist when John flung him down the hall. He skidded, almost fell on his face, and only gradually got himself back into a lopsided walk.

“John,” Midnite said. Something dropped into John’s pocket, though Midnite’s expression didn’t change. Then Midnite lifted his hands in the beginning of a blessing.

“Jesus Christ,” John snorted. He walked away before the first word was even out of Midnite’s mouth, but still, he was grateful. Maybe he’d even have time to remember to tell Midnite so, if everything went right.

Walking back through the club was an…interesting experience. He was used to the intense hatred pouring from every pair of eyes, but the fear was new. Even if it was mostly reflected fear due to coming in with Gabriel, who had one hell of a temper for a former member of the Heavenly Host, it was a pretty nice feeling.

He looked for Ellie but didn’t see her; that wasn’t too surprising, given her instinct for self-preservation, but it did make things more difficult. Hopefully Gabriel needed to sleep sometime, because John needed to get away from him to see to a few things.

“Constantine.” Someone plucked at his arm. One very drunk half-breed stumbled along beside him, apparently following a death-wish to its logical conclusion. “Constantine…so that’s all that it’d take to bring you over. Does he take you singly, or do you get to play with Balthazar, too? Are you content with that, or should I let my lord Lucifer know you’re looking for a position in his bedchamber?”

Exactly what the shit was implying took a moment to sink in. Then John needed another moment to get his anger down enough for his jaw to unlock—that half-breed asshole thought he’d whored himself for protection? After twenty fucking years of playing the game his own way, and not taking anyone’s bullshit? He thought--John hooked up a chair as he walked past it. Then he stopped and spun, smashing it into the demon’s head. “You goddamned piece of—”

“Not now, Constantine,” Balthazar snapped, dragging him away by the arm. He let go as soon as John whirled on him and jerked his head towards the door, where Gabriel was impatiently waiting. “Have a little dignity, would you?”

“Go. Get. Fucked. Since you like it so much,” John retorted. His foot tangled with a piece of the shattered chair and he kicked it away so hard that it bounced off the wall. Feeling a little better, he stalked past Balthazar and out of the club. He slipped his hand into his pocket and felt out what Midnite’s gift was: a cell phone. Warded, too. Sometimes John could almost kiss that man.

Balthazar sighed. If John turned around, he’d probably catch the bastard rolling his eyes as well. “Don’t play innocent, Johnny. We’re demons. Of course we’re going to assume that.”

“Well, don’t expect me to go fulfilling expectations.” John swung himself into the car and drummed his fingers on the window while the other two got in. “So now what?”

“So we might as well go back to your place so you can rest. There are a few others I can try to contact for information, but I have to wait till dawn.” Gabriel started the engine, then looked over at John. He pursed his lips a couple times before he finally decided on what he wanted to say. “I don’t intend to treat you that way.”

When the hell did he learn his manners? The Victorian age? It would fit: that growling black rage chained down beneath a family-friendly exterior. Only the chains obviously weren’t holding like they’d used to, and what was coming out was fucking up John’s life.

And he could still smell the cigarettes on Gabriel. He moved restlessly for a moment, watching the lights smear in the night, then turned on Gabriel. It was stupid, but John was too worked-up to think much on self-preservation. He grabbed the back of the seat and dragged himself over, squeezing past the gearshift to snarl at Gabriel. “Yeah? Well, thanks, but the real question’s more like do you want to? Because I’m betting you don’t intend to do a lot of things, but so far you’ve had a shitty track record of keeping your promises—”

“John, sit down.” Gabriel looked straight ahead, hands flexing on the wheel. He sounded infuriatingly calm.

“Do you? Is your demon side getting the better of you? Telling you hey, let’s be like the rest and have a bite off John Constantine. Do I smell nice? Do you look at my neck and think it’d be delicious to—” John choked to a stop, clawing at the hand that’d seized his throat. He twisted and kicked out, but Gabriel didn’t ease up in the slightest. The darkness began to shade from the normal fluorescent-edged haze of L. A. to sparking, blinding black.

The car swerved and threw John backwards so the artery in his neck mashed up against Gabriel’s hand. His head exploded and he temporarily lost awareness, only to come to with Gabriel’s mouth forcing his open and burning it out. John coughed, hit out. Moaned and cursed when Gabriel bit into his lower lip.

Then he was clutching his neck and doubled over on the seat, wheezing while blood slicked over his chin. It was horrifyingly like the days just before Mammon and Angela.

A muffled roaring pulled John out of his memories: the car pulling back into the road. Gabriel was a rough-edged silhouette in the seat beside John, his hands the only clearly visible part of him. They worked on the wheel, and once John thought he saw claws gleaming.

“Truthfully?” Gabriel said. He would’ve sounded like he was dreaming but for the resigned bitter note in his voice. “I’d like to pin you down and take you apart and put you back together around me. I’m trying not to, so stop pushing. And no, it isn’t merely a demonic peculiarity. Generally I either don’t care or I simply want to kill the other person.”

There wasn’t really much John could say to that. He tried to think of something anyway, but by the time he had anything decent in his head, they’d already arrived. And Gabriel was out of the car and inside before John could even blink.

Something lightly traced down John’s back; he slapped away Balthazar’s hand and then sat up. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“That’s my question,” Balthazar snorted, folding his arms over the top of the seat. “Have you completely lost your mind? You’re going to push him into Hell and then worrying about some human overthrowing Lucifer will be a moot point. What he does with me takes off the pressure; what you’re trying to do to him puts it back on.”

“So that’s your game.” John straightened his coat and tie, then got out of the car.

He almost missed Balthazar’s reply, and even when he’d sorted out the words, he had a hard time believing that it’d been Balthazar muttering, “No, it’s not,” in that tone. John paused, which let Balthazar slope off before he could prod the bastard for an explanation.

He thought about that, and he was still thinking when he walked into his apartment. Gabriel was in the process of cutting up John’s window-frames, which almost made John interrupt, but the blood drying on his chin suggested he shut up for now. Instead he made his way into the bathroom and jammed that door shut before taking a seat on the toilet. He flipped out the phone and dialed one-handed while he wiped at his face…and tried to shrug off the itching feeling, which had spread from his arm to cover most of his torso. It was starting to resolve into a definite want, which he was doing his damnedest to ignore.

*Dodson.*

“Angela,” John said, keeping his voice as low as he could. “Look, I’m sorry about before, but I really need to see you.”

Chapter 4: Side Games

Chapter Text

As soon as the bathroom door closed behind John, Gabriel stopped drawing sigils in favor of bending over and resting his head on the cool glass of the window. He gave into the impulse to bang it once, then pushed himself back up and took a deep breath. That wasn’t going to hurt enough. Nor was it going to do him any good. Best to concentrate on one problem at a time, and since magic tended to backfire quicker than personalities, he’d better focus on finishing his warding spells.

He went at the windows with renewed energy, but as he scrolled magic along one sill after another, the tug in his blood only grew stronger. By the time he had done the last, he was gritting his teeth so hard that he felt one crack. The pain was brief but sharp enough to cut through and let him temporarily rise into a rational mindset.

Problem one: he needed to find out who his opponent was. Problem two: he needed to find the other Gabriel and the Spear of Destiny. Doing that would probably go a long ways towards solving problem one, but in the process he’d butt right up against problem three: he had essentially squared off against Lucifer over a half-demon and an annoyingly untraditional magus. And that inevitably brought up problem four: he wanted to burn out his nose and ears with a hot poker.

But he wasn’t going to do that, and moreover, he couldn’t undo taking Balthazar as a familiar, so all he could do was find a way to deal with that and with his urge to do something similar to John. Oh, and he had to both save Lucifer and keep him from sending up Hell’s armies after all three of them. Just like the old days.

Gabriel scored the last symbol so deeply that a splinter of wood flew out from beneath his nail. He flicked it away and stalked into John’s…bedroom, where Balthazar had appropriated the bed without deriving any enjoyment from it. The demon was tossing and turning, wide awake and frustrated by it.

When he saw Gabriel, he rose up and started to push himself backwards. What Gabriel had to do left a sour taste in his mouth, but he ignored that. There were certain obligations concerning familiars, and now that he’d gained one, he wasn’t going to neglect those. It’d affect Balthazar’s health if he did.

“Up,” he muttered, seizing Balthazar by the arm. He pulled him out of bed, then had to give Balthazar a moment to free himself from the sheets. As soon as the demon was, Gabriel pulled him out into the main area and down to the floor.

Balthazar awkwardly went to his hands and knees besides Gabriel, who had knelt on the edge of the biggest open area. “What do you want?” he shakily said.

He started to bend towards Gabriel’s lap, but Gabriel pushed him back. Confused, Balthazar let Gabriel tuck him alongside Gabriel, head resting on Gabriel’s thigh. He relaxed a little when Gabriel smoothed a hand up and down his back, patting down his shirt, but tensed again when Gabriel let his hand rest on Balthazar’s nape.

“Go to sleep,” Gabriel told him, rubbing gently at the swollen bruise on Balthazar’s neck. The flesh there was nearly black now, and it felt warmer than the rest of Balthazar.

Eventually Balthazar settled down, his arms and legs sprawling out from the tight knot he’d had himself in at first, but he never quite drifted off to sleep. Gabriel first guessed that Balthazar wanted to see what kind of summoning he was setting up on the floor, but then he noticed that Balthazar wasn’t even looking there. Instead he watched Gabriel, still waiting.

He was expecting some task to be asked of him. After all, that was what a familiar was for…and that had been why Gabriel hadn’t needed one. Or wanted one.

Enough with the complaining, Gabriel thought. He just…needed to come up with something. “Tell me about Mammon, and about Constantine and the other Gabriel.”

Balthazar blinked, then finally looked away from Gabriel. His bare feet flexed against the floor, pushing him further up against Gabriel’s hand in tacit encouragement of the caressing. “She had some nonsensical plan for scourging humanity into greater nobility. Mammon, on the other hand, only wanted to better his dad. I figured he’d turn on Gabriel as soon as she’d brought him over.” His fingers curled briefly into fists. “She was a bit more twisted than I’d anticipated.”

“How was she planning to do that?” Gabriel asked. He bit his fingertip, then drew a small sigil on the floor. It flashed red before dulling till it looked as if it’d grown into the wood. He got up and drew three more at the corners of a square, then one in the middle. When he came back to Balthazar, the demon automatically moved to nestle against him. Gabriel started to seal his cut finger, then thought the better of it and let Balthazar do it.

For a moment Balthazar merely stared at the offered finger. Then he leaned forward and opened his mouth so his tongue flowed out, twining around Gabriel’s finger. It constricted and almost immediately relaxed, slipping teasingly off as it lapped up the last few drops it’d squeezed from the cut. “The Spear of Destiny. Plus two women—twins, very strong psychics. Stronger than Constantine, but more unstable. The first one killed herself before I could prepare her. Mammon was supposed to possess one and then be cut out by the Spear of Destiny, but Constantine stopped him and Gabriel. I…heard he got Lucifer to do it. Made a bargain. It’s what he usually does.”

Gabriel rubbed the spit off his finger, then ran his hand through Balthazar’s hair. It was silky and thick, staying slightly ruffled even after he’d moved his hand to Balthazar’s neck. “Why did you come after me?”

Balthazar’s mouth moved against Gabriel’s thigh, but no words came out. His shoulders hunched and he tucked his head down, arching his neck into Gabriel’s fingers without providing an answer.

There were ways of forcing him to answer, but Gabriel felt too tired and nauseated to even consider them. In the end, he pushed Balthazar’s head off of him and got up to draw the large circle and pentacle. “Go to sleep.”

Though Balthazar didn’t get up, he also didn’t obey that, either. He rolled over to rest his chin on his arms and watch Gabriel. “Who are you summoning?”

“I don’t summon. I ask my former colleagues if they’d like to stop and chat. This is mostly to keep them from you or John.” Gabriel drew an extra sigil to protect the join of end and beginning of the line, then began to shrug off his coat.

“You know what’d work better than that? If you didn’t do it in the middle of my living room.” John had finally come out of the bathroom and was now lounging against the wall, hands half-sheathed in his pockets. The fingers of his right hand curled every so often.

Which reminded Gabriel. “I’m sorry about earlier. I forgot you didn’t smoke anymore.”

“I didn’t tell you till then,” John said, eyebrows raised. “Or is this another one of those things you can smell?”

“You wouldn’t need to smell it. Johnny, you’re a classic addict, and it shows.” Balthazar licked at the end of his words, smiling when John abruptly looked away in disgust. Then he startled when Gabriel dropped the trenchcoat on top of him, hands automatically going out to draw it down and head going up to stare at Gabriel.

Shoes clicked over John’s amused chuckle as he pushed away from the wall. He walked around the circle to stand triangulated from Gabriel and Balthazar, upper lip occasionally drawing into a faint sneer. “Cute. I take it our guest’s going to be heavenly, then.”

Gabriel turned to pick up the manuscript from the table, and so he almost missed seeing Balthazar’s slight freeze. The demon neatly covered for it by sitting up nearly at the same time, but his movements were just jerky enough to give him away. He didn’t quite move towards Gabriel, but he also suddenly didn’t seem comfortable where he was. The trenchcoat hung loosely from his shoulders, over-large folds making Balthazar look much younger and more innocent.

It was funny what the eyes did, Gabriel thought. Smell was a little less tricky—for example, it told him that John had calmed down too much. He’d thought the man had needed time to recover from…in the car…so he hadn’t been listening to whatever John had been doing in the bathroom, which Gabriel was starting to regret. “It would be a bad idea to do this outside. You already had some warding spells set up in here.”

“Yeah, and you’ve been playing with them.” John wiggled his fingers at the windows. Then he sighed and pulled up a chair, flipping it around before he took a seat. “Well, not like I’ve gotten to have much input with you so far. God forbid I accidentally invite in a demon and get eaten while you’re dialing heaven.”

“If they showed up in a skirt and batted their lashes at you, you probably would do that,” Balthazar muttered. He pushed himself onto one knee and hesitated there, eyes flicking between John and Gabriel.

Gabriel slowly walked back over, as if he preferred that side, and Balthazar sank back down. It didn’t fool John, but for some reason he chose not to comment. That was also worrying, but the first weak rays of the approaching dawn were stealing through the windows and Gabriel needed to hurry. Calling on another archangel wasn’t the hard part: catching them near enough to the earthly plane for speech to be possible was. Dawn was when they all drew nearest—dawn was the most beautiful time, the time when angels could best understand why God would bother.

The scars on Gabriel’s back suddenly itched like they hadn’t in years. The manuscript was a poisonous weight in his hand, coating it in a phantom oily slick that sank into his skin and rotted his bones.

He grimaced and shook off the feeling, ignoring how the others glanced at him. Raphael

* * *

The room suddenly filled with light. Searing white light, stinking of myrrh and juniper, that scalded Balthazar’s skin. He yanked Gabriel’s coat higher over his shoulders and scooted backwards, squinting at the being that had appeared in the middle of the circle.

Stop that, Gabriel irritably said. Or rather, impressed on the air, because he wasn’t using his voice, or for that matter, a mortal language.

Balthazar sat up straighter and grinned to himself. At least there was one benefit to letting himself be bought again—he hadn’t been able to understand the private tongue of angels before. Aside from the reek of holy good, they sounded about as cranky and uptight as the higher-ranking demons.

Why call? Aren’t you capable of—oh, Gabriel. The light dimmed in an expressive if dramatic gesture of disappointment, revealing a white-clothed, androgynously beautiful creature hovering over the circle. Angels were supposedly asexual, but the longer they walked on earth, the more they tended towards one or the other: Raphael must have been peeking at humanity an awful lot, for he had a decidedly masculine cast to his face and the arms he folded over his chest were fairly well-developed. Have you fallen down the last steps at last?

That certainly didn’t improve Gabriel’s temper. His hand curled slightly towards Balthazar and his nails briefly elongated into claws. I didn’t ask you here to discuss my personal life. There are larger matters at stake.

And what is more important than the salvation of a soul? Raphael’s wings suddenly snapped out. They were the first pair of full-angel wings that Balthazar had ever seen, and after a moment, he decided they were remarkably unimpressive. The solid white laced with golden beams of light ended up looking amorphous and utterly non-threatening; the wings of angelic half-breeds might have looked “dirtier,” but they exuded an air of coiled power that was lacking here.

John didn’t seem terribly impressed either. Actually, he was barely even looking at Raphael, choosing instead to wander around the circle and study the sigils Gabriel had used. And he…Balthazar frowned and eased himself around Gabriel’s legs, peering at the man.

The salvation of Hell, Gabriel archly suggested. He held up the manuscript so Raphael could stare at it. After a moment, Raphael’s wings flared wide and he shot up a foot, feather-tips wildly fluttering. Hell keeps things contained. Ordered, in a way. If Lucifer goes, the whole place will fall into chaos. You won’t have a war—you’ll have a cataclysm that’ll echo all the way into heaven.

Yes, Constantine was definitely snickering at the conversation. He shouldn’t have been able to understand it, but unsurprisingly, he’d found a way around that. Perhaps that kiss in the car, if such a weak word could apply…but no, that would’ve only given Gabriel blood. For it to work on John’s end, he would have had to have gotten a bit of Gabriel into his bloodstream.

Balthazar suppressed another smile. So much for Johnny’s attempts to stay a maverick. Even Balthazar had to admit that John had done quite well at keeping his independence, but he couldn’t keep it up forever. He was too strong and more importantly, too clear-sighted to not get picked up by someone—unless he wanted to drop back to the foot-soldier ranks, and John had always wanted what he thought was due to him. He wouldn’t do that. Though his luck had, infuriatingly, pulled through again, because Gabriel was definitely a cut above the usual.

Something grated. After a moment, Balthazar realized that it was his teeth locking together. He was simmering with rage, and when he figured out why, he nearly laughed out loud. Damn it all, he hadn’t even wanted this—not like he’d gotten it, and now he was already developing possessive instincts about it. But Gabriel dripped power, tangled black and white and red, and he could bite and touch Balthazar like he wanted him, and not merely like he wanted a tool. It wasn’t the kind of attitude either side had in much abundance, and John was too damn thick-headed to even understand how rare it was. Not to mention he was simply too lucky to deserve it. It annoyed.

Raphael finally descended till he was of a height with Gabriel. His wings snapped into his back and his chin tilted up so he could glower at Balthazar. And this is why you make alliances with the enemy? You shame us.

I’m not one of you now, so that would be an accomplishment. Gabriel’s voice sharpened till it was thin and pointed as a needle. He rolled his shoulders, then casually moved his feet a few inches farther apart, as if bracing himself. This is my plane.

Not naturally. You made yourself fit it. You’re not human, Raphael dismissively said. Then he shrugged and pivoted so he could look condescendingly over his shoulder. As you wish. You still may be able to do a little good as you are—Uriel is missing.

That was significant enough to distract Gabriel’s ire, which was a shame. He had been smelling deliciously of black anger, and the heat of it had nicely warmed Balthazar on the chilly floor. Uriel?

He who fathered the missing half-breed. He also developed attachments, it seems. The angle of Raphael’s long, beautifully-formed nose was begging to be broken. When he flipped out something at Gabriel, like tossing a tip to the doorman, he came close enough to having that done to send him flapping up to the ceiling. He warily eyed the flames that had sprung up along the circle’s outline. You lack respect, Gabriel. You always did.

Raphael whooshed away in an explosion of light just as Gabriel took a step forward, fist coming up. Gabriel snarled and slapped at the rays, shredding them into curling sparks that winked out of existence the moment they touched something solid. One fell on the back of Balthazar’s hand, burning so hotly that he swore and scraped his hand along the floor. Then he brought it to his mouth and sucked at the spot.

“All you need now is to get him a flea-collar and a scratching post,” John dryly said, nodding towards Balthazar. He mockingly danced back a step from Balthazar’s hiss before turning to snag his coat from a chair. The shotgun Gabriel had given him was leaning by the wall nearby, and John took that plus a duffel bag as well.

Then he headed for the door but stopped on the threshold when Gabriel called to him. “Where are you going?”

“It’s morning, so I think I’m okay. No one’s going to risk an attack in broad daylight yet, and I’ve got an appointment.” John started to step through the door, then paused. He turned back, his shoulders and the lines of his face sloping into weary impatience. “With my doctor. Who still won’t let go of the fact that my lung cancer’s magically vanished. I’ll bring back lunch, as long as you don’t have sex in my goddamned bed. All right, honey?”

Gabriel considered that without showing any emotion, then curtly nodded. With an irritated slap on the door-frame, John whisked himself out of the apartment.

Balthazar stood up and took off the trenchcoat, absently folding it up while he watched Gabriel erase the lines on the floor. His ass still ached a little and he bit back a groan, moving his hips to try and ease the pain. “You know he’s lying. He’s the only one who would know where the Spear of Destiny is now…actually, that’s probably what he’s going to get.”

“I smelled it on him. But if that’s true, I might as well let him get it himself. I’m much easier to track than he is, and I think he’s finally trying to hide.” Head cocked, Gabriel squatted on the floor for a few seconds longer. Then he got up and rolled his shoulders again so the muscles stood out through his shirt. He reached over his head and rubbed at one of his shoulderblades, where Balthazar thought he glimpsed the line of a long, ugly scar.

“He knew what you two were saying,” Balthazar added, a little absently. He sidled up a few paces, trying to make out that scar. It was in a very intriguing place for a former angel, and he started to wonder exactly how Gabriel had “walked out” on the war. It had to have been before he killed Vlad Tepes, since full angels fought demons without ever taking on their traits.

When Gabriel spun around, he caught Balthazar off-guard. He also got Balthazar by the arm, yanking him in to stare intensely at his face. “Are you sure about that?”

“I wouldn’t say so if not,” Balthazar protested. Not convincingly enough, for suddenly a tight grip had hold of his jaw, pressing hard against his windpipe so he began to wheeze. “Yes! Yes, I’m sure!”

