Ult. Hellblazer #3 - London Gothic Pt. 2

[liquidsword34]

Ultimate Hellblazer #3
London Gothic Part 2 of 3

The steam from Constantine's coffee rose up into his face, surrounding his nose with the aroma of cheap, sour beans. The rank odour and even worse taste kicked John into gear, putting his mind to work. Jack the Ripper might be after me and I have fuck all idea what to do, he thought to himself as he stared across the table at his companion, Kit Ryan. Kit was holding her Styrofoam cup of tea in her left hand while scrawling something on a scrap piece of paper with the pencil in her right hand, occasionally glancing up at John between strokes. Around them sat a few people in formal business wear, satisfying their caffeine addiction between pieces of paper work most likely. With his dusty trench coat and five pound hair cut, John felt out of place in the yuppie coffee shop. His general rule had always been that any establishment with furniture you'd find in a home was too up market for him, and he'd muttered the appropriate swear words when Kit dragged him inside a coffee shop with a sofa, occupied by what John could best describe as a loud pair of Patrick Bateman pastiches talking about payslips, work schedules and other concepts which were strange and confusing to Constantine.

"What're you drawing?"

"You", Kit muttered between a sip of her drink and a line down the paper.

"Leave it out, Kit".

"I'm serious, John. I got asked by a friend to contribute to a gallery she's doing. 'Interesting faces in an uninteresting world' or some other pretentious bollocks. She'll pay me for my work so it could be for a Hitler memorial for all I care".

"Your artistic integrity continues to amaze me, but you're stretching the definition of the word 'uninteresting' right now".

"You think?"

"I'm being hunted by Jack the Ripper, pretty bloody interesting that is don't you think?"

"Fair enough", Kit chuckled as she concluded her drawing and stuffed the scrap piece of paper into her pocket. "I've finished anyway".

"So where're you staying now?", John asked Kit as he carefully scanned the coffee shop, looking for anything out of the ordinary.

"Between places, mostly at friends houses. I'm hoping to get a place over here if I can get this collection published, but money's tight".

"Sure, sure".

"So, any idea how we're gonna get this guy? Or are we just gonna sit around like a pair of eejits until he tries to stab you?"

John gulped down a mouthful of bland coffee and then gave Kit a half-hearted shrug. "That doesn't sound like a bad idea to be honest".

"You what? Are you out of yer bleedin' mind?", Kit spat across the wooden table at Constantine, keeping her voice hushed so as to not draw any attention.

"He's not going to just slam a knife in my back with all these hair product samplers around, is he?", John replied as he gestured his head towards a young man stood at the counter who's hair was practically swimming in wax or gel. "We'll just wait around for a bit, see if anybody suspicious looking comes in, wait till we see the guy I saw in the kitchen then...I don't know, improvise".

"Feckin' magicians", Kit grumbled in a half-sincere yet half-flirting way before taking a gulp of her tea. "Improvise this, improvise that, why don't you just buy an iPhone like the rest of the world and make plans for this type of shite before it happens".

"Hang on", Constantine whispered as a young man wearing chino trousers and a navy blue polo shirt stepped through the coffee house door. Even in clean clothes and with slightly neater hair, John recognised him instantly. "That's him".

"Who?"

"It's fucking Tom Jones in the flesh!", John said sarcastically. "Who do you think it is? The kid from the flat, walking in, in the chinos". Kit peered from the corner of her eyes across the busy coffee shop to see the killer walk up to the counter, pulling a wallet from his pocket. He quietly ordered something and paid, not even glancing over at Constantine and Kit.

"You think he's noticed us?", John asked Kit as his grip on his cup