Gabriel let go of Balthazar’s throat, but kept hold of his arm while Balthazar coughed air back into his lungs. “You don’t exactly have a reason to be honest about Constantine. In fact, you’d rather see me rip into him, wouldn’t you?”

“I’d like to see your successor sent to Hell more. Johnny’s more fun alive and suffering. Anyway, you don’t want him dead.” Balthazar untwisted his hand from Gabriel’s coat and pushed it back at him, trying not to look as bitter as he’d ended up sounding. It was just too pathetic, getting jealous because of John fucking Constantine, and over something that still might end up seeing Balthazar deported.

A hand took him by the jaw again, but this time, Gabriel wasn’t trying to break his neck. Instead he was stroking along Balthazar’s throat, warm rough fingers rubbing gently at the bruises and faint cuts. Occasionally a hint of claw would trace lightly along Balthazar’s hairline, or nick at his earlobe, loosening his muscles so he slowly sank against Gabriel. When a thumbpad ran across his mouth, he found himself willingly sucking it in, nibbling as nail turned to claw and back.

“You hated Hell,” Gabriel suddenly said.

And Balthazar was just relaxed enough to blurt out a true answer. “I always liked it here better. Even before Mammon and Gabriel offered to make it permanent.”

The fingers on Balthazar’s throat slowed even more, half-closing his eyes with their languorous caressing. He was dimly aware of breath floating over his skin, prickling at the bite that was taking longest of all his injuries to heal, and of how it skated higher till it was nearly licking at his mouth. It was as close to heaven as one could get without asking for absolution.

Then Gabriel abruptly moved away, letting go of Balthazar and snapping on his trenchcoat. He only stopped to grab the car keys and was almost out the door before Balthazar caught up. Even then, Balthazar had to run after him without shoes, which wasn’t painful for him, but was going to make it a bit harder to disguise what he was once the sidewalk had ripped off the skin of his soles. “Where are you going?”

“Where are we going,” Gabriel corrected. He opened the car door for Balthazar in a belated gesture of caring—which was mere reflex with him, Balthazar was tempted to think—before tossing something into Balthazar’s lap.

A feather. Half-crumpled, spotted with dark crusts along one edge. It scorched at Balthazar’s hands so he had to wrap it in a bit of sleeve before he could look closely at it.

“You said you could find things others couldn’t—well, how about Uriel? He should stand out nearly as much as I do.” Gabriel started the engine, then glanced over at Balthazar. He paused to take a second, longer, more assessing look. “And we should get you new clothes. And shoes.”

“If you say so,” Balthazar purred. Reckless and stupid and entirely not following the plan, but then again, he wasn’t certain that he still had one. As much as he’d been dreading the price of staying on the earthly plane, he was…beginning to like paying it.

Black gleamed over Gabriel’s eyes; his warning growl shuddered through Balthazar’s body so he dropped his eyes. He slid as the car started to pull from the curb, started to push himself up and was stopped by a hand gliding pointedly over his shoulder and across his back. Balthazar obligingly laid down and arched into the fingers tickling inside his collar, twirling the feather between his fingers. After a while, he thought he had enough of an impression to try and held out his hand. “I need a coin.”

The hand left his neck long enough to drop one into his palm, then returned to tease at the bumps of his spine. He rubbed up against it as he flipped the coin over the backs of his fingers, moving his hand from side-to-side. The coin slipped when he pointed left; he looked up at Gabriel. “Right for clothes, left for the angel.”

“Is Uriel moving?” Gabriel asked. When Balthazar shook his head, Gabriel turned the car…right. Pity he hadn’t loosened up a bit more, but then, Balthazar was thinking there would be time for that. It might even be something to look forward to.

* * *

Angel’s blood, Christ’s blood…both were necessary, John was betting, so if he had one then he was in a position to negotiate. He squinted down the street, wincing when a passing car’s chrome bounced sunlight into his face, and sped up a little once he’d spotted the diner. He sped up some more when he recognized the brown head in the window-seat.

Angela looked good, aside from the butterfly-bandage accents on her heavily bruised temple. John nodded at it as he sat down. “What happened there?”

She shot him a wary look over her eggs, fork stabbing down to pop the yolks. “Why I didn’t really want to meet you. About two minutes after you walked out of my office, I heard some fighting beneath my window and I looked out, only to have someone whack me. I tried to call you afterwards, but you haven’t been home.”

Gabriel. Jesus. John flashed back to claws and stinking breath, and shots cracking down from overhead to scare the shit out of him. The bastard must have been tracking him from the library, at the very least. “Sorry about that. I’ve been…having some problems.”

“Yeah, I can see that. What happened to your lip? And your throat…you look like someone kicked you out the back of a bus.” She cast a hasty look around, but at this hour, the diner was nearly empty. Then she grabbed John’s wrist nearly as hard as Gabriel had and leaned forward, eyes edgy and angry. “What the hell is going on? Is someone trying to bring Mammon through again?”

“Not exactly. Why—” John paused to take his plate from the cook, then turned back to frown at her. “Why would you ask that? Specifically that?”

Her lips thinned out as she leaned back, and for a moment he thought she was about to walk out on him. Then Angela picked up her knife and slashed a great gout in her eggs, letting the runny yolks bleed into the middle of her plate. The half-burned whites crumpled up around the sides, framing it like Arioch’s shattered ribs had his heart. John jerked his head away, but Angela didn’t notice. “Because it’s been—I’ve been—I hope you’re here to take it, because I can’t stand this any more. I can’t. It’s bad enough seeing--seeing--but now I’m—it’s making me dream, and I can’t—I can’t—”

“Not to make excuses, but I did warn you. And you wanted to do it anyway,” John muttered. He tried a forkful of his own eggs, only to discreetly spit it back out. And that was something, considering the kind of stuff he’d deliberately or inadvertently swallowed before. He looked more closely at the cook, who was no longer the grunting old coot he remembered, but some skinny teenager that had crack-withdrawal jitters. Great. He was even going to have to change his snack stops.

“I know, and I don’t blame you. It’s not your fault. But I can’t do this. I can’t help you with anything from your world, John…not and stay sane.” Angela drew a deep, long breath. She put her head between her hands and pressed at her ears, then sat up to look John in the eye. Her gaze was clear, lucid, and utterly determined. “I’ve been practicing. When I…try hard enough, they go away again.”

And John couldn’t really blame her, either, though he wanted to. He wanted to, so much that he could taste the bile burning the back of his mouth. She’d wanted to see and know so he’d shown her, and now she was backing out? Now she could back out? It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fucking fair, that she got to choose and he never had. “Thanks a bunch, Detective.”

“I’m sorry, John. I…” She ducked her head again. Something heavy and wrapped in cloth dropped onto his lap, then almost slid off. While he was catching it, she slipped off her stool and quietly ran out of the diner.

Smart. But then, she’d always been a smart one—smarter than her sister, by the measure of John’s experiences, and there whoever lived longest got to brag most.

He was still alive, but that was always up for grabs. He was getting really tired of that—he hadn’t been lying to Midnite when he’d said he was too old to ignore it, but lately he’d been wishing he could get a rest. Get a pair of eyes to watch his back. His bed had usually been empty, but now he was starting to feel it. Even just someone he could meet up for coffee…too bad he’d pissed off Midnite over that Haitian pot de tête. And that other little…he’d done something like that to just about everyone else that would understand, so no wonder he was sitting by himself now, chewing on bad scrambled eggs.

John absentmindedly patted at his coat. Then he caught himself and swore, snapping down his hand so fast that he clipped the edge of the counter.

Damn him, Balthazar had had a good point. This wasn’t the old way. And anyway John was sick and tired of playing by the old rules. He was tired--to hell with all of it. Angela had a point, too. Maybe…he could get out. Maybe he could get out of everything, instead of just convincing Lucifer to stop slavering over his soul.

He looked down at the bundle in his lap, then glanced at his eggs. They were looking more unappealing by the moment, so John didn’t feel bad in the least when he shoved them away. He tucked the Spear into a coat-pocket, threw a couple bills on the counter and slid off his stool. One second more to grab his duffel bag and wince at how the disassembled shotgun clattered inside it.

The cook shouted farewell in Spanish after him, to which John waved a hand over his shoulder. He swung out the door and then paused, thinking. As annoying as Gabriel had been, he had saved John’s life, and this was betraying him, in a way.

But it could also be seen as solving the problem for him, and it was certainly going to solve John’s problem, so he shoved down that niggling voice. He needed to see a succubus about a Spear.

* * *

The backroom of St. Germain’s shop was cramped with bolts of cloth jamming the walls, measuring tapes dangling like a small host of nooses and shears poking out where they were least expected. Its doors were more like large shutters with fairly wide slats, allowing him a good view of the fitting room. Balthazar clearly knew his clothing, but he’d never been to St. Germain’s, and his lapses from polished indifference into incredulous glee were…amusing. Arousing as well, which Gabriel did his best to hide from the other occupant of the room.

St. Germain looked about forty, but once one got near enough—and knew to search for it—it was patent that he was in fact much older. His skin had a translucent, brittle quality to it that vaguely reminded Gabriel of mummified skin, and his movements all had a preternatural grace to them that said he was acting to make his guests more comfortable.

“You don’t need to put on the front for me,” Gabriel snorted, drawing back from the door. He leaned against the wall and watched as St. Germain obliged, needle and thread and pins suddenly flying so fast that even Gabriel’s eyes had a hard time making out what the man was doing. Because St. Germain still was human, even if he’d achieved immortality. “So how’s your top client?”

“Oh, as finicky as always. But that’s as it should be. The Morningstar could conjure up the finest suit in the world—absolute perfection, stitches so fine that even a microscope couldn’t find them—but he appreciates flaws. He knows that they can add a special gloss that perfection could never match.” The needle and thread were set down, and then St. Germain spun about to show Gabriel the finished product. He dramatically draped it over his arm to show off the fine shimmer in the cloth. “As you do. You two have a good deal in common, you know.”

Gabriel ran his hand over the surface of the coat, palm a hair away from the fabric. When he was satisfied that St. Germain hadn’t sneaked any traps into it, he nodded. “I’m not here for a fitting. Spare me the patter.”

“You never are, and more’s the pity. I know a cut of suit that would look exquisite on you. But yes, yes, I know. You only come here when you’d like a message passed along. Well, my ears are open and hopeful as always.” St. Germain carefully folded the coat and set it aside before stepping over to a mass of brightly-colored silks. Somehow he teased out the wooden rack that lay at its center and began to flip through it, stroking this tie and that before he moved on.

“I just want him to know I’m taking care of things, so there’s no need for him to…interfere. His position is secure; I have no interest in tipping the balance one way or the other.” The warning hidden within the words wasn’t terribly subtle, but considering that Lucifer was short a Duke, subtlety would have come off as derisive. And while Gabriel hadn’t gained any love for Lucifer over the centuries, he also didn’t see any point in antagonizing him more than he had to.

Tsking like a mother hen, St. Germain slipped one tie from the rack and held it out for Gabriel to check. Once it was approved, the tailor folded the coat over his arm and laid the tie on top of it. Then he nodded at the door, but before Gabriel could push it open for him, he spoke. “But you already have, Gabriel. Or else what are you doing with him?”

St. Germain pushed himself out, leaving an irked Gabriel to follow. Sometimes he had an urge to remind St. Germain that immunity given by two sides didn’t necessarily matter to the third. And then he remembered that technically, he wasn’t supposed to have a side. Once he did, he’d have to go to battle again. “Fine. I have no interest in tipping it further.”

“A commendable goal,” St. Germain murmured. He handed Balthazar the tie as if he were passing over the Holy Grail, then held up the coat for the demon, professionally flicking the sleeves so they hung straight as he did. “Certainly my business will appreciate it.”

Gabriel decided he’d go take care of the bill. Just as he was wrapping that up, Balthazar glided out of the fitting room with an air of smugness that was palpable. He’d gotten gel from somewhere to slick back his hair, which made him resemble a particularly noxious stockbroker Gabriel had had to kill two years back for rediscovering Dr. Jekyll’s formula.

“Who was that?” Balthazar asked as soon as they were in the elevator. He caught sight of his reflection in the doors and unconsciously sighed in appreciation. Then he frowned, looked closer, and made a slight adjustment to his tie. “You know, you could’ve done with a new suit as well. Or at least a new coat—yours is starting to smell a bit odd.”

Actually, it’d smelled like that for the past five years, ever since Gabriel had gotten Nicki to anoint it with the musk oil of a manticore, thus rendering it flame-proof. He glanced at his preening…Gabriel bit down and made himself acknowledge it…familiar, wondering if shopping always turned Balthazar into an idiot. A low growling in his gut made a suggestion.

“Oh, come on. You’ve been around too long to interrupt a hunt to buy clothes, though the gesture was very much appreciated. He has to be somebody important.” The elevator dinged just as Balthazar finished speaking. He waited one beat for an answer. Then he looked over Gabriel, shrugged as if to say what else could be expected, and started to saunter out the doors.

Gabriel stopped gritting his teeth and let the growl pass his lips. He saw Balthazar’s back stiffen, but only for a moment because after that, he’d wrenched Balthazar up against him. Balthazar actually struggled, which Gabriel dealt with by letting it swing him around to the button panel. He slammed his elbow into the button for the basement floor and the doors closed again, just before they would’ve been visible to anyone waiting for that elevator.

Then he braced his feet on the floor and twisted Balthazar’s wrists up in front of him till the demon was whimpering and gasping, tossing his head about in an effort to keep Gabriel away. It was a pitiful attempt and Gabriel would’ve laughed if he wasn’t so busy listening to Balthazar’s pulse suddenly pound like the blood was trying to beat its way out of the arteries. He waited till Balthazar had swung his head one way, then darted down. Only a mouthful, only enough blood to scald the nerves in his tongue raw, because this wasn’t the time or the place. But it was so delicious that it took all of Gabriel’s will to pull away.

The elevator doors were standing open, but neither of them was in any condition to walk out. The doors started to close and Gabriel belatedly elbowed the ‘stall’ button. Then he slowly loosened his grip on Balthazar’s wrists. He completely let go a second later, yawning wide and then letting his teeth audibly click back to human dimensions. Balthazar didn’t respond, staying frozen with his head bent and slightly tilted to the side, his hands pressed up against his breast.

“I may not get along with my old colleagues, but that doesn’t mean I sympathize with the other side. Or that I’m willing to surrender everything in my attempt to stay neutral.” Gabriel took a deep breath and filled his nose with the spicy, pungent smell of Balthazar’s blood. It was richer than human blood, a little more thick so the smooth burn of the aftertaste still warmed Gabriel’s throat. He tucked his head against Balthazar’s head and took a deep whiff, nuzzling downwards to lick shut the wounds just as a drop was about to mar Balthazar’s collar.

His black streak was so near the surface that he almost didn’t notice the press of Balthazar back into him, the slight rubbing of Balthazar’s head against his own. It was…strangely right and wrong at the same time. It—mixed matters.

Gabriel snapped his head up and shook it hard, trying to substitute worry about the manuscript and everything else for…whatever knife he’d almost allowed to cut him. He looked up and hazily saw the doors shutting again, so he lunged sideways to slam the ‘door open’ button. Doing that jostled Balthazar away and turned him so Gabriel could see the daze still lingering on his face. He seemed about to say something, but Gabriel pushed them out of the elevator first.

“That was St. Germain,” he told Balthazar. His breath was still damnably short and his eyes wouldn’t stop straying to Balthazar’s rumpled hair. Nor would the little laughing shadows that frolicked and bit playfully at his heels stop saying how much better the demon looked with a confused expression and some strands dangling in his eyes. “Lucifer’s tailor.”

Balthazar ran that through his mind as he walked around the car. Then, oddly enough, he yanked open the door as if he were tearing off someone’s head. When Gabriel got inside, he saw that Balthazar was drumming angrily on the window. He didn’t turn to look at Gabriel, but instead just started to flip his coin over his fingers. “Take a left, a left…and then a right at the second street. How do you say that sort of thing with a straight face?”

Gabriel’s trenchcoat had bunched up while he was distracted, so he took a moment to straighten it out before he started the car. It also gave him time to figure out what was going on here; he could have sworn that Balthazar hated how easily he gave in to Gabriel. Yet he also reacted badly to being…being treated like something like how the Vatican had treated Gabriel, patting him on the head and then feeding him to the mobs. And Gabriel thought he’d learned from that, hypocritical fool that he was. “I practice in front of a mirror.”

The coin stopped between the third and fourth knuckles. Then it disappeared into Balthazar’s palm as he twisted to look incredulously at Gabriel. His eyes flicked up, down, and finally settled on a spot slightly below Gabriel’s eyes. “So you’ve got a sense of humor. That’s small consolation.”

“I didn’t realize demons needed consolation,” Gabriel grated out. Guilty as he felt, he couldn’t stand up to his temper. And when that rose, his control thinned till it was the most delicate of films holding back his baser compulsions.

“I need to know what you want, otherwise this’ll never work. I—” Balthazar choked, though this time Gabriel had merely grabbed him by the arm instead of by the throat.

He didn’t physically struggle when Gabriel pulled him across the car. Not even when Gabriel bent his arm up behind his back till the bones creaked. But his eyes were slices into some kind of internal war that crested a moment before he dropped his head.

“So you can decide whether or not this works?” Gabriel softly said, tipping Balthazar’s chin up again. He was dimly aware that he shouldn’t be talking like this, shouldn’t have his hands wrenching flesh like this, but he couldn’t manage to care. He watched Balthazar’s lips circle around a soundless gasp, watched lashes flutter and head loll forward.

And finally he had to succumb to the craving for that taste, for a mouth rent raw by his own mouth, for a squirming tongue pinned to his teeth. For the kind of heat that was neither given or taken, but somehow, simply was.

Somewhere along the line, he let go of Balthazar’s wrist and buried his hands in Balthazar’s hair, twisting its silk around his fingers. A couple strands ripped out, but Balthazar didn’t seem to notice, sliding his hands up beneath Gabriel’s coat to run over Gabriel’s back. He periodically dug his nails in so the points went through Gabriel’s shirt, leaving a trail of prickles as he worked his way up—

--Gabriel’s hand clamped down on the back of Balthazar’s neck and he yanked the demon off, sight going red in a way that had nothing to do with how much Balthazar’s mouth tasted like damnation, and how much Gabriel liked it. He barely remembered not to break Balthazar’s neck before he flung him back into the passenger seat. Then Gabriel jerked himself around and clutched at the wheel, trying to breathe again. After a moment, he had gotten enough of himself in hand to start the car and back it out of the space.

Balthazar stayed slumped where Gabriel had tossed him, blinking at nothing. Gabriel was on the verge of asking if he’d been concussed when Balthazar finally moved, lifting a hand to rub along his mangled lip. He looked at the trace of blood left on his fingers, then licked it off. Then he raised his hands to his hair, paused to look at Gabriel, and lowered his hands to leave it disheveled. “What were those from?”

The scars in question throbbed, and for once the sensation even beat out the black cravings for Gabriel’s attention. “My wings,” he curtly said.

The answer didn’t surprise Balthazar, who wisely shut up except to give directions whenever they approached an intersection. Once he rubbed his fingers over his neck, tugging at his tie so his collar wouldn’t rub so much against the bite-mark.

“What are you doing?” Gabriel finally asked. He parked the car and put his hand on the door-handle, but didn’t get out quite out.

“We’re a block away. I don’t know which building.” Something white and fluffy twirled between Balthazar’s thumb and forefinger: Uriel’s feather. Then it flared up, crisped to black with a tiny stream of smoke spiraling towards the ceiling. It smelled like incense to Gabriel, nothing unpleasant, but he noticed that Balthazar tried to covertly wave the smoke away from himself.

Balthazar scraped the ash off with a nail and flicked it onto the floor. Then he flipped up his coin, caught it, and leaned over to tuck it into Gabriel’s pocket. He stayed bent over Gabriel’s legs, tilting the curve of his neck so it just grazed against Gabriel’s mouth. “Placing a final bet, I suppose.”

Gabriel raised his hand and let it hover over Balthazar’s shoulder. Then he brought it down, slid it slowly up to Balthazar’s neck and moved Balthazar slightly so he could trace over the scabs and the bruised vein with his tongue. He felt Balthazar shudder, breathe shakily out. Then, so gradually that Gabriel couldn’t tell when it had begun, the muscles beneath his neck relaxed. Acquiesced to the pressure he put on them.

A second later, they both flew apart, snarling at the outside. Gabriel whipped himself out of the car and slid his rifle from his coat, clicking off the safety as he did. On the other side, Balthazar was cursing so violently that the plants near him began to brown. “Constantine. You stupid shit--”

Now they knew which house. It was still broad daylight, but Gabriel let the shadows flow around him till his pack rose around his legs. Above them, clouds were rapidly gathering as Uriel prepared to meet them, turning this little patch of the earth abnormally dark. Almost as dark as night…

Gabriel’s mouth stretched into a feral smile. He had a hunger, and he could finally loose it.

* * *

John stopped on the doorstep to quickly check over himself. He hadn’t had any sleep in over twenty-four hours and he couldn’t do anything about his bloodshot eyes, but he did his best to smooth the wrinkles from his shirt and pants. For good measure he straightened his tie. Then he pressed the buzzer to Ellie’s little nondescript bungalow.

Usually she answered before his finger even hit the bell, but today she was late. He frowned and pressed again, not worrying yet because occasionally he did walk in when Ellie was ‘entertaining,’ or ‘freshening up.’

But when John managed to count to twenty before he heard footsteps, he knew something was wrong. He backed off the steps and yanked open the zipper to his bag, but before he could get the shotgun reassembled, the door disappeared.

Actually, it was sucked inward, and he went with it. He desperately grabbed for something and barely caught the door-frame, but his grip on that lasted mere seconds before the wood ripped free. John went flying into the dark house, then slammed hard against a wall. He was numb for the first moment, but by the time he’d fallen to the floor, his body was exploding with pain. He tried to push himself up only to have his limbs riot against him, the agony twisting him into a fetal curl around his bag that had tangled about him. Up ahead he was aware of two figures standing in a square of light—he thought he recognized them. Then the door rebuilt itself to block out the light and in the darkness he knew he recognized them. Her, anyway.

“Hey, Gabriel. How are things?” John wheezed. His chest felt like someone had whacked it a hundred times with a two-by-four, and when he tried to hump himself around, his back turned into a string of mini explosions along his spine. He wanted to black out, but not—not with—John gritted his teeth and made himself stay awake.

Pain. Just pain. He’d had worse. And in front of the sweetly smiling bitch, too, so he didn’t have to worry about his dignity.

The other one was male, or male-looking, and the resemblance was unmistakable. “And hello, Daddy. Having a little family reunion, are we?”

“Always with the ready quip,” Gabriel cooed. Then her face hardened and she stalked towards John, hands hanging by her hips but turned outward so he could see how her fingers were frozen in a clawing rictus.

“And the usefulness of showing up at the wrong time with the wrong things,” Uriel chimed in. He stayed by the staircase and leafed through a…sheaf of papers that looked a hell of a lot like what a thesis paper would look like minus its cover. His wings were still whole, but even in the dark they looked much blacker than they should have been, as if they’d been dipped in charcoal.

John curled tighter around himself, paying more attention to Gabriel. His right hand had landed over his bag and was mostly hidden from her view; he used it to rummage as quietly and frantically as he could for the shotgun. He felt the edge of one half and pulled it slightly out, but it wasn’t the butt-end, damn it. Then he had a burst of inspiration and heaved himself up so he was on hands and knees, with the former neatly in the bag. His panting for air wasn’t acting—his lungs hurt almost as badly as when he’d had cancer. “Where’s Ellie?”

“You know, John, I find it commendable that you care even about your pathetic, hopelessly degenerate friends on the other side. Commendable, but ultimately pointless. Though helpfully predictable.” As she neared him, Gabriel began to circle like a cat would with a mouse. She looked like she’d had a rough three weeks and only recently had gotten scrubbed up nice again, and of course the insanity was still there.

Behind her, Uriel casually held up a piece of fabric so ripped and bloody that John almost didn’t recognize it. But he did, and even as the rage surged in his throat, his gut twisted into a cold knot. God, Angela had been smart. He couldn’t blame her now. Not now.

“You’re mourning,” Gabriel said in wonder. She knelt swiftly, gracefully in front of John and lifted her hand to his cheek as if she was going to cup it. Then she suddenly punched him, her face twisting with brutal hatred. “You should, you—”

Except John had gotten his hands on both pieces of the shotgun, and he came up swinging them. The muzzle half caught Gabriel on the cheekbone and he heard it breaking as she reeled backward, crying out. He kept rolling into the corner and there he feverishly snapped off the safety, then spun to aim at Uriel, who’d leaped into the air as soon as Gabriel had cried out. John let off both barrels just as Uriel’s nails touched his cheek.

Uriel was blown backward by the blasts, while the recoil sent a splattered John back into the wall. His jaw rattled shut with the impact and once again he had to fight off black-out as he scrambled for the front door. But just as soon as he got up, he went down again. John twisted around while swinging with the muzzle-half, but his wrist was caught in an iron grip. He had a glimpse of Gabriel’s enraged face just before her fist hit his temple. His last thought was, inanely enough, of how angels really didn’t bleed before they fell—they only oozed a kind of perfumed oil.

He came to in a groaning body that seemed to be nothing but vicious bruising; a slight flex told him that maybe he should add a couple cracked ribs to that count as well. His hands were tied together behind his back, and he’d been shoved to the side so Gabriel and Uriel could draw symbols on the floor. John tried not to make it too obvious that he was awake, but Gabriel noticed anyway and smiled at him. “Hello, John.”

She padded over to slip her hand into his coat, then slapped him when he tried to twist away. While his head reeled back into place, she took the Spear from him.

“My greatest thanks to you, Mr. Constantine,” Uriel said without a trace of irony. His eyes were bright and his smile as hollow and wrong as his damn daughter’s was. “With your help and my daughter’s sacrifice, but the Traitor shall also at last receive his scourging.”

John snorted in disbelief. “By replacing him with you? How the fuck is that supposed to work? You still have Hell.”

“But Hell is necessary. Mortals never stop to think unless they have a punishment to fear,” Uriel gently answered. He bent down to check on something, his wings folding to let Gabriel pass behind him. “Lucifer has abused the idea, used it to further his own selfish struggle against God. We shall set Hell to the use God intended it for.”

“Forgive me if my religion’s a little rusty, but I thought Hell sprang into being around Lucifer after he fell, as a perversion of God’s creation. Not the other way around.” The knots were not only tight, but also cabbalistic, which meant John couldn’t untie them without menorah oil from the Temple Mount, some hyssop and a blessed knife. He wrestled with them anyway, biting back moans at how that jarred his ribs.

Gabriel chuckled. She was insane, but something exceptionally amiss in that sound made John look up. The bitch was standing directly behind Uriel, one hand lightly resting on one of his wings. “He’s right, Father.”

And then she yanked Uriel’s wing out straight. Off-guard, he teetered wildly, then twisted, but not soon enough for the Spear to miss its aim. The whole house seemed to shake as Uriel beat out in agonized surprise with his wings—Gabriel was flung against the stairs, but Uriel’s wing went with her. Uriel spun around so John got a good view of the gaping wound that was left. He saw how the sweet, light oil suddenly darkened to pale pink, scent rotting from the best of all flowers to slaughtered meat. A little bit even splashed over his cheek.

“Daughter…” Uriel gasped, sounding utterly shocked. If he didn’t do something about the blood sluicing down his back, he was going to be in shock.

“And thank you, Father. Thank you for giving your blood so that I can rule Hell, and make my own creation.” The lines of Gabriel’s face hardened and twisted as her voice dropped, roughened. She flicked the blood off the Spear, then stalked around the hall; Uriel belatedly stumbled away from her, but he was visibly failing. “One where I will not be betrayed, one where I will not be thrown aside after the first failure…one where I will not have to depend on the grace of others,” she continued, nearly snarling. “Where I won’t be a sacrifice to someone else’s ambitions.”

John scrunched himself as far back as he could, watching it all in horrified fascination. This was, by far, the worst surprise he’d ever had. He’d thought he could just pacify Lucifer with the Spear, trade away his sight, and had that ever backfired.

He should have known better. It wasn’t an addiction—it was a faith, of sorts. It was something he knew and believed, and he did best when he acknowledged that. Worst when he tried to pretend it wasn’t there like every other schmuck in the world. Stepping out wasn’t an option, so what he should have done was step further in and just plunge his hands down till he reached bottom, if there even was a bottom.

What he should have done, frankly, was take up Gabriel on that ‘put you back together around me’ offer. He wanted in on a higher level, and he wanted company that would understand, and he wanted something to keep him interested. Instead he was watching bitch-Gabriel tear apart her father just before she kicked Lucifer out of Hell. John had no illusions, and so he could see clearly enough that a smarmy, self-absorbed, prideful Devil was better than a blindly righteous one.

Gabriel danced on the balls of her feet, eyes locked on her father’s as he weaved across the other side of the room. He suddenly made a desperate lurch to the side, but she had picked up something of mortal instinct for the kill and she was there first, wrenching his wing up so she could saw through it. She got it halfway cut off before he struggled loose, screaming incoherently as his wing spasmed. White bone stuck grotesquely out of reddening flesh. Gobbets and gouts of blood sprayed all over the place, with an extra spout when Uriel’s wingtip caught on something and he tried to yank it free with his hands, only to end up snapping a bone. He collapsed with a thin yell, body crumpling into a defenseless heap.

“And now—” Gabriel started to say, only she’d ended up standing before the front door. And once again, the front door exploded.

In the middle of the splinters streamed something black and growling and furious. The wolves leaped at Gabriel and in a moment her arms were slashed all over. She screamed and cut at them with the Spear, bringing down a few, but more were coming through and one bit at her hand. In her panic to get away she nearly, nearly dropped the Spear. But no, the bitch still had it when she came running towards John.

He didn’t think about it, but just kicked out; the pair of idiots hadn’t bothered to tie his ankles. Gabriel went down in a pile of flailing limbs, too hysterical to get back up. John ripped his wrists down along the backs of his legs, frantically contorting till he’d gotten them around to the front. Almost pulled out his shoulders doing it, but he had his hands out by the time Gabriel finally started to rise again.

He grabbed for her ankle and yanked her back down, then scrambled up to grab for the Spear. But she recovered too fast and stabbed at him with it, nicking his sleeve but missing his arm. He dodged sideways and fisted his hands in her clothing instead, using the grip to slam her body against the floor. No divine strength or endurance now, so she damned well felt that. He slammed her down a last time just because of the shit she’d put him through, then got his hands on the Spear. John had just wrenched it free when she snarled and rolled up again to seize his arms. She twisted them around so the Spear pointed at his throat.

He kicked and fought and writhed so twice the point buried itself in the floor instead, but he was still weak from hitting the wall earlier. And mortal though she was, Gabriel was still stronger than a normal person.

“Get down!” someone yelled—Balthazar? Balthazar. Balthazar with a rifle.

Maybe John was concussed or something, but he didn’t question it. He just slammed his head back so the shot—

--well, it would have hit Gabriel, but for Uriel suddenly throwing himself into it. John could hear Balthazar cursing, and then there was an earth-shaking thump as something smashed into Uriel. At the same time, Gabriel screamed and forced the Spear down.

John’s arms failed. He twisted aside as far as he could, but all that did was make it go into his shoulder instead of his throat. There was ice, and then there was fire, flaring more and more intensely as it traveled up his arm and down his chest. He snarled and with the last of his strength, flung off Gabriel. Held onto the Spear.

She hit the ground, and then he heard her running away. He didn’t see her. Actually, he didn’t see a lot—his shoulder was starting to go numb and his vision was blurring in a—no. Goddamn it, no. No.

“John?” Someone levered him up, blocked his weak swing with the Spear. Other Gabriel. He smelled like angel blood, but beneath that, he smelled sweet. And where he touched John, the pain eased. “John?”

“She hit the artery,” Balthazar said. He sounded like he was commenting on the weather; John swore at him and he laughed, which came out much more pained and nervy. “He’ll bleed out in another minute.”

“Fucking won’t. Gab—Gabriel, listen—your spit, my arm earlier—I want to—” John tried to pull himself up Gabriel, but his arms weren’t working. He heard Gabriel start to talk about if John knew, and he had to snicker. “Fucking do, all right? I’m John Constantine--I know. I want—not die—you—”

The Spear was pried from his hand. He was turned over and pushed into a puddle of something that burned in his nose. What, Gabriel wanted to drown him first? “What—”

“Just drink it. Now.” Gabriel pressed his hand against the middle of John’s back, forcing him into it so his mouth and nose was covered and he had no choice.

He lapped, sucked, sneezed some out and sucked up more. It got easier after a little while. Things hurt less. And then it started to feel better, and it started to taste better—taste good so he struggled when Gabriel lifted him from it, but then Gabriel shoved more into his mouth and that tasted spectacular. He grabbed onto Gabriel’s hand and drank till his head was swimming, drank till it turned red and then till it turned black and he was dizzy and warm and God. He loved it.

* * *

Gabriel flopped back against the wall and waited for his strength to come back, cradling an unconscious John. He looked blindly once around the room, then blinked and scanned it with comprehension. Uriel was dead, with such an extreme look of sorrow on his face that Gabriel almost didn’t curse him for what he’d done. His daughter was long gone with her copy of the manuscript, and from the state of things, neither Gabriel nor Balthazar had the strength to go chasing her now.

Balthazar had taken care of most of the spells that had been keeping them out of the house, and it showed. His skin was a drained white and his hands were charred; he kept them bundled up in his ripped sleeves, but occasionally his grip would loosen so Gabriel could glimpse char-streaked bone, shriveled flesh. It’d grow back, but it would take a while.

“She has enough of Uriel’s blood soaked in her clothes to do it, doesn’t she?” Balthazar said, dragging himself over. He collapsed besides Gabriel, too tired to even take a swipe at John.

“I think so. But she still needs the Spear. It’s—” Gabriel’s old reticence made him hesitate, but he finally decided that there was no point in holding back now. And besides, Balthazar had helped save a man he seemed to detest--because Gabriel had told him to. “It’s the only thing that can wound Lucifer. He can’t even touch it without receiving hurt.”

He shifted John to free one arm, then bit his sleeve open. Something bumped his leg before he could also bite into his wrist: Balthazar staring at him with a look that was as near to concern as a demon could get. It probably was because if Gabriel passed out, then Balthazar automatically did as well, but nevertheless it gave Gabriel pause. “Didn’t you pour all you could down Johnny’s throat?”

“Not quite. He had some of Uriel’s blood to even out the demon in mine. And…and I had a good feed,” Gabriel finished, grimacing. He slashed a shallow cut in his wrist, then held it to Balthazar’s mouth.

Balthazar lapped sluggishly at it for about thirty seconds before crumpling up into half-consciousness. Gabriel sealed his wound himself and stared down at the demon and the man lying across him. Despite all his care, he’d ended up here anyway. He wondered how long before it inevitably turned on him.

Snorting to himself, Gabriel grimly got to his feet. He bent over to take hold of the other two, then set about getting them out of there.

Chapter 5: Dancing

Chapter Text

John woke up in a bed. His body felt as if it’d transmuted to lead while he had slept except for his head, which someone had replaced with a throbbing sore. He tried to move and had to stop immediately because of the nausea, falling face-first into the sheets. The sheets got up his nose so he sneezed, and God, did that hurt. It felt like somebody had sunk hooks into all his ribs and then tried to pull them out all at once.

He lay still for a moment, pulling his muddled thoughts together. Bed. Lumpy where his bed was lumpy, but clean. Sheets were clean and smelled nice. He hadn’t had time to do his laundry in…a while. So that was interesting.

“Rise and shine, Johnny,” came a coo from one corner. The mattress dipped besides John as Balthazar flopped down.

Trying to slap him revealed to John that his muscles were completely unstrung. The second mouthful of bedsheets didn’t taste much better than the first had, but at least it didn’t try to asphyxiate him. He spat that out and pressed his forehead into the mattress, gathering up his strength. Then he shoved up…and rolled onto his side, gasping for breath.

“Or not,” Balthazar muttered. He was lying on his side, facing John, and apparently wearing nothing but one of John’s stolen shirts. His hair was damp and strips of it were plastered to the sides of his face.

“Fucking one-night-stand from hell…” John gritted his teeth and tried to sit up again. This time, he made it, but his vision blacked out so he just had to sit there. Eventually it wandered back and he could take a good look around. Definitely his apartment, then. He’d been wondering because of the sheets, but that scorch on the wall was from the accident with the Ring of Surtur, and that faint stink from the bathroom was because he still hadn’t quite fixed what Angela had done to his plumbing.

Angela. Diner. Ellie—John’s headache spiked and he dropped his head, pressing the heel of one hand against his eye. After a moment, the urge to kick something passed. Which was good, because if he had tried to do that, he had a feeling the result would have been incredibly embarrassing. And not in front of…Balthazar. Gabriel. Two Gabriels and Uriel and oh, Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary.

“You weren’t that memorable.” Balthazar laughed at the glare John shot him. His amusement was limited only to his voice; his eyes glittered hard and dark as obsidian knives, and the way he licked his lip was hungry for blood. “I’m joking—I’m not interested in trying to have sex with a coma patient. Don’t panic, Johnny-boy. You asked for all of this.”

John rubbed the crusts out of his eyes, then raked his hands through his hair. He took another look around the room, and this time he spotted the shotgun leaning against the wall. His mouth tasted cottony and he wanted to spit so that would go away, only he suspected if he did, he’d end up having an attack of dry heaves. “I didn’t ask for you.”

“Oh, you did. ‘I’m John Constantine--I know.’ Well, now you’re stuck. There’s no getting out of this noose. You fucked up. Only this time you had to go and fuck up everything else.” The bitterness in Balthazar’s voice was could have taken on a life of its own, it was so intense. He looked away, snarling, and then suddenly flipped around to take a swipe at John.

“Jesus!” One second later, John was on the damn floor with bruises all sounding off. Part of the sheets had tangled around his legs and he angrily ripped them off, then flung them back into Balthazar’s face. He surged after them, hooking his arms over the edge of the bed and groping for the bastard.

But Balthazar was in better condition than he was and slipped out from under John’s arms, sliding around to the headboard. He mockingly waggled his bandaged hand at John. “Nervous? I hope so.”

“What the fuck is your—never mind. Where’s Gabriel?” A growling sound, low and shockingly near, startled John into whipping around. Then he figured out that it’d come from his stomach and he winced, wrapping an arm around himself. He could feel the damn smirk on Balthazar’s face like a bad rash.

He was almost happy for it, because that meant he was distracted from determining exactly what he was hungry for.

“Where do you think? He’s out trying to find the bitch, convince his heavenly contacts that killing Uriel was necessary, and avoid Lucifer at all costs,” Balthazar snapped. He pushed his hair out of his face before swinging his legs over the side of the bed and lurching to his feet.

There were more bandages winding around his calves and ankles, and between his thighs was the dark shadow of deep bruising. A closer look told John those bruises were pretty fresh. Maybe a couple hours old, compared to the dried blood that spotted the wraps around Balthazar’s legs.

He grimaced and turned away, rubbing at his shoulder. Then a memory slapped into John, whiting out the weird resentment that had crept up on him, and he yanked down his shirt. It took a lot of twisting and craning around, but eventually he determined that one, he had a long, ragged scar running across his shoulder, and two, bite-wounds didn’t form any part of it. John felt up his throat just to make sure, and then flipped aside the sheets to check out the rest of himself. No bites. No pants or boxers, either. Shit. Another thing he didn’t want to think through.

“That’s also why he’s out. He didn’t want to accidentally have you shove your neck at him.” Balthazar had only gone to the table against the wall to rummage through a heap of things on it. He limped back and crawled onto the bed, breath giving out on him. In one hand was clutched something shiny—a coin, which he started flipping as soon as his feet lifted off the ground. He rested his head on his arm and watched it dance over his fingers, but only till it’d gone back and forth once. Then he abruptly snapped it into his fist and rolled over, upper lip lifting into a snarl.

“What, do you miss him or something?” John stared incredulously at Balthazar. When he spotted the flush dusting Balthazar’s cheek, he nearly keeled over from the shock. “You know, all those times you tried to beat the shit out of me and get me killed and get my friends killed weren’t scary. But this is.”

First Balthazar’s eyes flicked over, and then he turned over and up so he was kneeling in front of John, flicking the coin so it nearly hit John’s nose. When John smacked it out of the way, Balthazar took advantage of the distraction to grab John’s wrist. “Constantine, do try to think. People would like to see us in Hell. I don’t want to return, and I’ll presume that neither do you. Now, why aren’t we in Hell?”

“Because of Gabriel,” John replied, yanking at his wrist.

Instead of letting go or fighting him, Balthazar just went with it. They toppled over backwards and before John could right himself, Balthazar had straddled his waist. Arrogant bastard apparently didn’t believe in underwear; when he leaned forward, his prick pressed right into John’s stomach.

“No, because Gabriel is alive and has a preference for this plane,” Balthazar hissed, spittle flecking against the side of John’s face. John swung at him but he caught it and slammed down that wrist on the other side of John’s head. He was so close that John could not only feel his breath, but could also hear the rapid, angry beating of his tongue against his gritted teeth. “And because he’s taken us. Now, if he should happen to die, or otherwise end up destined for Hell—”

“—we go with him. I’m not a magical dunce.” Everything still hurt, but being pissed off was a damn good general painkiller, and John certainly was that. He abruptly relaxed, then threw himself forward.

It wasn’t enough to dislodge Balthazar, but it got his hands free, and free hands meant John could make a grab for Balthazar’s throat. He got one hand around it, but then something whacked him in the side and his ribs failed to put up a fight. The lapse let Balthazar seize John’s wrist, yank him off-balance, and thus send them both over.

It was a short fight. They were both in pain, weak, and besides, the fucking sheets kept wrapping around their limbs like Gabriel was around to referee in spirit. Finally John pushed Balthazar off of him and collapsed onto his stomach, wheezing into the mattress. After a moment, he twisted his leg and arm free and kicked the goddamned blankets off the bed. Most of Balthazar’s bandages, which had unraveled during the wrestling, went with them. “What is your problem?”

“You truly want to know?” Balthazar gasped. One of his hand-wraps was unraveling and partially tangled around the left head-post. He was on his back with his arms flung limply over his head, and his eyes were closed in genuine exhaustion. “Your incredible stupidity, Constantine. He didn’t bite you—you drank from him.”

John’s headache blew back full force, and he had to forego answering Balthazar in order to fight it back down. He pressed his hands against his head, pushing away the hair, and then he rubbed his palms over his face. Fuck. This was bad. This was really bad. This was—

--he wanted to eat some eggs. Eggs, and not blood, which was what he’d been dreading. Then again, he dimly remembered Gabriel shoving him into a pool of something before feeding him from a slashed wrist. So maybe it wasn’t all like it should be, but apparently enough of it was to piss off Balthazar. Demon drinks from victim first, then gives blood equaled familiar. The other way around equaled…except John hadn’t finished the deal, which might or might not explain why he still felt more or less human. “What the fuck else did I have?”

“Some of Uriel’s blood. If you sealed it, you’d get a nice set of fangs, perhaps, and a much longer life, but otherwise you’ll probably stay as you are,” Balthazar muttered. “You ignorant cocky piece of mortal shit.”

“Aw, Balthazar. Are you jealous? Wanted Gabriel all to yourself, did you?” John pushed himself up and elbow-walked over to peer down into Balthazar’s face. He smirked because that was one of his two reflexes around Balthazar, and he felt too shit to go with snarling rage. As for thinking—well, he was busy processing things like getting yanked from death a third time and making unbreakable pacts with former angels that came with irritating half-breeds attached. Oh, yeah, and pretty much ensuring that he was in till the bitter, fire-and-brimstone end. “You’re really pathetic, you know that? I mean, here you are still smelling like his fucking cock, and you’re—”

Eyes still closed, Balthazar shoved at John’s face. He really was tired, because when John clawed down his hand, he didn’t bother pulling it away. “Johnny-boy, try to look at the big picture for a moment. Lucifer wants you like he hasn’t wanted a mortal since Jesus Christ himself. Only now Gabriel’s got you—partly. Irrelevant, anyway. He’ll go to war over you either way, and I’ll be sucked into Hell if he loses, and it’ll all be your damn fault.”

Good point, John had to admit. As powerful as Gabriel was, he wasn’t God, or the Adversary. He might be able to maim Lucifer, but he couldn’t win. Normally the threat of serious mauling would make Lucifer think twice because of how delicate his stalemate with God was, but he’d been known to take risks with that if he was angry enough. Balthazar probably wouldn’t do it, but John would, and John wasn’t bragging about that. It wasn’t bragging material.

And that was what was eating at Balthazar: Gabriel would declare war over John, because John had lost too much blood for Gabriel to risk drinking and so Gabriel had brought him over as a…mate, John thought with a wince. Whereas he’d made Balthazar a familiar, and even if he treated Balthazar more like a companion, there was a difference. John was almost sympathetic. “Serves you right. Now do you understand why we humans get so worked up when you threaten our loved ones?”

Balthazar went stiff except for his eyes, which snapped open. Rage boiled there for a single second before it roared over the edge.

Then Balthazar was up and choking John with one hand because his other hand had gotten its bandages tangled in the headboard. He was jerking at it so hard that the whole bed was groaning, but he couldn’t get it free. That distracted him long enough for John to right himself and dig his feet into the mattress, then slam forward.

They hit the wall in a smashed knot of limbs. Knee in John’s gut, his own knee grinding up between Balthazar’s legs to work over those tender bruises. His nose ended up crushed into Balthazar’s jaw; he would have bitten the bastard if he could’ve gotten the room to open his mouth, but he didn’t. Balthazar had no such problems and was chewing away on John’s collarbone. Shrugging and ramming a shoulder into Balthazar’s mouth knocked him off, but only for a couple seconds at a time. John tried to yank the bastard off, but one arm was trapped beneath Balthazar’s hip and the other was busy keeping the grip on his throat loose enough to allow for breathing. He snarled and did what was left: shoved his knee higher, aiming to impact Balthazar’s balls back into his squirming body.

It didn’t work. Not really, because while Balthazar gasped and arched up and away, it damn well wasn’t in pain. And when Balthazar’s head went up, John’s was freed to come round, and in true dumb-fortune style, they collided. His mouth hit a corner of Balthazar’s, running up against Balthazar’s tongue, and then slid sideways to get better coverage. Why John wanted that, he had no idea, but he did and he got it and everything else aside, Balthazar knew how to tongue-fuck.

Maybe it was self-preservation kicking in, because rolling around trying to get beneath Balthazar’s shirt was a hell of a lot less painful than rolling around trying to get beneath Balthazar’s skin. Besides, John ended up doing both anyway to judge by the startled way Balthazar kissed back, tongue moving forward on instinct while the rest of his mouth stayed slack. He went with it, pushing his hand up Balthazar’s chest to tweak at a nipple, and was rewarded with a twitching prick rubbing against his leg and a hand raking down his back.

Halfway to his waist, the hand lost its way and slid to grab at the bed. Then Balthazar ripped away his mouth and stared up at John, nothing but thought-fragments showing in those big eyes. Nice look on him. “Have you lost your mind?”

“No, this is me thinking.” John swiftly bent to lick at the scars on Balthazar’s throat. Grinned and sucked at them hard when he started to get moaning. “I’m stuck. Okay. Not like I can kill myself to get out of it, so I might as well live with it.”

It wasn’t nearly as simple as that, but it was a step towards making his life work and he could dress it up in something he already knew—throwing Balthazar for a loop—so he wasn’t going to argue. Not yet, anyway. And damned if Balthazar wasn’t agreeing with him in a way that John liked, for once. The wheel definitely was turning, and John was rolling with it.

* * *

Old reflexes kept Gabriel sitting straight and tall in the pew, head turned upward towards the gigantic cross on the wall. He couldn’t look at the carved Christ nailed to it for very long before he had to turn towards the rose window, which was soothingly geometrical.

“True red glass,” murmured a voice behind him. It echoed slightly in the empty cathedral, the trailing whispers sounding like the rattling of spears and swords. But in spite of that, it bothered Gabriel less than Raphael’s or Uriel’s voice had.

Then again, Michael always had been more tolerable than the rest. Gabriel gathered up his trenchcoat and scooted aside for his old friend.

“Red as blood, only achievable with the use of gold. I am constantly delighted and horrified by the metaphors hidden within the workings of man.” Michael straightened his sleeves before sitting down, the corners of his black coat floating soundlessly outward. He bent his head slightly forward so his long red hair hid his face and neatly folded his gloved hands in his lap. “You’re a little surprised.”

“I thought I’d be meeting Azazel or Raguel.” The flames of the candles on the alter were creeping higher and higher. They stopped when they were six inches tall, casting a soft soothing glow over them. It couldn’t match heaven or even the sunlight outside, but Gabriel appreciated the attempt.

With a shrug, Michael sank back against the pew. After a moment, he reached back to rest his arms on the top of it, though his hair still obscured his face. “They wanted to come, but they would’ve only made things worse. Our Father agreed with me, fortunately enough. You had no choice in the matter of how you dealt with Uriel, and I know you found no love in it.”

“I wouldn’t be that generous. You should know part of me enjoyed ripping apart that supercilious fool,” Gabriel muttered. The phantom taste of Uriel’s blood washed through his mouth and he irritably swallowed the ghost. He was getting hungry again. Unsurprisingly, since Balthazar and, to a lesser extent, John were drawing on his strength.

“There’s a difference between pleasure and love. You fell because of love—your real flaws have always been out of love, and not out of base lust.” Michael brought down his arms, then pulled off his glove. Gabriel politely started to look away, but Michael lifted his hand so he had to look at the wicked gleaming claws, the bloodstained knuckles. “I understand, Gabriel. Our Father made me with the purpose of dealing with the worse elements of creation. I never had to struggle as the rest of you did to reconcile that with knowledge of Him, but I—”

“—was made to understand struggle. Your good fortune.” Then Gabriel bent forward, covering his face with his hand. Behind it he grimaced. His skin felt worn out, dry and loose like a snake just before it shed. Only he couldn’t cast off the past so easily, though he had tried. “I’m sorry, Michael. I’m bitter.”

A quiet laugh made Gabriel look up just in time to see Michael pulling his glove back on. “I know, and you’re forgiven, if you wish that. If not, I hope I continue to see you. I will not abandon the Cause, but I appreciate your perspective.”

He had gotten up and rounded the pew before Gabriel managed to drag himself together enough to react. But Michael was already slowing, hand dancing over the bench-end carvings, before Gabriel had even finished asking him.

“No, we will not take back the Spear. Its fate is bound to the earthly plane. We will refrain from interfering with you in regards to this matter, I am bidden to tell you, and bear you no lasting ill-will for Uriel’s death.” A slash of white gleamed from behind that scarlet veil of hair, and then Michael lifted his hand in farewell. “And personally, I wish you luck.”

Gabriel stayed put where he was, half-standing with his hand on the back of the pew. He looked down at the floor, watching how the shadows poured back after Michael had passed. Then he laughed to himself, shaking his head as he stood up.

It was barely anything in the real scope of things: Heaven was standing back, but then, Heaven had never been a real worry in this matter. Uriel had fallen before Gabriel had gotten to him, and as for his successor, the moment she became mortal was the moment she also lost the attention of God. But it was reassuring to know that not all of Heaven was turning a blind eye.

On the other hand, Gabriel wished fervently that Hell would. He’d barely begun to feel out his way with Balthazar when Constantine had happened, and…it had been a stupid thing to do. But he couldn’t have let the man die, and not only because it would have been a sin of neglect. It…had reminded him of the time, just before he’d lost his wings, and then he hadn’t been able to do anything. With John he could and did, and now he’d gained at least one mortal enemy. Possibly two, since he had no idea how John would view the conditions of his new life once the tunnel-vision of near-death had lifted. This far from the man, hiding in the most power-charged cathedral in the city, and the raw ends of the unfinished binding still ate at Gabriel. He knew what he wanted, but he had no idea if that would turn out to be the same as what kept him himself, whole and sane and alive. And since he had no idea where he’d go if he did in fact die, he had best do his damnedest to stay on earth.

Gabriel made his way down the aisle and nearly out the door, so preoccupied that he nearly rendered it all moot.

He smashed back from the threshold, clutching at a candle-stand as his shoulder burned fierce as the wrath of God. But the stand didn’t hold and snapped, sending Gabriel to the ground before he could reach for his rifle. Just as well, since it wouldn’t have done any good.

“Long time no see, Gabriel,” Lucifer said. He’d taken the form of a young man, suit perfect but slightly dated and slicked-back hair smelling distinctively of Brylcreem. The dazzle of his smile lighted up the whole church.

And the church blazed back, stones rumbling as it sought to eject the great evil it sensed. Though Lucifer backed up a step, he remained close enough for the great stained-glass windows to continue to give off a faint, baleful glow. All the candles that had been in the stand Gabriel had toppled had suddenly whooshed out, as had any flames within a distance of ten yards.

The burn in Gabriel’s arm died down to a low, pulsing ache. He gently pressed his hand to his sleeve and touched warm wetness, torn flesh beneath the ripped cloth, but no broken bones. Lucifer.

Then he pushed back, drawing off the cathedral so the air inside howled and the ceiling bowed inwards. Lucifer resisted, but after a moment he had to retreat two steps; the church cried out as its stones and wood snapped back into place. It wasn’t much, but the look on Lucifer’s face said he’d been well-reminded of their respective positions, before and after Falling. His eyes flashed with anger, but he still gave Gabriel a little nod of respect. Been awhile since anyone’s bothered addressing me in this language. Nice to rate a smidge of manners.

You’re welcome, Gabriel said beneath his breath. He awkwardly pulled himself to his feet, still holding onto his arm, but was careful to keep well out of Lucifer’s range. A second pull at the cathedral gave him nothing, and his stomach sank as he remembered he couldn’t rely on anyone but himself.

He wasn’t going to draw on Balthazar. He tried not to think about John.

The absence of response hadn’t slipped over Lucifer’s head, and as he leaned forward, the smile on his face grew more oily. See you’re not ready to take up sides again, though. Shame, shame, Gabe. You know there’s always an open chair for you at my table. He ran one finger suggestively along the doorway, leaving smoking scorch-marks in his wake. I’d even forgive you snitching that traitorous half-breed and dear Johnny out from under my nose.

Would you? Gabriel dubiously said. His arm was slowly beginning to numb from the blood he was losing, but he couldn’t heal it while Lucifer was around. Couldn’t risk locking up even that much of his power, just in case Lucifer attacked.

I would. You can believe me on this one, Gabe. Lucifer grinned like a shark, eyes filming over with black. His voice softened, grew beautifully caressing. If you crossed over to Hell, I’d gift-wrap John Constantine for you. I think you’d do him up proper. And I do like to watch.

Not to mention that that way, he would be able to enjoy the suffering of two souls, because no matter how far Gabriel fell, he wouldn’t ever be able to entirely divorce the two halves of himself. If his demonic side took over, the rest of him would be trapped and screaming in the same body, unable to look away. I’m afraid I have to decline that offer.

The black washed away from Lucifer’s eyes, which Gabriel frankly found more terrifying. Opacity was easy to ignore, but the kind of piercing, intensely aware eyes that Lucifer possessed could never be. Last chance, he hissed, the fetid heat of rot flaring up all around him. A red film suddenly flung itself across the sky, and the cathedral bells chimed wildly as powers began to clash. Come on. You’d have them forever. No disobedience, no divisions, no despair…you’d like it, Gabriel.

And part of Gabriel would. He could feel it resonating in his bones, nagging him forward, and it was all he could do to hold fast. No, he reminded himself. That was not him. That was not why he’d left God, why he’d suffered and wandered for so long, and if he took Lucifer’s offer, he would render everything about himself worthless. He gripped harder at his arm, using the pain to keep himself in check. And very slowly, he started to ease his other hand into his coat-pocket. No, Lucifer. And if you have any sense, you’ll leave me be.

You dare-- Suddenly the world exploded into red and orange, the sky bloodied and the land raped till its flesh and bones were bared to the noxious, stinging air. It seemed to wrap about Lucifer like a cloak, eons of hatred and rage all concentrating here.

Gabriel exhaled, knew immediately that it was a mistake and tried to suck in air, but already the pressure on his chest was excruciating. He pushed out with what he could, but this was Lucifer, Morningstar, he who had been God’s First Companion, and even Gabriel’s strength couldn’t compare. The little bit of Lucifer’s blood that Gabriel had gotten through Vlad kept him from being immediately overwhelmed, but it wasn’t enough.

He could hear laughing. It angered him, and he struggled. Used his temper even as he knew it’d only worsen things, but before that could happen, just a moment before…his hand closed on the Spear and he slashed out with it.

The air thickened before him, trying and failing to resist. It pushed back, but the Spear cut through and suddenly everything fell apart to show the cathedral, still trembling beneath Gabriel’s feet, and a furious Lucifer who’d flung himself out of the doorway. He’d caught himself on the railing and now he swung into the shadow of a pillar so only Gabriel could see the flaring of his wings. They were skeletal, grotesquely draped in strips of flesh with the occasional half-burned feather twisting from a bony point.

Gabriel swallowed his nausea and stumbled to the door. He kept his feet within the threshold but leaned out to address Lucifer. I dare because you’re in my debt. I’ve dealt with Uriel and retrieved this, and you know I don’t care about ruling anything, so you can trust me to dispose of it. And you know that I’ll deal with my successor. Whom you cannot touch directly because of her mortality.

Lucifer’s wings snapped shut and he backed into the sunlight. His skin peeled away—because he allowed it, because he was making a point: beneath his outer skin was not the decayed hideousness of most demons, but something painfully bright and beautiful, so bright and beautiful that it stung tears from Gabriel’s eyes. He threw up an arm and stumbled backwards till his back banged into a railing.

When he took down his arm, Lucifer had disappeared. Of course, that didn’t necessarily mean that he was gone, and Gabriel didn’t make the mistake of assuming so. He took his time easing out of the cathedral, Spear still in hand, but finally he made it all the way onto the steps without any untoward events. That hadn’t—

--Gabriel whipped around, but not before something sharp had sliced across his shoulderblade, barring his old scar. His back erupted in pain and he staggered, grabbing at his wound.

Debt there is, but forgiveness there is not. See you later, Gabriel. Everyone does, eventually, whispered the rolling stones of the gravel walk.

Gabriel chewed on his lip till the blood came, gasping and breathing. Eventually he deemed himself under control and got himself back to the car, where he tied a makeshift bandage around his shoulder.

He’d see Lucifer again. And then they’d see just how much each of them were willing to risk.

* * *

Balthazar had a blurry impression of the ceiling moving in circles. He had a clearer impression of John swirling a tongue in his ear, but he was still a little stupefied by John’s about-face, so it wasn’t by much. He tried to say something, possibly about how he still wanted to twist John’s head off his shoulders, but the hands running over his body suddenly dipped to rove between his thighs and that became a very, very bad idea. He could always kill John during the afterglow.

Except he couldn’t. And strictly speaking, he wasn’t even supposed to be popping the buttons off of John’s shirt either, but Gabriel hadn’t yet said no—or perhaps he hadn’t noticed. Either way, Balthazar was a demon and was going to milk the situation for all he could get, while he could get it. He was allowed precious little these days, so he didn’t have the margin to be able to indulge in the sin of wastefulness.

“You know, I always had a feeling you wanted my ass for more than kicking around,” John whispered, laving the tender spot behind Balthazar’s ear. He gasped as Balthazar’s hands got to his ribs, writhing and flinching as Balthazar alternated between stroking and scratching. Plenty of sore spots there, but Johnny was being enough of a sport to retaliate instead of just whimpering.

Whimpering got boring rather quickly, anyway. That was why Balthazar had always liked batting John around—he’d turn around and do something like sink his teeth into Balthazar’s neck, just at the edge of the fresh bruise Gabriel had left on it earlier. His snicker tickled against Balthazar’s leaping pulse and he flattened down, rubbing his whole body against Balthazar’s at a maddeningly slow pace. His hand was pressing up behind Balthazar’s balls, twisting to slide a nail-edge against the thin, sore flesh there, tipping a fingertip inside the hole that was just slightly behind so Balthazar couldn’t help clenching down. All for naught, since as soon as he did, John would whip his hand down to pet at his prick.

“I mean, you took so damned long to try and kill me.” John dragged his teeth around the bite scars, just catching one with a canine that felt a little longer than it should have been. One of his hands roamed up Balthazar’s side and then jerked away just a little too late to avoid getting caught.

Balthazar pulled it out and shook off John’s mouth so he could nip at the delicate inside of John’s elbow, just over the bluish veins. He trailed a line of bites down the arm till he could lick at the long scar running along the wrist-vein, and when John groaned he just had to smile. Once a suicide, always a suicide. “Constantine, if that is your idea of flirting, no wonder your girlfriends keep dying or running away.”

The hand on his prick abruptly tightened, squeezing till the pressure had gone past pleasure and well into pain. The world briefly whited out; Balthazar snapped at where he remembered John’s neck being, but John wasn’t there. Then the pressure slackened—shifted to his captured wrist. John flipped him over and then smashed him down as he was trying to rise, pulling up his hands behind his back. He snarled into the mattress and humped violently upward, trying to throw off the man, but his knees kept slipping on the sheets so he couldn’t find the leverage.

“I should really rip you open for that,” John said very softly, once Balthazar had stopped struggling. His voice more than his sudden strength sent chills down Balthazar’s spine. “Actually, I could. And Gabriel would have issues with that, but that’d be afterward because you couldn’t do anything, could you?”

Balthazar’s mouth went dry. He’d forgotten how vengeful John could be, and of course he hadn’t missed a nuance of the respective positions in which Gabriel had put them. “Johnny…”

Something light and cool touched his nape. It traced a rune there that made his skin shiver, too hot and then too cold, before wandering downwards. The fingertip hooked on the edge of his shirt and pulled it off his shoulders, chasing warm spots over his back before drifting in a wavy line down his spine. Then it lifted, and a moment later John’s hand settled on his hip as the man leaned forward to whisper in his ear. “The name’s John.” Voice savoring the next word. “Asshole.”

Then John slid down, so rapidly that Balthazar didn’t have time to realize what for before he was suddenly whining and wriggling the little he could against the mattress, knees trying hard to spread and ass pressing backwards into the hot, sly tongue running over him. It seemed to trace over every tight wrinkle before it finally deigned to tease inside of him, tip rolling so his clenching muscles never could quite catch it. He was still feeling the morning, when he’d irritated Gabriel into taking him over the kitchen table, and if John had guessed, he wasn’t cutting Balthazar any slack for it. He was merciless, rimming the edge while Balthazar moaned and thrashed, waiting till exhaustion had turned Balthazar limp before pushing into the raw passage, fucking too hard and not hard enough. Not deep enough, not enough to twist up Balthazar till he broke, and damn it, John knew it and he was laughing. He laughed and pressed his mouth around the hole so the quivering of it would torment the sensitive flesh.

“I really have to love how you demons are so hairless,” John murmured, nuzzling down the inside of Balthazar’s thigh. He took a shallow bite, then jerked back to avoid the vicious buck into Balthazar’s overloaded nerves sent him. “Nothing to get stuck in your teeth. Well, unless you want it to get stuck.”

Another rune traced there had Balthazar down and unstrung, every muscle locked stiff in agonizing pleasure so he couldn’t move as John rose up, worked a hand under him to tease at his nipples. “Ellie?” he managed to croak.

“Yeah.” John’s hands momentarily slowed. They sped up again as soon as Balthazar had unraveled enough of the spell to push up at him; John ground Balthazar’s wrists into his back as he dragged his cock up Balthazar’s leg. Rubbed it against the crease where hip joined body, then higher so its hard, hot length was pressing between Balthazar’s buttocks in a devastating tease. “I liked her. Gonna miss her.”

“Sure she’ll be flattered.” The grandstanding bitch, she would be. A burst of irritation powered Balthazar’s sudden twist for freedom, which was almost, almost successful.

But Johnny had a good sense of balance and better leverage, riding it out till he had Balthazar flat again. He yanked Balthazar’s wrists up a few inches, just till Balthazar gasped, then let them back down and draped himself over Balthazar. His prick was still rubbing just where it could almost but not quite slip in, and his hand had sneaked down to pull firmly along Balthazar’s cock, stopping on every upslide to briefly swipe the thumb over the head.

Balthazar cried out and tried to twist, to bend, to do anything that would release some of the tension rapidly coiling within him. But he couldn’t—he was too pinned, too worked over, too lost. He went limp, offering up his neck in hopes that it’d be enough, but it wasn’t. The rhythm didn’t stop, didn’t give him a moment to catch his breath, but instead raced ahead so he was helplessly dragged after it. A last moment of resistance, and then he broke.

His body somehow found the energy to spasm till he’d shaken off John, but almost immediately afterward he collapsed in the same spot, his come soaking between him and the mattress. Only his arms had changed position, coming down to clutch at the bed while John snarled brokenly through his own climax.

John came down half-on, half-off him, one hand lying on Balthazar’s back almost affectionately. As was typical, he didn’t like feeling vulnerable and tried to get up at once, but his limbs flopped out from under him and he fell back on Balthazar.

Old aches and new ones sluggishly woke at that, making Balthazar hiss. He managed to drag himself onto his side, but after that he gave up on moving for a while. “How nice. And for your next trick, are you going to rid the world of greed and hatred?”

“I’m not a priest, as you once pointed out. And definitely not a saint,” John mumbled. He rolled over so he could face Balthazar; his expression was surprisingly introspective for him. “Not to worry, Balthazar: I don’t expect you to change a single bit…because of me. You’ll be the same reassuring shit you always were.”

“Getting used to the new company, are you?” Now that his breath was back, Balthazar was starting to remember he was nervous. He hadn’t heard from Gabriel in hours, and given the current circumstances, that was worrying. The best he could do was reason that since he couldn’t feel Gabriel, then Gabriel still had to be alive and in relatively good condition in order to be blocking him.

John glanced down, then looked back at Balthazar. Resignation, frustration and a certain insane excitement mingled in his eyes. The corner of his mouth lifted in a sarcastic smile at nothing. “Stop being such a prick about it. You could’ve had worse.”

Balthazar opened his mouth to retort, then shut it and tucked his head into the rumpled sheets. He thought for a long time, trying out potential plan after plan, but in the end that all came to nothing. There was still this one truth, and it couldn’t be dodged around—not when evidence of it was drying on his thighs and belly, and pricking at his throat. “I don’t necessarily see why that means I have to stop. You’re like a bull in a ring—no entertainment at all till you’ve been goaded a bit.”

“And now you remind me that you’re a bastard who killed my friends without thinking twice,” John sighed, sitting up.

“You deported a good many of my acquaintances, not all of whom that I particularly hated.” Though to be honest, Balthazar could have counted on the fingers of one hand the number of other demons he’d been able to relax around enough to share a project.

John cocked his head, thinking. Then he shrugged and got stiffly up. “True. But we’ve pretty much gotten booted past that. Christ, I need a cigarette—what’s that?”

Balthazar frowned and reached out as far as he could. Then, pain and fatigue and all, he rolled off the bed. “Gabriel.”

* * *

“What the fuck happened to you?” John incredulously greeted Gabriel. Okay, it wasn’t the brightest reaction to have, but it was damn well appropriate. Even with the dark trenchcoat covering up the stains, it was obvious that Gabriel had been through a hell of a fight, and hadn’t come out too well.

Balthazar didn’t say anything, but just went around to pull at Gabriel’s sleeve. Gabriel instantly whirled away, which startled Balthazar into jumping back. Most would’ve taken offense to that, but demons weren’t prone to hurt feelings; Balthazar shrugged, waited for Gabriel to relax and then reached out to slit the sling off with a claw. The fabric only slid apart an inch because of all the blood soaked into it.

Gabriel kicked the door shut and then fell against it on his unhurt shoulder, eyes slowly losing their glazed sheen. He took a deep breath, then gave them a cursory glance. Something must have caught his eye—maybe it was the mussed hair, or the lack of pants, or hell, the come smeared all over them—because his second scan was long, surprised, and towards the end, a bit aroused.

John suddenly realized he was smelling that. He stepped back and started to lift his hands, then dropped them. Christ. That…he needed a minute.

He’d nearly gotten killed by the Spear of Destiny, drunk angel-blood, gotten himself half-mated to a seriously fucked-up archangel, and had sex with Balthazar. On second thought, this might need more than a minute.

“What happened?” Gabriel asked, staring back and forth between John and Balthazar.

Balthazar, John noticed, was doing his best to blend into the surroundings. Odd for him, even given the way he acted around Gabriel. Then again, John supposed it wasn’t strictly kosher for the familiar to be fucking around with the mate without prior permission or something, but it wasn’t exactly like any of them were playing by the rules.

“We…figured out a truce. Of sorts. Come on, get into the kitchen before you fuck up my floor even more.” John went over and started clearing off the table. There wasn’t much; it looked like Gabriel had even less taste for living accessories than John did.

After that he still needed something to do that didn’t involve getting close to Gabriel, so he started pulling things from cabinets. Anyway, Balthazar was surprisingly good at persuading off clothing, so that was taken care of.

Or maybe not so surprising. A cabinet door swung too fast and nicked John’s hand, making him curse and shove the cut into his mouth. He tasted his own blood…and it was a bit richer than he remembered. Not so disgusting.

But also not lessening his earlier craving, now returned with a vengeance, for a good omelet and coffee and cigarettes. He repeated that under his breath while pretending to be rummaging for thread, and eventually he calmed down enough to understand. Different, yeah, but he could deal. He had been dealing pretty well with Balthazar back there, and that should’ve just short-circuited his mind. “Really not time to be losing it,” he muttered to himself. “You’re okay with this. Hell, you really like parts of it. Better than getting beaten sideways for every brownie point.”

“If you’re done chatting up the furniture, Johnny, I could use some—” Balthazar abruptly threw himself backwards, clutching at his hand and hissing.

He’d gotten off Gabriel’s coat and shirt so the wounds were bared, and they were bad. Claw-swipes: one had taken Gabriel across the triceps, and the other ripped across his back. The second set were still bleeding sluggishly around what looked like partial searing. And for some reason, John couldn’t look at them straight on for more than a second without his eyes watering.

Gabriel had his eyes closed and head bent, breathing shallowly. If he hadn’t been leaning against the table, John might’ve taken him for passed out. But no, after a second he opened his eyes and gazed dully around the room. “I need some holy water.”

“Want L. A. or River Jordan?” John knocked through his shelves till he found a box of each, then offered them to Gabriel.

Guess it didn’t matter, because Gabriel just grabbed one at random and crushed it above his shoulder. The stuff turned to steam as soon as it touched the wounds, briefly blocking Gabriel from view. When the fog cleared, he was picking the glass out of his palm, which was healing on its own. The cuts on his back and arm, however, had all turned black and crusty. It had to have been painful as fuck, but Gabriel was as stony as ever.

“You’ll have to scrape out all of that. I think only the middle two on the back will need stitches by then,” he said, like he was talking about the best way to bone a steak.

“Right. Uh…” Did John have anything for that?

Balthazar snorted and pushed him aside. His claws flicked out and he started digging away, occasionally stopping to clean them off on a dishrag. Once or twice Gabriel flinched, but otherwise he held perfectly still.

“Yeah, of course. Claws. Why didn’t I think of that?” Well, that left John at loose ends. He paced pointlessly about for two seconds before remembering. He had the needle and thread, but it was going to take Balthazar a while to finish, so he might as well…work on getting the important stuff stitched up.

Gabriel had been concentrating on his hand, but he looked up inquiringly when John hesitantly moved to stand in front of him. The last bloody piece of glass dropped onto the counter, and he was about to wipe off his hand when John grabbed it. He got in a couple good licks before Gabriel jerked it away, some half-formed exclamation spitting from him. Behind him, Balthazar snarled and hastily pulled away his hand. John glimpsed him licking a couple drops from a nick he’d just made in Gabriel’s arm. Then Balthazar went back to scraping, though he kept his head at a careful angle to listen in on the conversation.

“John…” Gabriel started.

He was still holding the rag, which was helpful because no matter what kind of being it came from, come dried itchy and annoying. Wiping off his stomach and legs wasn’t too bad, but when John got around to pulling up his shirt and dealing with his groin, he found himself dropping his gaze. “So I woke up and I thought, what the hell did I do? Did I do. Pay attention to the subject there.”

“Pay attention, period. You don’t hear Johnny-boy taking credit for his disasters too often,” Balthazar muttered. He caught the rag John threw at him with a grin and paused to clean himself off as well.

“Comments from the demonic gallery aside, the point is that I did know what I was asking for. And…I guess I’m still asking for it.” Even if the first flickers of its enormity was scaring him half to death. Let it never be said that John Constantine didn’t have the balls to follow something through to the end, once he’d started it. He reached for Gabriel’s hand again.

He’d almost gotten it when Gabriel suddenly spoke, low and fast. “Those were from Lucifer.”

John couldn’t help stiffening, and it pissed him off. He grabbed Gabriel’s wrist and held onto it. “Yeah, I guessed. What with Balthazar’s panic fit and the holy water.”

Gabriel’s gaze was clear and steady and a lot more piercing than John usually allowed. He had the uncomfortable feeling that Gabriel was seeing right past his witty front to the hyperventilating, frightening and wanting mess inside. “When he lashes back, it’s nine times worse than the original offense given to him,” Gabriel said.

Balthazar stepped out from behind Gabriel, using the rag to wipe the last of the charred flesh from beneath his claws. When he was done, he tossed the rag into the trashcan and edged up beside Gabriel, who briefly ran his hand over Balthazar’s throat. Then he pushed Balthazar gently but pointedly aside.

For a moment, it looked like Balthazar was going to fight, but Gabriel locked eyes with him and he dropped his head a little. Then he walked carefully around John, giving him a hard elbow as he did. “If you’re not done in an hour, I’ll take it as a sign that I can carve out your guts.”

Which was the height of tact for him. John didn’t say anything, but just pulled at his collar, flashing his unmarked throat at the bastard. He hid a grin as Balthazar growled, but that died as soon as he turned back to Gabriel.

“You—”

“You know, I hear I’ve got a whole city of old friends and family in Hell, just waiting for me to show up so they can stomp my face into the ground while telling me exactly what they blame me for. Which is pretty much everything.” John caught himself kneading Gabriel’s wrist and dropped it. He juggled the needle and thread for nearly a minute before remembering what he was supposed to do with it. “Believe me, this is nothing new.”

But when he went around to take care of Gabriel’s wounds, an arm around his waist snatched him away. He ended up pressed to Gabriel’s chest, unnatural warmth of Gabriel slowly melting his back. Lips ghosted up and down his neck, feathering his suddenly jumpy nerves with words; he suddenly got an idea as to why Balthazar got so hot and bothered whenever Gabriel decided to take a bite. “You say that, but you’re lying. You’re terrified.”

“Smell that, do you?” John said. He sounded shaky. Hell, he was shaky. Shaky and still with the aftershocks of Balthazar going through him, and damned if he wasn’t developing a taste for it. “Okay. You’re right. I am terrified. But I’m terrified because I’m alive, and I want to keep living. No, scratch that—I want to live, finally. I spent twenty goddamn years as a suicide, mind and body and soul. Not doing that anymore.”

“And you think this is your way out?” A bit of strain was breaking through the smooth caress of Gabriel’s voice. They were pressed so closely together that John could feel how his jaw was working, trying not to snap down.

Last chance to take the half-way ticket, try and bail out of this life. But salvation wasn’t enough for John—he needed a resurrection, too, and all the ordinary ways weren’t going to cut it after what he’d been through. So he reached back till he’d gotten hold of Gabriel’s knee. Used it to push up till the pulse in his neck was practically rubbing against Gabriel’s teeth. “Yeah. So do you want a pint, or what?”

There was a laugh, or something colored to look like a laugh, just before Gabriel caught him up and then it was fucking painglorygoodgreatmore.

Needle and thread hit the ground. John smelled fresh blood on Gabriel’s back, dimly, but if Gabriel cared he wasn’t showing it. His teeth were buried deep in John’s neck and now he was sucking, tongue wriggling in between so there were points of ecstasy stabbing in between the pain that was so damn fierce and keen and good, somehow. The grip John had on Gabriel’s knee clenched till John almost thought he heard bones grinding, and then it slackened. The pressure on his neck vanished and the shock made him whimper. He wanted it back.

A hot, broad tongue laved soothingly over the spot, turning his noises into begging little moans. He rubbed against it, ran his hands up and down Gabriel’s thighs, his ass against the erection he was beginning to feel rise up, and was rewarded when Gabriel’s hands started roving over his body. No wandering there; every stroking, every scratch and pinch was knowing and firm. In no time at all, John was reduced to the same kind of limp pleading that Balthazar had been under him.

Gabriel turned them around and heaved John up onto the table, and John was so damned boneless that he didn’t feel it. One hand stayed to run over his back, setting off teasing sparks in the various cabbalistic tattoos he had there so soon he could barely stand to feel the cotton of his shirt, his skin was so sensitive. He mustered up a burst of energy and yanked out his arms, then flopped onto his back to get the rest of it off.

As soon as he did, Gabriel was back on him, mouth fixed to the underside of John’s jaw so his head was forced back, hands brushing all his blood to his groin. They ran over his chest, sides, lingered on his belly, then scraped roughly up his thighs so he squirmed and bucked. Got Gabriel off his neck long enough to kiss him, get a taste of his blood mixed with spit. Getting better, so maybe it was an acquired taste and fuck, John didn’t care at all when Gabriel’s fingers were teasing him open like that. Somewhere along the line Gabriel had gotten his hands on one of the salves John had absentmindedly pulled from the shelves, and God knew what it was supposed to be used for, but it made his skin icy and prickling and he groaned, struggling to get away, but Gabriel held him put. Pushed it farther into his body till suddenly he was pushing down and hooking his legs around Gabriel, asking and asking for it even though it still burned coldly at him. Thank fucking God Gabriel was quick with clothes.

Gabriel slid his mouth against John’s neck again, brutalizing the sore bite, and John bent up under it so he met Gabriel’s prick sliding in, and it seared a swath through the cold, swept it away in a moment so then he was writhing in fire. He grabbed for the edge of the table and hung on for fucking life, crying out incoherently and knowing nothing except yes, he wanted this, and yes, he was taking it, and yes, fuck, yes. Blood trickling between Gabriel’s mouth and his neck, blood dripping between his lips from Gabriel’s wrist that’d just been shoved in, blood beating inside of his body, straining the thin layers of flesh that bound Gabriel’s separately from John’s.

And then something ripped through, slashing from John into Gabriel and back into John in an electric circle. John’s shoulders slammed against the table and he gasped, tearing his mouth free of Gabriel’s wrist just in time to avoid choking. His old world spiraled out of sight and he calmly let it, waiting for the new one to swallow him up.

* * *

Fortunately, Gabriel needed even fewer sutures than he’d predicted after downing a couple quarts of John’s blood. Balthazar got it done soon enough for him to be able to lick still-moist clots from the edges.

Gabriel let him for a couple seconds before pulling him away and casually ravaging most of them out of Balthazar’s mouth. It was considerably more than pleasant, but it still didn’t disguise the fact that Gabriel had been trying to get him away from the scars on his shoulderblades.

John lazily crawled up Gabriel’s back from where he’d been lying on the bed, one of Gabriel’s cigarettes dangling from his mouth. He took it out, stared at it with a look of utter bliss, and then leaned over to put it out. “God, I missed these.”

“You can still die,” Gabriel said. He seemed to have sobered again, though he didn’t stop himself from running hands over Balthazar’s back and buttocks. “Not cancer, but—”

“Well, I always figured it’d be one of those ways, and not something that goddamned…normal.” The face John made when saying the last word was delightful, and Balthazar made a note to try and get it to appear again as soon as possible. Then John lifted a hand and touched the scar.

Gabriel stiffened, but didn’t yank him away. Then again, his hands were too busy with Balthazar to even keep him from peeking over Gabriel’s shoulder.

“Are these from your wings?” John quietly asked, watching what he could see of Gabriel’s face. He started to draw his finger down one, but stopped when Gabriel flinched. “Who did you? I’ve—well, I’ve seen worse, but not much.”

The silence that fell was so long that Balthazar didn’t think there would be an answer. Neither did John, who was on the point of dropping his hand when Gabriel suddenly replied.

“No one.” Then Gabriel looked at the ceiling, ancient grief in his eyes and so strong that Balthazar could almost touch it. “I did it myself. You need something like the Spear if you’re going to assault another angel, but if you’re cutting off your own, you just need anything with an edge…all I had was a Roman shortsword.”

“That must have been messy,” John lamely said. He visibly regretted it as soon as he did, which was not going to keep Balthazar from tossing him into a wall the moment he wasn’t looking.

Gabriel shrugged a little, dropping his gaze and pulling into himself. Then he carefully put Balthazar aside and got up, hunting around till he found a spare shirt of his. “The shock made me forget who and what I was for fourteen hundred years, so I suppose so. Get some rest. I’m going to try and scry for my successor again.”

“Yeah, about her. I was thinking.” Which meant Johnny had not, but had just had some offbeat, insane idea that was going to end up working anyway. “This whole loophole’s because she’s mortal, right? I mean, normal mortal. Would it still apply if she were—”

“—a werewolf? Or a vampire?” Gabriel said, spinning around to stare intently at John.

Balthazar sat up at that point. “Johnny, I’ll put up with you, but I will eat that bitch’s eyes for breakfast and grill her ovaries for lunch.”

“Oh, for—” John rolled his eyes “—I didn’t mean Gabriel should do her. There are plenty of—actually, we wouldn’t even need one. Midnite’s got some things, and I know this spell…”

That one. It wasn’t too difficult to actually perform; most of the trouble was in gathering the ingredients, but Midnite certainly should have everything needed in stock. On the other hand…“Still two points. First, she was an angel. What if she ends up like Gabriel? And secondly, why not just kill her?”

“Because if she had two seconds, she could ask for absolution and since she’s not actually killed anyone as a mortal, she might get it. I finished off Uriel, remember?” Gabriel stared down John’s startled look. There was a hint of that wry humor in his voice that Balthazar occasionally glimpsed. “I didn’t think you wanted her to go to heaven. You have this tendency to hold grudges.”

“Oh, yeah. That.” John flicked a look at Balthazar, then returned to Gabriel. “Well, I think she deserves a fighting chance to damn herself completely like everyone else. And I don’t hear you objecting.”

For a moment, it almost looked like Gabriel would crack a smile. He didn’t, but he did come forward long enough to run his hand over John’s shoulder and over his throat. “Grudge-holding has never been limited to Lucifer’s side.” Then he turned around, and this time he was definitely determined to make it to the door. “I’ll take a look at the manuscript to check, but I think it’ll work. I was a special case—I never turned completely mortal when I lost my wings, and I was a full angel to begin with. They…fixed that loophole after me.”

There were interesting echoes in that, but Gabriel had swept out of the room before Balthazar could think about exploring them. Suddenly the room was a little colder.

“I really hate how he does that,” John muttered. He leaned over to dig Gabriel’s coat up from the floor and dig in its pockets, then came up with the cigarette pack, which he offered to Balthazar.

After a moment, Balthazar took one, and he generously lit both their tips. “You’re in no position to comment.”

“No? But I’m going to anyway, you hypocritical bastard.” John grinned around his cigarette. Then he tried to swing out of bed and sat back down in a hurry, wincing and shifting his hips. “Jesus…right back where I started today…”

Balthazar had a good laugh at him. It was going to be a while before he could have another.

Chapter 6: Belly-down

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Of all the things that Midnite looked when he saw who was at his back door, happy wasn’t one of them. John felt a little bad about that, but there wasn’t much he could do now and they were both professionals, so he didn’t dwell on it. “Hey. What do you say to a copy of the Delomelanicon, complete with hand-written notations by Lou himself?”

Midnite rippled the fingers of one hand against the door, a single sharp fusillade. His gaze wandered over John’s shoulder to Balthazar, who was trying not to look like this was the first time he’d ever been to this door, and then to Gabriel, who was impatient and didn’t give a damn who noticed. “This is not a bookshop.”

“Okay, okay. Gabriel’s going to need reading material anyway…well, what about Aunt Caroline Dye’s personal conjure bag?” A little tribute to Beeman in the flourish John used to produce the bag, which he was careful to hold so his hand stayed on the handkerchief wrapped around it. He waggled it in front of Midnite’s wary face. “You know what I could get for this would buy out half your—”

“What authentication do you have for it?” Midnite finally said. His fingers were curling and uncurling by his hip, itching to get the bag, but he was playing it very cool.

“I—”

Gabriel shifted, instantly garnering Midnite’s attention. “I was a pallbearer at the funeral. She gave it to me.”

Midnite weighed that for a second, then took it. He spun on his heel and curtly beckoned them inside. Balthazar strolled after him, but John hung back to glower at Gabriel. “Now that is why everyone wants to throw you out of places.”

“And you’re an expert, I suppose,” Gabriel muttered. He looked around the door, sniffing, and then he raised a hand to trace some of the protective sigils Midnite had carved into the frame. His feet were starting to shuffle, but something seemed to be holding him back. “He used Arioch’s heart. That should keep nearly everything at bay…”

“Though I really doubt she’s got many favors left to pull in.” John suddenly noticed his hands were fidgeting by themselves, playing with his lighter. He snapped it shut and shoved it into his pocket, willing back the residual nervousness that was seeping into him from Gabriel. Maybe it was touching to some people, but it was annoying as fuck. Not to mention condescending, since maybe Gabriel hadn’t seen him at his best, but he’d survived twenty damn years without an ex-angel watching his back. “Midnite knows what he’s doing. I know what I’m doing, and even if he’s an asshole, Balthazar isn’t exactly stupid. This will work.”

The twist to Gabriel’s smile might have been affectionate or irritated, but it didn’t stick around long enough for John to figure out which. “I wasn’t worrying that much about what she’d do.”

Neither was John, but nobody ever got through a tough spot by pissing themselves over the shit they couldn’t help, and as much as it rattled his nerves to admit, they were stuck in regards to Lucifer. He had the move, and until they settled bitch-Gabriel, they weren’t free to think about him. “Yeah, I know. So, you have the number to my cell, and I just paid my phone bill so my apartment’s line should work. Just try not to break too much of my furniture.”

They were betting that the bitch would try and sneak into John’s apartment, so Gabriel was staking out there while John and Balthazar prepped for the spell. She had to try tonight, or else the blood she’d gotten from Uriel would be too old to be usable and she’d have to trick some other angel into getting close. Given how lacking in charm the bitch was, that wasn’t likely to happen.

If she didn’t show, then the back-up plan was John surfing with the Chair. Even with his new…durability, he wanted to avoid that experience if at all possible, so he hoped it wouldn’t come to that.

He turned to go inside, but Gabriel caught his arm. The pull was so hard that John went back over the threshold and nearly bumped into Gabriel; they were a bare inch apart, and their respective heights meant that when his head jerked up in surprise, his nose knocked into Gabriel’s. He opened his mouth and felt a little bit of Gabriel’s breath go in it.

After a moment, Gabriel pressed something long and hard and wrapped up into John’s hand. John didn’t have to look down to know what it was. “We don’t need this.”

“Neither should I. It’d get in the way. Hold onto it till I get back.” Gabriel was more or less pressing his words on John’s cheekbone, lips so close John could feel their warmth. He hesitated, and John was abruptly aware of a strange seesawing feeling in his gut, and a tightness in his neck, a band centered to run over the bite there.

He didn’t move. Another breath, and then Gabriel was a yard away and walking off fast while John stood in the doorway like a dumped chick wrestling with a vague frustration. He figured out far too after-the-fact that that indecision probably had been Gabriel’s.

“Got to do something about this empathy shit,” he muttered to himself, stepping back in. Just then something shut. Clicked off, leaving him in the cold in more ways than one. He didn’t give Gabriel’s retreating back the finger, but it was pretty damned close. Instead he slammed the door and tucked the Spear into an inside coat-pocket, then wandered down to the main room.

Balthazar had already explained things to Midnite, and however dubious Midnite was about the whole situation, he seemed to have gotten over it. He was busy pulling out bags of herbs and tallow-fat candles, occasionally stopping to bark an order at a servant, while Balthazar used blood to paint the binding circle on the floor. By the time John picked his way through the clutter Midnite piled back here, Balthazar had finished and was getting down on hands and knees to eye the lines, carefully holding his tie out of the way.

John paused behind the demon and just looked. He couldn’t help himself with that perfect a set-up.

After a moment, Balthazar glanced contemptuously over his shoulder. “Johnny, I know this is difficult for you, but you’ll have to drag your mind out of your filthy, predictable lusts and concentrate on business.”

“Sorry, honey. I was just thinking that you’d look really good with a bootprint on each of those nice, tight buns.” Behind them, Midnite choked like he hadn’t in literal years; John grinned and temporarily forgot about Gabriel as he squatted down by Balthazar. He ducked the usual hiss-snap, then dragged up a book that Midnite had just tossed down besides them and flipped it open. “Huh. We’re a sigil short.”

“No, we aren’t. That would be the circle if you wanted to make her a werewolf, but I thought we decided it would be a bad idea to give her the ability to make an army.” Balthazar reached over and flicked over two pages, then tapped the diagram. His hair flopped into his face as he did; he’d gotten a nice new suit from somewhere, but had apparently ditched the slicked-back snake-oil salesman look. The derision in his voice more than made up for it.

John resisted the urge to knock the bastard over and use those convenient locks to yank back his head and…he could feel Midnite’s gaze branding a warning on his back. Sometimes Midnite’s pretensions at being so damn cultured were really annoying, but here John had to agree. Screwing Balthazar might satisfy his sense of revenge, but he’d lose the fight anyway. “All right, then. Shapechanger it is. I think she’d make a really nice cat. Would just love to see her face the first time she changes back to human with a mouse in her mouth.”

The faintest hint of approval slipped into Balthazar’s smile as he read through the page, double-checking his work. “You always were delightfully petty,” he snorted. “What took you so long with Gabriel?”

The bastard would have to remind John of that. He irritably snatched up herbs and began shredding them into a bowl. “Just needed to discuss a few last points.”

Balthazar obviously didn’t believe him, but at the moment John didn’t give a shit what Balthazar thought. His nerves were still a bit twitchy from the upheavals of the past few days, and since Gabriel had closed himself off, they were hurting themselves trying to reach out for a goddamn iceberg. For that matter, he was getting annoyed at the fact that they were reaching out in the first place. It was a new feeling and he couldn’t seem to get a handle on it, and it left him feeling uncomfortably cracked, exposed.

He’d asked for it, he reminded himself. “Okay, time for the…for Christ’s sake, Balthazar.”

Who blandly looked up from the mauled throat of the black cock he was holding. He tipped it upside-down over John’s bowl of herbs, licking his bloody lips. “Yes?”

“Jesus, if you need a snack that badly, I’ll open a vein. It’s Saturday—Midnite’s only got a couple of those left and he can’t get more till Monday.” Not that John particularly wanted to, so Balthazar could wipe that leer off his face, but now an ill-feeling Balthazar was a drain on him as well as Gabriel. Well, and maybe Balthazar tended to act a little inebriated after getting a drink so he was much more cooperative about being shoved onto his knees. John was beginning to see the benefits in having regular access to that damned tongue of his.

“I do not need to hear this,” Midnite suddenly said, stalking off. “I will be out front clearing the club. You have twenty minutes.”

Busy shaking the last drops from the chicken, Balthazar rolled his eyes. He tossed the drained bird to a passing servant, then sucked the blood from his fingers. “You’d think he would be happy. He no longer has to worry about watching over your pathetic ass.”

“You sure about that? Gabriel’s got some weird ways of showing he cares,” John muttered. The silver spoon took a while to find in the mess Midnite had scattered around them, so by the time he started stirring the mixture in the bowl, he had to do it hard to break up the forming blood clots. It was oddly therapeutic.

“Don’t be an idiot, Johnny. He does.” Balthazar’s voice was so quiet and his face so pensive that John had to look twice to make sure he had the right demon. Then Balthazar grabbed a chicken and disemboweled it with one swipe that didn’t get a single drop of blood on him, which was more characteristic of him. “It’ll probably kill him, given your sorry history.”

John’s hackles rose and he nearly broke the spoon-handle by shoving too hard at a clot. “And here I thought you didn’t want to go home again.”

The guts Balthazar flung into the blood nearly got him splashed, but he shoved the bowl away from him at the last moment. Snarling, Balthazar got up and started snapping open and shut boxes. It looked like he was done with sparring, which was actually not a good thing because then John had to think about what Balthazar had said, and there was just enough truth in it to be painful. He was tired of people leaving him, one way or the other, and one reason he’d given in was because he thought it’d make sure that didn’t happen again. But strong as Gabriel was, Lucifer had been able to hurt him, and everyone had their breaking point.

John mentally slapped himself and dragged his attention back to the spell. He told himself not to get distracted, but the thought kept circling back to him like a vulture over a dying man.

* * *

Gabriel had only been in John’s apartment for a few minutes when someone knocked on the door. He’d taken off his coat, so he dithered a couple seconds about how to hide his rifle. They knocked again, harder, and he finally just snatched it up.

He silently sniffed the air before putting a hand on the knob, but though it was a woman, it wasn’t her. The door had a chain, so he held the rifle behind his back and eased the door open so it wasn’t visible. “Yes?”

The detective John had seen the first day stood on the doorstep, looking very pale and very surprised. “Oh! Er, hi. I’m Angela Dodson…is John in?”

“No, he’s…out.” It was a useful euphemism, especially if she knew John as well as Gabriel suspected she did.

His guess was confirmed when she accepted it without asking further questions, merely nodding to herself the way people did when they knew something unpleasant and wanted to discreetly toe it under the rug. It didn’t, however, look like she was about to leave, which made Gabriel slightly nervous. He’d been clamped down so she would have no way of telling who he was, but she still might be able to recognize him from nearly a week ago. Granted, she couldn’t have gotten a good look while he was smashing a rifle-butt into her temple, but she was a police detective and a powerful psychic. He wasn’t about to completely rule out that possibility.

At least he didn’t hear anyone coming, so he didn’t have to worry about accidentally involving her in a fight. “I’m a friend of John’s. Can I take a message?”

“Didn’t know he had any left,” she muttered to herself, glancing around the hall. Then she noticed he’d overheard and flushed, waving her hand about in half-hearted denial. “Oh, I’m sorry, I just meant—”

“—you’ve known him for a while.” A little sarcasm seemed to fit, assuming that John picked up people similar to himself. That was what people generally did. Gabriel was carefully not thinking about himself, and about what the last few days said about him. “I’m Gabriel.”

Angela flinched. Then she smiled nervously and wrapped her arms around herself, rubbing at her elbows. Her gaze, however, lifted to fix steadily on Gabriel’s face. “Catholic parents, huh.”

The smile that pulled at Gabriel’s face spoke well enough by itself, so he didn’t add a comment. He thought a moment, then took off the chain and stepped out into the hallway. “John’s not going to be back tonight. Did you…”

“Oh! I don’t—” She lifted her hands and pushed at her hair, then irritably shook herself. A quick pace about the hall settled her down, and when she spoke again, she was calm and firm. “I’m sorry. This is unfair to you, but the last person I met with your name was a little…anyway, I was just coming by to tell John goodbye, and thank you.”

“Are you leaving town?” Gabriel quickly asked. He still wasn’t sure, and Balthazar hadn’t been able to enlighten him, as to what John felt about Angela, but he had a sense that John might want to know. Loose ends that John didn’t leave himself seemed to bother him. And anyway, it was a good idea to keep an eye on anyone who’d been in contact with the Spear.

Angela nodded very slightly before turning to stare down the hall. Her lips tightened, went slack, and then she started mumbling in such a low voice that Gabriel had a problem making out the words. It sounded like she was just saying one thought after another, without trying to plan or arrange them. “Yes. Yes, I think so. I can’t lie anymore, I was stupid to try, but I can’t do it here. There’s too much in this city—too much Isabel and how she lived, and I’m not her. I’m her twin, not her. There’s too much.”

“Los Angeles is a hotbed,” Gabriel said. He didn’t mean to startle her, but that was the result and the intensity of her eyes asked for an explanation. There wasn’t one to give; he’d merely been making an observation, but nevertheless she didn’t seem as if she was going to let him go without something more. He caught at the first thought he had. “ But you can’t wander forever. Leave it too long and you’ll be caught where you don’t want to be.”

His own words gave him as well as her pause, but to her credit, Angela recovered first. She tilted her head, eyes briefly unfocusing, then blinked. He doubted that she realized she’d been calling on her gift. “Choose your own battlegrounds for meeting your past, then? That was the idea. I’m—I’m put in a position to kill too often in a city the size of L. A. anyway. There’s got to be other ways to enforce the law…I asked for and got a transfer to San Francisco. Crime rate’s a lot lower there.”

“So is…abnormal activity,” Gabriel finally said. He could sympathize a little with the haunted look she wore when speaking about killing.

In the distance, something creaked. Gabriel was instantly at attention, though he refrained from doing anything that would make Angela notice. After a moment, he decided that it was merely a stray in the alley, but nevertheless he was reminded that this was not the best time to be holding a discussion.

Angela might have picked up on that despite his care, for she suddenly stepped back. “I should be going. Anyway, thanks for taking the message.” She started to say something else, but stopped. Then her head shot up and she stared at him in a way that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand. “Blaming yourself forever isn’t good, either. At some point, there is an end.”

She blinked, shook her head, and then began to apologize for babbling, but in the middle of that, she understood that it was pointless. “Are you sure John won’t be here tonight?” she finally asked.

“Yes,” Gabriel lied.

He disliked doing it, but over the years he’d been forced to learn to do it well. So he was a little surprised when she peered doubtfully up at him. But Angela didn’t push further. With a last, awkward wave, she left.

Gabriel stayed in the hall till he heard her footsteps make it to her car without any interference. After closing the door, he dragged a chair to the center of the room and sat on it, staring at the symbols he’d carved into John’s window-frames. Then he put his elbows on his knees and dropped his head into his hands.

* * *

“Balthazar’s not that difficult to deal with, actually. Keep him well-dressed and well-fucked beneath that, and he’s a happy little demon.” John grimaced as he and Midnite struggled to pry the cat out of its carrier. From the sound of things, the cat was winning.

Good. Little, indeed—they only had an inch’s difference in height, and most of the time it was luck and not that that saved John’s ass. Once they’d seen that bitch safely off, Balthazar had every intention of persuading Gabriel to letting him play a little harder with Johnny-boy. Certainly Gabriel wasn’t going to bend John over nearly as many times as the man’s ego needed.

Midnite grunted and scrabbled around for something. “John, I rarely attempt to speak to you about your personal affairs—”

“—because you pretty much lost that right a while back. Pass me those gloves—fuck! Worse fucking teeth than Balthazar.”

“—but are you sure about this? I was under the impression that you were planning something different.”

Such as working a lone game with Lucifer that would have left Gabriel and Balthazar out in the cold if it’d succeeded. Perhaps the present situation had pushed that to the background, but Balthazar wasn’t about to forget any time soon, and he had a suspicion that Gabriel hadn’t, either.

Then again, that could simply be Gabriel’s reticence towards anything that might express intimacy. He was understandably paranoid, but now that he’d full claims on Balthazar and John, he shouldn’t be nearly so concerned. They couldn’t hurt him any more than they could hurt themselves—at least, Balthazar couldn’t. John had a history of gleefully plunging into self-destruction, which had been amusing before but now put Balthazar in the aggravating position of biting his nails over the idiot.

“Yeah, well, that didn’t exactly work,” John muttered, banging things extra-hard as if he could make up for it that way. He stopped a little bit sooner than Balthazar had expected.

The lack of sound eventually made Balthazar chance a look over: John had rocked back on his heels and now squatted by the carrier, staring morosely into it. He absently licked at a small set of bloody scratches on the back of his hand, tongue moving in small, precise laps that made Midnite look oddly at him. Not that he noticed.

The gunk in the bowl blurped at Balthazar, recalling his attention to it. He smacked it down with a spoon before sprinkling sand made from ground-up stones of Bastet’s temple over it.

“It was a stupid idea, anyway,” John presently said. “Lucifer isn’t going to give up on me that easily, and there’s no way I can walk the straight and narrow long enough to beat him that way. I mean, can you imagine me working a nine-to-five office job? I couldn’t even stay off the cigarettes.”

“Though this time those will not be your end.” There was a crashing sound and then a desperate yowl, which Balthazar took to mean that Midnite had finally gotten the cat. He murmured soothingly to it and in no time at all, it was purring at him.

John snorted. “Didn’t realize you gave a shit, Midnite. Here, kitty…shhh, not boiling you tonight. I just need your whiskers, and a couple drops of blood…”

Balthazar ignored the subsequent cursing and smacking about, but it was hard to do that with the sudden smell of John’s blood. He dug into his coat and pulled out a cigarette. Once it was lit, he inhaled as deeply as possible.

He almost immediately regretted it, because the strangely pungent smoke was a component of Gabriel’s own distinctive scent and that reminded Balthazar of too many uncertainties.

“John—”

“Drop it, Midnite. I mean it.” The words were softer but much sharper than how John usually spoke to his friend. “I agreed to this. And I know what I’m doing. Mostly.”

Midnite chuckled, but there was no humor to it. “You want this. You might as well say so.”

A moment later, John scooted over to toss three bloody whiskers into the bowl. He passed it back to Balthazar, and while Balthazar was taking it, stole Balthazar’s cigarette. John grinned through his drag and then blew the smoke at Balthazar’s snarl, casually insolent as always. Or so said his face; his hands stayed curled into fists until Midnite had walked away. “Just making sure you don’t get ashes in that. Might fuck it up, and then we’d have to start over.”

“If you bled on any of those whiskers, that would be a worse disaster,” Balthazar retorted. He flicked his gaze over the new scratches that decorated the backs of John’s hands and wrists; one even laced his chin with red. They were all healing rapidly, but a few smears still lingered.

John raised an eyebrow and stabbed the cigarette out on the floor. “Having a little problem, are we?”

Balthazar didn’t stoop to answering that. Instead he put aside the bowl and undid his cuff, letting the claws on his other hand come out as he did. One sharp cut, and then he tilted his hand so the blood would mostly trickle down his forefinger. He added the last seal to the design on the floor.

The moment he’d torn his flesh, John’s eyes had jerked to his wrist and they never left while the blood was beading up. When Balthazar finished, John made an aborted grab for his wrist. He stopped himself and ducked his head, biting into his lip. “You’re a real fucking cocktease, you know that?”

“At least I’m not still in denial about whose cock—” Balthazar hissed, lunging forward. He latched onto the scratches running over John’s chin, sucking and probing so the ripped edges of skin rippled against his teeth.

They went over with a crash, John twisting so he barely avoided smudging the lines painted on the floor. Keeping away from those kept him busy enough so that he couldn’t block Balthazar from mouthing down his throat to press hard against the scarred holes over the pulse. John groaned, went slack, then stiffened again when Balthazar’s knee ground up against his prick. His hand got into Balthazar’s hair, but he couldn’t get the angle or the time to use it to pull off Balthazar.

“I’m not him, you goddamned—” he gritted out.

Balthazar flinched before he even knew he was doing it; John instantly wrenched him aside and sank teeth into the back of his neck. Even as he was going limp and moaning, he squeezed out a last dribble of bitterness. “Neither am I.”

For a moment, they were frozen in their mangled knot. Then John abruptly pulled away and sat, knees up and hand behind him to support him. He rubbed hard at his mouth, then at his neck before viciously kicking to his feet. The floor echoed his angry steps so they formed a hollow song that wandered from corner to corner.

The mixture in the bowl was beginning to bubble again. Though he wanted to simply toss the gunk across the room, Balthazar didn’t. Instead he levered himself up and resumed stirring, and after a second he straightened his clothes. At least he wasn’t so blind as to pretend this was still anything remotely like a business transaction, small comfort though that was.

Very small comfort. He gave the contents one last hard stir, then carefully walked the bowl into the center of the circle without stepping on any of the lines. There he poured it out and, stepping delicately backwards, smoothed it till it formed a thin coating that just filled the innermost circle.

“That’s done,” he said to himself. Though that was hardly the truth.

* * *

Two hours had passed since Angela had visited. Normally Gabriel’s patience could extend much, much further than that, but for some reason his ability to wait was shot. He caught himself fidgeting twice, and once he even had to get up and pace around the apartment before he could make himself settle down. The stitches in his back had come out only a few hours before and the raw scar tissue itched; so did his throat, but drinking tap water didn’t ease his thirst.

He had an idea as to what he was missing, but he steadfastly refused to consider it at any length. Firstly, it was distracting. Secondly, it wasn’t under his control. Perhaps John had agreed to complete the binding, but that didn’t necessarily mean he wanted to live with it according to traditional interpretations. And for that matter, Balthazar probably would prefer staying in L. A. to being dragged along to the wastelands of the world.

The frustration with being immortal, Gabriel thought, was that he had all the time to consider the angles but had never managed to learn how to. He’d stepped—briefly, and that expectation made him smile sourly now—out of an ongoing life to take care of Ariel’s business, and what he’d left behind was not about to disappear. He’d have to go back, recalibrate everything. Attempt to lose the habits born of centuries of largely solitary wanderings. Think of how he was going to keep his old grudges from entangling John or Balthazar.

Gabriel knew that he wasn’t the only one with that problem, but he suspected he could deal better with the ghosts and enemies the other two brought with them than they could with his. For one, he’d had far more time to accumulate his.

He sat back down and pressed his hands against his face again, suppressing the urge to groan. This was exactly why he’d spent so much time alone: company brought complications and weaknesses and inevitably, loss. Fourteen hundred years of not remembering who he was, of being able to do things and call on powers that he’d forgotten how to understand, and though it’d hurt to live with gaping holes in his memory, sometimes he missed the ignorance. At times it’d been better than living with the knowledge of what had thrown him into such shock, what had made him hack off his own wings. And then he’d begun to remember, after he’d met Vlad, only to lose it all again through his own stupidity.

Occasionally he still had nightmares about it—that had been a human quality he hadn’t cared much to receive. Angels didn’t sleep or dream, so the past could never drag sharp icy nails through their minds. Couldn’t deceive them with the memory of soaring past the sun’s warm rays and into the far hotter, far more glorious light of God—with the memory of hesitantly touching a cheek and suddenly, blasphemously finding that same radiance in a mortal’s smile.

“But I didn’t fall. I pushed myself over,” Gabriel said to himself. With open eyes and mind, and a heart flayed more than badly enough to also qualify as open, so he had no room to complain about what had been done.

He leaned back and stared at the door. That lasted two and a half minutes before he caught his fingers rubbing together; Gabriel growled to himself and fished his coat from the chair-back. He was just pulling out his pocket copy of the Delomelanicon when his head jerked up. A moment later, his mind caught up with his instincts and he was on his feet and padding softly towards one of the windows, rifle in hand.

It was loaded, but he held it so it’d be easier to swing than to shoot. He took up a position at the side of the window, where his shadow wouldn’t fall over the sill, and listened as someone struggled up the fire escape. A woman, smelling of sin underlaid with heaven, and more scared than angry, though she’d be loathe to admit the former.

She paused near the top and Gabriel belatedly realized the silence must have been suspicious, but it was too late to fake any kind of bustle. He held his breath and hoped she’d assume they were sleeping, or temporarily out.

Eventually the window creaked. Gabriel glimpsed a pale arm glide up along the center to press something at the lock, which clicked open. She still had some small spells up her sleeve, he noted. Charms, cantrips, the hardscrabble magic of the streets.

The window swung open and something dark swooped over the sill to clunk heavily on the floor. Everything nervously froze.

Then, like a large spider, a scabbed and cut-up hand crept over the sill. She peeked over the edge and thoroughly looked about before finally pulling herself through the window. Gabriel let her feet hit the ground before he soundlessly slammed her in the head with his rifle.

She crumpled with a small gasp, her hands clawing at nothing as she folded neatly over his arm. He needed a moment to adjust to her weight. Then he lifted her—she hadn’t been eating well—and quickly wrapped her in his trenchcoat. He slung his rifle over his back and snatched up her bag, then headed for the door.

Once they were in the car, he riffled through the knapsack to make sure the manuscript was inside. It was, so he started the car and headed for Midnite’s. All the way there, he was tense and expectant, anxiously watching every shadow, but nothing happened. Uriel must have been her only backer, and once she’d killed him she’d been on her own. From the looks of it, she’d struggled.

A small pang of empathy caught Gabriel in the gut, for he remembered how he had fought to survive his first days without heavenly support. He was still surprised he hadn’t simply given up on the earthly plane and continued down to Hell.

But he hadn’t. And she’d nearly cut off John’s head—the dark curled tight around his gut and growled through his bones, murmuring for her blood for that. Gabriel set his teeth and ignored it, steering his way into the parking lot.

He got her and the knapsack out without too much difficulty, but trying to retrieve his rifle proved too awkward, so he reluctantly left that in the car. When he’d reached the door, he stopped to sling her over his shoulder so he could knock; as he did, something clattered softly on the ground. Frowning, Gabriel backed up to see what it was.

The same moment he recognized it as the Delomelanicon, she suddenly came awake with a vengeance, writhing and screaming in—Latin. He knew the words, but even if he hadn’t, he would’ve known what they were for from the resonance of the earth with them. The ground rippled up once, twice, thrice, and every time it rumbled higher around Gabriel like approaching war drums.

He flung himself against the door, smashing her head into it, but it was too late. She knew it and she was laughing hysterically when she wasn’t trying to claw at his eyes. He seized her wrists and slammed her again, which shut her up. But only for a second.

“You cannot cheat the Devil!” she screamed.

“Neither can you cheat God. This is not the way back into His good graces,” Gabriel snarled. Something ripped at his elbow and he whirled around, spitting out a spell as he did.

The light arcing outwards from him burned away the soft, tarry tentacles that had risen out of the pavement, but he knew that that was only the beginning. He backed up against the door, trying to get as far into the frame as he could—Arioch’s heart’s blood was painted over it, keeping it safe from all other denizens of hell. It wouldn’t bar Lucifer himself, but it would slow him, a little bit. If he got through Gabriel.

“Why? Why should I suffer because I tried to do right?” she was hissing. Almost sobbing, jerking her hands wildly as she tried to get away from him, tried to keep clear of the hungry shadows that were coiling nearer and nearer to them. “All I wanted to do—and it hurts It hurts so much…”

“That’s why. Mortals are born to hurt, to pain, to hatred and sin and they still rise above it to love. They love selfishly, generously, cruelly and kindly, but they love on their own. We have to learn it.” Gabriel gritted the words out from between his teeth. He wanted to break her damned idiotic neck but he couldn’t, if only because blood spilled here would do all the more to ease Lucifer’s passage.

Suddenly a scavenger of the dead screeched out of the dark at her; Gabriel knocked it away, but not before hot blood splattered his face. It wasn’t his.

She cried out, then went stiff. “Oh, God. Oh, Father. I loved Him…”

“No, you adored Him. There is a difference. And I wouldn’t bother calling—you just sold your soul to Lucifer, and all because of some petty revenge,” Gabriel snarled, banging again on the door with his fist. Two more scavengers leapt at him and he had to resort to unleashing a pair of shadow-wolves to rip them down. “You finally had a soul, you—you could’ve returned to heaven. But—”

Gabriel lost his balance as the door behind him disappeared. He barely caught himself on the frame, but his grip on her slipped and she crashed backward. Someone—John—cursed as he fumbled to catch her. “What the—”

“Get her in and do it!” Gabriel hissed, whirling around. He saw Balthazar skid up behind John’s shoulder and tossed him the bag, then threw himself backwards through the door. Claws immediately sank into his arm.

A second later, the red cleared to show a twitching corpse on the ground. He had demon blood in his mouth, and from the looks of things, he was going to have more in a moment.

“Holy shit,” John breathed.

Gabriel took a swift step backward and yanked the door shut in John’s face just as it went from shocked to comprehending to furious, mostly at Gabriel. He was sorry, but there was no time to apologize.

Gabriel… came a whisper from behind him.

His blood ran cold as ice, and even the surge of hatred and rage did nothing to thaw it. Very slowly, Gabriel turned around.

* * *

“What. Did. You. Do. You. Fucking. Bitch!” John punctuated every word by picking up her by the arms and slamming her into the floor. Once she started to say something and he simply snapped unusually long canines in her face. Her face went white, and continued to drain of color as he yanked her up to throw her into the wall.

Balthazar gave the knob one last yank, but it wasn’t going to open to any normal force. Gabriel had made certain of that. Beyond it he could hear the first muffled sounds of fighting: hisses, wet slices, thuds. A soft patter. The scrape of claws over concrete. And the smell of sulfur was so strong it caused even him to choke.

He stumbled backwards, coughing, and then spun to hit John in the back. “Pull your teeth in and get her to the circle.”

“What is going on?” Midnite came hurrying from the front office. He suddenly stopped, eyes widening. His hands came up to make a warding gesture, as if that would help.

“John!” Balthazar snarled. He would’ve added something along the lines of indulging in crude testosterone vengeance later, but a stabbing pain in his belly temporarily robbed him of breath.

He dropped to one knee, but halfway there the pain was already evaporating. So Gabriel could still keep himself locked away, but he was losing his control…

The blow had staggered John as well, loosening his grip on the bitch so she could duck out from between his arms. She made a run for it, but John was already whipping around to stop her. He got her by the elbow and flung her down the hall so she tripped and fell at the edge of the circle. There she started to grab wildly for a weapon, but suddenly she stopped, staring at the circle. “You’re…you’re not sending me to Hell?”

“No, but I wish I were now, you goddamned bitch.” John came running after, hurrying so much that when he stooped to take her by the arm, he nearly fell himself. His balance held, but for a moment he was too preoccupied to force her the last few feet.

“But—then—I thought and I called—” She looked dazedly about the room. “Then I—”

“Called up Lucifer and set him on Gabriel in exchange for your eternal soul. Brilliant. You’ve taken to mortal ways like a professional,” Balthazar hissed. He dragged himself forward, kicking her knapsack out of the way, and caught her by the other arm.

The bitch remembered she was in the middle of a fight and pulled against him, but by then Johnny had gotten back his breath. He shot a look at Balthazar, who was already yanking up on his grip, and then the two of them bodily slung Gabriel into the middle of the circle. She landed neatly in the innermost set of lines, skidding a little as she hit the mixture they’d painted over the floor, but staying within the lines.

Before she could get up, Balthazar scrabbled a coin from his pocket and flicked it into the air. The bright silver flash got her attention for the small amount of time he needed to mesmerize her. Then it was just a matter of concentrating to make her stay in place.

“I bet you’ve been wanting to do that to Gabriel for ages.” John’s quips had a shaky edge to them, and his hands trembled as he snatched up the book from the floor. He more or less leaped into place, already reading out the spell.

In point of fact, yes, but it was far less enjoyable than Balthazar had intended it to be. Her mind was still strong so he needed to use all of his energy. Normally that wouldn’t have been a problem, but normally he didn’t experience phantom pains every time someone else was injured. He bit down on his tongue as one of his ribs seemed to explode, reminding himself that it was not his, that he was going to ensure she regretted this for centuries.

Mvatis mvtandis--” The pain was great enough to take both John and Balthazar to their knees, and John nearly dropped the book. In the center of the now softly glowing lines, Gabriel jerked herself onto her elbows. John’s eyes shot to her and his upper lip curled in a hate intense enough to surprise Balthazar. His fingers clamped down on the book till they were white from tips to knuckles. “Sic…haud ignota loquor…

Balthazar dug his nails into the floor and fixed his eyes on Gabriel, willing her to look at him. The muscles of her neck stood out in sharp relief as she fought him, sweat slicking over her skin and dripping from her hair, but slowly she turned. Her lips were drawn back from her teeth in a snarl that he wasn’t about to let her voice.

An effervescent mist was beginning to rise from the ground, starting at the outskirts of the circle and growing thicker as it moved inwards. Gabriel looked horrified at its approach, eyes almost popping out when tendrils began to coil around her arms and legs, but she couldn’t break Balthazar’s hold on her.

John was chanting as quickly as he could, nearly doubled over the book. Midnite walked up behind him, hesitated, and then carefully pulled him back so he wouldn’t fall on the lines if he was forced down that far. Then Midnite retreated till he was across the room from them.

Smart man. Just then something hooked into Balthazar’s side and ripped across his belly, so deeply that he thought he’d been disemboweled. He gasped and crumpled to the side, curling around himself; Gabriel abruptly jerked forward and he barely willed her back in time. Across the circle, John hadn’t stopped reading, but there was blood dripping from his nose. He wiped it off with a hand shaking so badly he had to use his wrist instead of his fingers. Then he glared at Balthazar.

Balthazar returned it with interest. John was going to fumble a word if he wasn’t careful, and then the word for what they’d be was fucked.

Actually, John should have been the last problem on his mind. The pain had receded, but hadn’t disappeared altogether, and Balthazar was suddenly aware that his exhaustion wasn’t only due to the strain of ignoring that and keeping the bitch in place. Gabriel was drawing on Balthazar for power. It was the first time he’d ever done that since he’d taken Balthazar.

This was not the best time to panic, so Balthazar didn’t. He did, however, signal for John to speed up.

The mist was so thick now that he couldn’t see the bitch, so he had to trust that the spell would hold her in place. If he’d had the energy; as soon as Gabriel’s eyes had disappeared beneath that blue foggy hump, he’d slumped to the ground and concentrated on not passing out. The moment he did, the drain would fall entirely on John and John wouldn’t be capable of finishing the spell.

“Father!” came a hideous shriek from the fog. It was one of the most beautiful things Balthazar had ever heard.

A hand briefly broke through, its fingers all sticking out at broken angles and parts of it rubbed raw. Just as quickly as it’d appeared, it was re-enveloped by the fog, which suddenly turned opaque and hard, like a gleaming shell.

Balthazar’s vision was beginning to waver in and out of focus. He dragged a hand that felt heavier than lead to his mouth and bit down to keep awake.

John didn’t look much better. He’d abandoned holding the book, but even leaning over it was costing him so much effort that he was swaying. His eyes fluttered as he struggled with the last words. “…factum est!”

From the middle of the circle rose an agonized cry. The silvery shell suddenly split and dissolved away, and the lines faded as if they’d never been there. All that was left was a small lump of fur lying in the center. For a moment, Balthazar wasn’t certain if it was still alive, but then he saw the sides lift and fall in a quick breath.

“Thank fucking God that’s done—” John rolled over and staggered to his feet. He tumbled down a mere yard later, but clawed his way back up in a burst of enraged energy.

Somehow Balthazar got up and followed, grabbing at statues and smashing against walls in his efforts to get to the door. He was still five feet short when he saw John bang on it. “Gabriel! Open the fucking—I have it, remember?”

Something glinted dully in John’s hand—the Spear. The one earthly weapon that might be able to deal Lucifer a fatal blow.

The door didn’t open. This time, John threw his whole body against it. He couldn’t muster up enough force to even make it rattle. “Open the fucking door!”

“Of all the idiocies…” Balthazar stumbled the last few feet and fell heavily against the wall besides John. He bit off his cuff-link, and then he ripped open his wrist. Messy, but then, neat wouldn’t bleed enough. He hoped Gabriel would be distracted enough to go on instinct and remove the barrier between himself and what would feel like a hurt familiar. And that Gabriel wasn’t so distracted that Lucifer could—

--the door lock clicked. John unceremoniously pushed Balthazar to the floor so he could yank it open. He almost collapsed as a wave of agony cut through them, but his grip on the door held. The next moment, he was flinging the Spear.

Balthazar had twisted himself around to see, cradling his bloody arm against his chest.

The world was painted red. Gabriel was crawling on the ground, wounds gaping wherever Balthazar looked, with a pack of limping, crippled shadow-wolves defensively circling him. Over him stood a Lucifer Balthazar had never seen before: an achingly beautiful figure with horrifically skeletal wings—wing. One of them had been ripped off and lay to the side, a jumble of bones and blackened rags of flesh, while the bony stump left on Lucifer’s back spurted black blood.

And—and John had missed. He’d thrown their only advantage and he’d given Lucifer a dashing cut on the cheek, but he hadn’t hit anything.

“Shit,” he said.

Exactly Balthazar’s sentiments. Balthazar pushed himself up with the beginnings of a scream in his chest. He couldn’t look away. Gabriel was snarling, rolling himself over for a last futile lunge, and Balthazar couldn’t stop watching. Couldn’t stop—

* * *

John only had one thought running through his head: you fucked up you fucked up again you dumb shit.

He swallowed, but there was no moisture in his mouth or throat. He held the door-frame, but he couldn’t feel it because his grip was so tight. He wanted to say he was used to sacrificing others, but the old dulled sense of loss had gone away and what he clutched in his chest now was razor-sharp and fresh and devastating.

“No—” he started to say.

Gabriel leaped—

--then twisted, suddenly, so Lucifer overshot him. At first John hated him for it because that was just a stalling tactic and that was going to prolong the pain, but then he saw what Gabriel had. And he stared. “Angela?”

She’d scooped up the Spear from where it had clattered on the ground and now held it out before her. Her hands were shaking, but her gaze didn’t waver as she stared at Lucifer. “If you’re who I think you are,” she steadily said, “Then you can’t touch me. Not directly. Not this time.”

Lucifer was too far gone to have a human voicebox, so she didn’t understand his cursing. But she seemed to get the gist, for she slowly started to walk between him and Gabriel, always keeping the Spear pointed towards Lucifer.

“I didn’t think so.” Angela took a quick peek at Gabriel, who’d drawn himself up into a standing position. How he was managing that, John had no idea, because he damn well should have been dead. Not that John was disappointed—very much the opposite. “You’re the first ‘friend’ of John’s I’ve met that was one, still alive, and two, nice. I thought something was up.”

Gabriel looked incredulous, with which John could sympathize. He’d probably been worrying so much about Lucifer or bitch-Gabriel that he’d never noticed a simple police tail, and that had to grate, given all his abilities.

He got over it fast, stumbling up besides Angela. She’s mortal, both your blood and mine is on the ground, and I’ve the Spear and the manuscripts. Don’t force my hand, Lucifer.

You wouldn’t, Lucifer sneered. She’s not willing. And neither are you. Not if it involves forcing someone’s will. She doesn’t want anything to do with Hell, let alone to rule it.

Are you certain? The cool, deadly way Gabriel replied was impressive, and that was saying something, considering John’s experience. He straightened up and stared Lucifer in the eyes. Beside him, Angela shifted uneasily at his tone but held her ground. Do you want to see how far we can take this? Do you dare?

Something pushed at John’s foot: Balthazar, who’d somehow gotten both manuscripts to the door. They were bloody as hell from his wrist, and come to think of it, John was beginning to feel lightheaded. He stooped down and covertly licked Balthazar’s cut, sealing it. Then he took up the manuscripts and dangled them out the door. “Hey, Lou. If you don’t want these, I’m sure I could find somebody else that would…”

Lucifer swiveled slowly from Gabriel to John, enraged but unable to do anything except think. At last he took a step back.

No one relaxed.

He took another step back, and then his remaining wing snapped out of sight. His flesh twisted, then untwisted to show him as a bruised old bastard in a stained and torn white suit. “I will call it even. This time.”

Gabriel’s lips drew back in a feral smile, and for a second John thought he saw Lucifer stiffening in wariness. “That is all I ever expect from you.”

He nodded to John, who tossed the papers with much better aim. Three-quarters of the way over, they suddenly flashed out of the sight. As did Lucifer. “Drama queen,” John snorted.

“So…do I want to know what you two were saying?” Angela asked, turning to Gabriel. The world around them was slowly fading to normal, and John was relieved to see that Gabriel’s wounds were already beginning to close.

Gabriel looked frankly at her. “No. Not unless—”

“No, I’m still going. Oh, and here.” She handed the Spear back to him. As soon as he’d taken it, she rubbed her hands against her legs as if the touch of the thing had disgusted—or pained—her. “You know…if you’re ever in town, I don’t think I’d mind a cup of coffee.”

Balthazar muffled a laugh in John’s ankle. “Your girl prefers him over you.”

“You know, you’d suck a lot better if I stomped the teeth out of your mouth,” John snapped. He tugged his foot free of the bastard and awkwardly came forward, since it looked like Angela wanted a word. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome, even if I don’t know for what. Not that that’s an invitation to tell me.” She looked down, then up. And then she gave him a closer, slower look-over. “I came by earlier to apologize for flaking out on you like that, but I ran into—”

“Gabriel.” John couldn’t help looking over her shoulder at him. His chest was still in the process of unclenching and just…Jesus, it’d been so damned close. So close, and he fumbled out a cigarette because the other thing he wanted to do was stick his face in Gabriel’s bloody neck to feel for the pulse with his tongue, and he couldn’t do that in front of Angela.

Her eyes flicked to the cigarette, then to the doorway where she momentarily went into shock. But her toughness was always surprising; she recovered quickly. And then she glanced at Gabriel for some reason. “You’ve been busy.”

“There’s been…things,” John vaguely said. “So…”

“I was a flake. But that—Spear kept sending me these horrific visions. I couldn’t close my eyes at all for the past few weeks because all I’d see is Hell. Hell and—it was wrong, if Hell can be that. Someone had it who wasn’t supposed to. I don’t know if that makes sense…” Angela saw the look on his face and offered him a wry smile. “Oops. Forgot I was talking to you.”

Balthazar was coming across the lot, something tucked in his arms. John drew on his cigarette as he and Angela watched the demon’s progress in lieu of making awkward chitchat. When Angela figured out what she was going to say next, she’d say it, and trying to talk about the weather just to fill up the space in between seemed pretty stupid at this point.

“Anyway, I changed my mind. I’m keeping with this—I can pretend myself out of this world, but that won’t keep me from still knowing. The thing is, I can’t do it here. There’s the Spear, and there was Isabel, and…don’t take this the wrong way, but there’s you.” She wrapped one hand around her wrist and twisted her fingers, looking embarrassed. Then she took a step closer. “You’re…fine, right? You’re smoking again, and—and that’s—”

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine. I’ve…let’s say I’ve gotten a new life to go with the fresh start.” John smiled at her as nicely as he could. Because after all that’d happened, he knew what she meant. And he meant what he said, so what she’d said didn’t hurt. Well, aside from the tiny pinprick at his pride, but that could go take a shit because they were all alive and everything was okay for a little while. Even when that little while was over, he’d still have something to fight for. To look forward to besides the gaming over the sordid little bet between God and Lucifer.

He took the cat from Balthazar’s arms and plumped her about, dodging the skittish little swipe she took at him.

Angela looked at it, and then she tilted her head and unfocused her eyes to look at it. Her mouth dropped open a bit. “Is that…”

“Yeah. Caused me another shitload of trouble, but I believe we’ve gotten that all straightened out. Of course, she’s still got Lucifer drooling after her soul, but there’s precedent for tricking him.” The cat slitted her eyes and hissed at him, which John cheerfully ignored. “You just have to come up with a plan.”

“You know, this is probably a bad idea, but…here,” Angela muttered, reaching for her. She glanced up at John when he held back. “I remember, I was nearly ripped apart by Mammon because of her. But I have this feeling…”

John kept his hold a moment longer, but Angela seemed sure about it, so he let go. “Okay, but Gabriel, you’d better watch it. I know these guys that raise killer pit-bulls—”

“John!” But Angela was smiling in spite of herself. She cuddled Gabriel, whispering something to her, and after a moment, the cat actually relaxed in her arms. Angela took one step back, and then another, and then she was waving to John as she walked away. It was too dark to make out what the glitter in her eyes was.

“We’d better go as well,” Gabriel said. He was standing, but barely, and even though he was trying to close himself off, bits of pain were still leaking out.

Idiot, John thought. But going over and taking Gabriel by the arm still felt awkward, and it was awkward so that he hesitated in the middle of it. He did, however, do it, and he even refrained from commenting on how Balthazar sidled up to the other side. “If you have to, you have to. It’ll be worse for everybody if you pass out.”

Gabriel gave him a long, unreadable look. Then they all staggered, adjusting to the draw Gabriel was making on them, but not for more than a couple seconds. It was something John could get used to.

* * *

Balthazar was still asleep, curled in the sheets around Gabriel’s hip, but John woke the moment Gabriel shifted. He rolled over and pushed himself up the headboard, rubbing at his eyes. “Christ, don’t you ever sleep? Or do you not need it?”

“I…don’t need much.” Gabriel looked at the man, and at how his white skin and black hair and eyes turned to poetry in the nighttime, and he tasted a sweetness in his mouth that was like the memory of heaven, but without that memory’s pain. He lingered.

John noticed, glancing from him to the coat draped over a chair. “Going somewhere?”

“I need to dispose of the Spear. And tie up a few other loose ends,” Gabriel said. His hand moved slowly over Balthazar’s back, savoring the smoothness of it, and gradually he realized that Balthazar had only been feigning slumber. The muscles were too tense. “In the morning would be best.”

He felt the muscles relax, but not completely. Likewise, John was only half-satisfied. He laid back down so he was weighing down Gabriel’s hand. “Are you coming back?”

It was difficult to know what to make of John’s tone. “Did you want me to?”

John looked up at him through slitted eyes. Then he exhaled sharply and pulled at Gabriel’s arm, making him lie back. “Take the cell phone—I don’t need it. And remember to fucking call this time.”

Gabriel rested his head back on the pillow and stared at the ceiling for a very long time, weighing past and present and future. Then he carefully packed away one, left the other to tomorrow, and turned over to smile slowly against John’s neck.

Notes:

Latin Translations:

1. Mvatis mvtandis: The things that ought to have been changed having been changed with the necessary substitutions made
2. Sic…haud ignota loquor: Thus…I say things that are known
3. Factum est: It is done.

Chapter 7: Cure

Chapter Text

Another thrashing kicked up a wave of inky water at John, nearly catching him in the eyes. He ducked his head away at the last moment, but still managed to get a mouthful, which he promptly spat out. Bitter, grainy, with a hint of sewage that made him long for a good, strong dose of whiskey to wash it out.

Whoever who was at the door knocked again.

A tentacle flopped free and slithered rapidly over the edge of the sink, slapping till it got to John’s thigh. He jerked away and yanked the tentacle back in, only to lose his grip on the whole damn thing. “Balthazar!”

Third knock. John threw himself to the side and grabbed the nearest knife. Just as the little slimy shit leaped at him, he stabbed it squarely in the mouth. Tentacles waving, it fell limply back into the dirty water, oily blue swirls leaking into the black. The knife-handle stuck upright like a tiny mast.

“Balthazar, you half-breed piece of shit, answer the goddamned door!” So much for that shirt, John thought. He raised his arms to shake off what he could of the gore and sticky ink, which wasn’t much. His shirt was sopping, stained, and as he scraped the stuff off, one sleeve started to slide down from his elbow. At first he tried pushing it up with an elbow, but then he remembered that yeah, he was only going to toss the shirt anyway and just did it with his hand.

“I am, Johnny.” Footsteps ambled across the room behind John. “Unless you want your apartment full of miniature reanimated nixies, you’ll ask more nicely. I almost knocked over the candles.”

John gave him the finger over one shoulder, but all he got was Balthazar snickering at him. He sighed and gingerly picked up the now-dead baby…thing…by the knife-handle, holding it well away from himself so the last few twitches of the tentacles didn’t splash him. Later he could do something about mussing up Balthazar’s damn suit in retaliation, but right now he had to figure out whether it was just pollution mutating the local sea-food, or if somebody was stupid enough to try and breed krakens in the harbor. He carefully tilted the knife—made a quick scoop when it looked like the baby was going to slide off—and poked around in the mushy flesh till he found the eyes and beak.

Well, fuck. It looked like he was going to be spending the week haunting cheap Asian restaurants by the docks. He shook off the disgusting thing into the wastebasket, then dropped the knife on the counter. After that he had been planning to change, but his head was lifting and his nerves were prickling, giving him pause.

A second later, John ducked out of the kitchen just in time to see Balthazar slammed up against the wall, whimpering and clinging desperately to Gabriel’s shoulders. John looked at himself again, shrugged, and walked over. It couldn’t be the worst mess Gabriel had ever seen.

Gabriel let Balthazar down much more gently, which was a good thing for Balthazar since he seemed to have forgotten how to work his knees. He slumped against the wall and rubbed at his neck, eyes dazed and hair disheveled. His tie had been pulled down and one tail of his formerly pristine shirt had been yanked out of his waistband.

“Sorry. I haven’t eaten in a while,” Gabriel muttered, licking the red off his lips. He leaned past Balthazar to close the door.

“I wouldn’t worry about him. He’s been living well in the party district.” John pulled down a sleeve and wiped at his face as best as he could. “You’re really a lousy date, you know. Gone for two months and then you don’t even call.”

Up close, John could see that it’d been a pretty rough couple of months for Gabriel. He’d gone somewhere cold again because he was a bit paler than John remembered, and he definitely hadn’t been eating much. But he was done healing to judge by the way he moved. And still wary, to judge by how he could let his gaze drift a slow scorch over John’s face and throat, but couldn’t bring himself to try touching. “I would have, but the cell phone was eaten.”

Even Balthazar looked pretty amazed at Gabriel’s deadpan, though he recovered a moment later. He pushed himself off the wall and began to straighten his tie. At least, that was what he was supposed to be doing, but the way he slowly ran his fingers down the silk, looping it through a circle of his forefinger and thumb, was definitely asking for something else. “Payphones.”

Gabriel knew he’d been caught out and, true to character, didn’t deny it. He also didn’t linger on the subject. “Is that kraken ink on you?”

“Yeah. I thought a little sushi might spice up Pussy’s dinner.” John let his eyes rest on Balthazar as he said that; Balthazar rolled his eyes and pulled Gabriel further into the room. “Fixed the bathtub, by the way. So you can stand in that instead of showering over the floor drain.”

He went back over to the sink, thinking something along the lines of it being a shitty way to meet again, and of it being Gabriel’s turn to do…whatever. After all, John had invited him back, and hadn’t reneged on it even though it’d been two goddamn months without a word or even a feeling because Gabriel would keep himself shut up tighter than a nun’s cunt. Nice, really nice. If something had happened to him, the first John would’ve known about it was when he collapsed and died from it. The bastard hadn’t even offered a…a handshake. Balthazar, that smirking little snake, had rated a welcome mauling, but John…was not that mortal anymore, so Gabriel could knock it off with the porcelain-doll treatment.

“Oh, to hell with it.” John flicked the water off his hands, then stalked around the corner into the bathroom. He unbuttoned his shirt as he went, so by the time he made it to the door, he could peel it off and drop it in the corner. While he was at it, he toed out of his shoes and socks as well.

The shower was on, but not much water was getting into the tub. Balthazar’s clothes were neatly folded and stacked in the driest corner, where John dropped his belt. He slid off his pants and boxers, letting them puddle all over Balthazar’s wrinkle-free shirt, before sloshing his way over to the other two.

Gabriel apparently hadn’t managed to finish undressing before Balthazar had gotten to him. Now he knelt in the bathtub, one hand on the side to steady himself while he fucked Balthazar raw. His hair had come loose and streamed in tangles over his soaked shirt, so wet they looked black, whipping off every time he shoved himself forward. Over them, Balthazar’s arms clutched pale and desperate as a drowning man at a life-saver; Balthazar’s head lolled back against the edge of the tub, mouth as slackly open as his eyes were tightly shut. His knees occasionally climbed clumsily up Gabriel’s sides, trying to urge him closer. John couldn’t see Gabriel’s face because he had it pressed into Balthazar’s neck. The smell of blood and sex washed into the air, diluting the usual faint zinc odor L. A. water gave off.

After a moment, John got into the tub behind Gabriel. He had to put a hand on Gabriel’s shoulder to steady himself and that momentarily broke Gabriel’s rhythm, but a broken keening from Balthazar redirected Gabriel’s attention.

“Can you tell he missed you? One part of you, anyway,” John said under his breath, laughing a little. There wasn’t nearly enough room so he ended up balancing with one leg in and one out, fingers digging into Gabriel’s shoulders. He scraped at Gabriel’s collar till he could get his nails beneath the heavy wet cloth and peel it down. The porcelain rim was cold, not helped a bit by the lukewarm water they were wasting, so it chilled the outside of John’s prick. Inside, however, he was hot and getting hotter, and it would’ve taken a hell of a lot more to discourage him.

Gabriel’s shirt only came down enough to expose half—maybe two-thirds of his shoulderblades at most, but his arms kept jerking so the cloth flopped back up, or Balthazar would spasm so he’d shove it up. Balthazar’s moans were starting to turn into ragged shallow gasps, but John got one last cry out of him by ducking down and biting at his wrist, not quite deep enough to draw blood. He nuzzled from there up the center of Gabriel’s back, dropping back whenever a particularly strong thrust would’ve slammed Gabriel into his jaw.

The claw-marks from Lucifer were still there, but only as faint white lines that to John’s eye would be all but invisible when they were finally done healing. In contrast, the far older ones from the wings stood out as stark rust-brown ridges, twisting their way beneath the folds of Gabriel’s shirt.

John waited till Balthazar had Gabriel knotted up, then swiftly leaned forward and licked along one. He felt Gabriel stiffen, but then Balthazar threw back his head, making the tub ring, and started to come. Nothing in Heaven or Hell could pry off Balthazar while that was happening, and John took full advantage of it. Even helped a little by pulling on Balthazar’s knees, making it easier for him to stay clamped onto Gabriel.

Running a tongue up one side of the scar drew a shiver from Gabriel in spite of himself; John tried a tentative nip at the top and nearly got teeth knocked out by the violence of Gabriel’s buck. He was saved by whatever that did to Balthazar, which saw Gabriel yanked down an impossible inch further. He gave the spot a quick, apologetic swirl of his tongue before moving on, running his teeth lightly over the skin but not catching them on anything. That went over better—he heard Gabriel’s breath hitch. Encouraged, he pressed his mouth across the scar and lightly sucked.

Balthazar’s heels finally stopped knocking against the tub, which should have been a warning. But John was lulled by the feeling of Gabriel’s muscles relaxing against his lips, and so he didn’t pull away in time to avoid Gabriel’s sudden twist around. His knee and ankle banged against the tub as Gabriel somehow got them out of that and up against the wall in less time than it took for a heart to beat; John swore but halfway through was muffled by Gabriel’s idea of an apology. Brilliant idea, really.

He got his arms around Gabriel’s neck, meaning to explore a little further with those scars, but forgot about it when a slick finger suddenly probed between his legs, a mouth settled on his pulse and chewed lightly at it. John’s knees unlocked and he had enough to do to just keep from falling. He bit at Gabriel’s jaw, messily kissed his way around, and finally got to Gabriel’s mouth just as the finger stabbed up and in, snapping all his muscles tight.

Gabriel forced John’s head back to the wall with the force of his kiss, blurring the world into such a haze that John didn’t swim out of it till there were three fingers in him and one thumb rubbing hard into the crease behind his balls, and he was moaning for more. He arched and squirmed till he got one leg around Gabriel’s waist. Stopped there because the change opened him deeper and Gabriel wasn’t shy about accepting that; Gabriel had to wrestle John the rest of the way up. In the end, he had to twist out his fingers and put both his hands on John’s waist to do it. John complained at the withdrawal, gasping and cutting his nails across Gabriel’s back, but was promptly shut up when Gabriel more or less sat John on his prick. And there wasn’t any time to catch breath—no, Gabriel was moving the moment his cock was inside John, pressing up till the white burst against the backs of John’s eyes and then pulling out so John collapsed onto him, whimpering. He kept moving, always moving, so John scrambled to hold onto him. He dug his nails into Gabriel’s flesh till he smelled blood, sank teeth into Gabriel’s shoulder till he was sucking greedily at it, did all he could to get a toehold somewhere. A hook. A something that would keep this coming back, filling up John till nothing else, not failure or death or grief, could fit inside him.

And he pulled Gabriel down, brought him down with a last jerking clutch at him. Maybe other people would’ve felt sorry about it, but John didn’t. The heights were for dreamers that didn’t want to wake up. Here, where they were, was for the people that wanted to get on and enjoy it.

* * *

“About fourteen hundred years the first time, right after I cut off my wings at Masada. Then four hundred years. That started just after Vlad’s burial—his first one. I’d been beginning to remember, but killing him wiped out my memory again. I’ve only really known what I was for a little over a century.” Gabriel sat on the corner of the bed, dressed only in pants because Balthazar had stolen his shirt after he’d discovered that John had thrown his filthy clothes on top of his own. He didn’t seem to mind, but then Balthazar was cuddling up to his thigh in nothing but said shirt, looking smug and well-fucked and letting his tongue snake all over Gabriel’s hand.

John supposed there was something appealing in that. He didn’t feel like getting dressed other than throwing a fresh shirt over himself. Not when he could sprawl on the bed with a pack of strong, anise-scented cigarettes Gabriel had brought him, an ash-tray, and Gabriel finally talking. “You and Vlad…”

“Who was the one at Masada?” Balthazar asked, lolling his way onto his other side. He shot John a warning glare. For a demon, Balthazar could be remarkably skittish at times. It made John wonder just what Ariel might’ve done to him in preparation towards making him a familiar.

On the other hand, it could’ve just been Hell. Weirder things than a tolerable Balthazar had come out of that place.

“I have no idea,” Gabriel said. He shrugged off John’s surprised look. “I went in to steel them against the Romans’ last attack, and I just saw…there’s something in the way men smile when they know they’re about to die and they’re ready for it, they’re willing to give up their lives for something they deem greater. I saw it in a youth’s face, and then a spear obliterated it in a crunch of blood. That was when I realized I could love. You don’t love God, if you’re an angel. You adore him.”

The smoke from John’s cigarette spiraled into the ceiling, molding into this and that face. Once in a while he’d lift a finger and make it freeze while he memorized one for later, when he was back at the hopeless job of keeping L. A. on the balance.

“Would you really have done what you threatened, with Angela and Lucifer?” he asked some time later. “You didn’t know if your blood or Lucifer’s would have worked…and she definitely wouldn’t have done it. Might’ve turned around and stabbed you, if she’d known what you were saying.”

It was a long time before Gabriel answered. He traced his hand over Balthazar’s face, ran his fingers through Balthazar’s hair and curved them down to rub beneath Balthazar’s chin, face intent on something else as if the touching was merely to remind himself of something.

“I would have anyway, if I’d been forced to it,” Gabriel said. The corner of his mouth twisted up in an ancient smile of bitter, quiet triumph, and suddenly John understood what Gabriel had meant earlier. “The last time I had to make this choice, I wasn’t willing to go that far. But I’m tired of making myself forget afterward.”

John smoked through his cigarette before he had an answer to that. “Good thing we’re all about the choice behind the door they don’t tell you about, then,” he muttered, pushing himself up into a sitting position. “Christ, I’m hungry. Hey…so there’s this great little noodle store down in Chinatown, which is conveniently near where I’ve got to check for baby krakens anyway. We could go there, have a good meal and then you can help me skim the scum off L. A. Sound good?”

“I’ve heard—” Balthazar fought against Gabriel’s hand for a moment, then sulkily laid back down.

“Sounds fine,” Gabriel said.

Chapter 8: Post-Canon: Loose Ends

Chapter Text

Some days John wondered why he bothered getting up, since he inevitably ended up back on his ass. The boost from his…thing with Gabriel and Balthazar could only do so much, and even that was dialed down by Gabriel’s radio silence. God knew where the bastard was now…

“Mr. Constantine?” quavered a woman in the corner. The kid on the bed promptly contorted, snarling and snapping at her, and she threw herself back out of the room, shrieking.

“It’s okay, it’ll be another minute.” John rolled over and hunted around till he’d found his charms. His hips were aching and his shoulders said he’d better not try anything funny or else they might just go on strike. He told them to fuck off and struggled back onto the bed. The boy kicked out at him and grazed his side, but he slipped past to force him back down. “Now, asshole, where were we? Oh, right. Et filii…

The balance had finally bounced back into force, so it was a simple matter to deport the jackass. But nevertheless, by the time John got off the bed to let the hysterical parents rush in, he found his cigarette had burned down all the way to the filter. Son of a bitch—one lucky kick, and so much for the nice start to the day for which John had been hoping.

He made his way to the bathroom and leaned over the sink to splash some water on his face. Something red and sticky glimmered in the bottom; he snapped back, swearing violently, and almost knocked down a towel-bar. Then he got himself under control and snorted, going back over to the clean sink. A quick rinse-up, a stop to graciously decline the family’s offer of money in favor of a weird old statuette they thought was worthless, and he was out on the street.

A sleek black car pulled up to the curb, so close that its rear tires nearly ran over John’s toes. He grimaced and scuffled back just as the back window scrolled down. “Very fucking funny. The bathroom, I mean.”

“It always is,” Balthazar said. He put his hand on the window and leaned out, critically looking over John. “Perhaps you should just give me the relic.”

“What, and miss out on seeing you do a hostile corporate take-over on your fellow shitheads? Not a chance in hell.” John didn’t wait for Balthazar to pull himself in before he jerked open the car door. He slid in and then delicately rearranged his coat, grinning at how Balthazar pointedly turned away. “Always wanted to see how the high life was.”

Balthazar slouched back and lifted a finger, somehow signaling the driver to move off. “Then you should lose the bowling alley.”

“And switch to your penthouse? Yeah, if I felt like dying by inches. Anyway, doesn’t seem to bother you when you stay over.” Five minutes after. The last couple weeks with the cancer, John had been too drained for the rush to hit, but now it was back in full force. A sudden jangling that made his fingers dance on his knees, a loose drunken warmth in his muscles.

“You’ve got no self-control, do you?” Balthazar tsked, slitting a glance at him.

John didn’t raise his head. Just reached out, grabbed Balthazar’s jaw before he could mouth off anymore, and dragged him across the seat. Contemptuous as Balthazar looked, he came pretty easily.

“Anyway,” he said a little bit later, “I’m not sure Gabriel knows where your place is.”

Balthazar muttered something about levels of intelligence and phonebooks as he redid his tie, but he wasn’t trying too hard to be annoying. He took a long time to tie a simple slip-knot.

“Can you figure out where he is?” John softly asked. He pretended to just drop the question in the air, not really directing it.

His reply was a slow shake of the head. A moment later, Balthazar abruptly snapped his heel into the floor. John agreed. Goddamn it.

Chapter 9: Post-Canon: Expedient Measures

Chapter Text

Balthazar sat up with a gasp, staring wildly around the room. But all he saw were shadowy dents in the walls, clutter spilling off of shelves, John restlessly moving besides him…no great walls of ice, no gigantic fanged mouth. He took in a deep breath and slowly lowered his knees back to the bed.

John suddenly froze, then turned over and looked at Balthazar. His hand was shaking, but he pressed it flat against the bed as soon as he saw that Balthazar had noticed. “Where the hell is he? Antarctica?”

Now that Balthazar had had a moment to compose himself, he thought upper Russia was more likely, but he didn’t share that with John. He tried a few tentative casts, but received no response. The sensible course of action after that would have been to get up, get dressed and take out his seething frustration on his idiot associates, who’d had not only had the gall to vault onto his company board seat when they’d thought he was dead, but had also nearly run it into the red. And Balthazar was fully intending to pursue the sensible course of action. Once he’d convinced his body that no, those hadn’t been his sensations and he was not incredibly cold. He wasn’t.

He was still shivering, damn it.

“What the…” Something touched Balthazar’s arm, then yanked him down by it when he tried to elbow it away. John squirmed over him and had teeth in his neck before Balthazar could throw him off. “Christ, between you and him I’m never going to get any sleep.”

“Why, Johnny, I didn’t realize you were so delicate,” Balthazar hissed. He got one arm under them and pushed, but that only made John bite harder. Balthazar’s head automatically went back and, much though he tried to fight it, he started to go limp.

Then John let up and leaned back, looking thoughtfully down at Balthazar. His fingers were working on Balthazar’s shoulders, convulsively squeezing and kneading. “Fuck,” he muttered.

“There’s an idea,” Balthazar said. He was teasing, but John took him seriously. And after a moment of moaning into John’s hungry mouth, Balthazar decided it might have been to his advantage. It was warming him, anyway. For now.

Chapter 10: Post-Canon: Post-Its from John's Fridge (Fashion Crisis)

Chapter Text

Balthazar--Touch my fucking suits again and I will rip that goddamned tongue of yours out by the roots. C.

Black. Black was functional. Black hid stains, and it looked professional, plus it generally suited John’s outlook on the world. He liked black. And besides the color, he had each of his suits custom-altered and doused with certain magics on top of that. They constituted one of his first lines of defense.

Maybe it wasn’t much, maybe the pinstripes were a deep gray and so fine that they were nearly invisible, but still, it was just as if Balthazar had walked in and dropped a corpse in front of him, then sat back to watch while he got railroaded into jail for it. While smoking John’s cigarettes.

John flung down the jacket and went for the door, only stopping to pick up Gabriel’s shotgun. That shit. If he wanted a lunchtime visit, he was damn well going to get one.

* * *

Johnny--Quit your whining. Now you have a much-needed excuse to take me shopping. B.

“—not—ever—fucking--again!” John’s knees slipped on the slick table top and he fell onto Balthazar, slamming his own jaw shut. Bit his tongue, but didn’t notice till he tasted the blood, and even then he didn’t give a shit. Just yanked Balthazar’s squirming body up by the waist and shoved back into him. Gave Balthazar’s prick a hard twist so Balthazar keened and twisted, bucking hard against him. “Get me?”

Balthazar’s answer was to rake huge scratches in his own boardroom table and scream like a banshee as he came. He collapsed, moaning, but when he figured out that John was just going to fuck him through the aftershocks, he started to whimper and move. John pinned him back and drove in till his balls were snugging up to Balthazar’s ass, and then did that again and again till he finally went over the edge as well.

“That’s…a terrible way…to discourage me,” Balthazar breathlessly said. “And now I need a new suit.”

John nipped sharply at his ear, since that was handiest; Balthazar merely craned around to flick that damned tongue of his along John’s lower lip. Impulses to rip it off and suck it in warred in John for a moment before he finally lunged down and smashed their mouths together.

“Son of a bitch,” he muttered. “Not yet, you don’t. Your shirt’s still in one piece.”

* * *

Both of you--If you don’t cut it out, I’ll tie you both up and leave you that way for a week. G.

Gabriel pinned the book with the heel of his hand and twisted about his fingers till he could fold over the next page. A little awkward maneuvering and he’d fully turned it. He was just about to continue reading when the body lying over his lap jerked, clenching hard around the fingers of his other hand. John had long since stopped trying to curse through his gag and now he was moaning, tugging at his bound hands and trying futilely to fuck himself on Gabriel’s hand. But Gabriel was careful to move with the other man so no matter what, his fingers remained at exactly the same shallow depth. “The next time she’s in town, I suppose I should introduce you more formally to Nicki. She’s a very interesting lady when it comes to alternatives to violence.”

Groaning, John writhed to press his erection against Gabriel’s hip. When Gabriel forced him to lie still, he craned about to show a plaintive, resentful expression. Then his eyes narrowed.

“Balthazar’s in the next room,” Gabriel answered. “He can hear, but can’t…attend to himself.”

That made John grin, but Gabriel always tried to be even-handed so he couldn’t allow that for long. He corkscrewed his fingers till John’s head dropped back, and then he resumed reading.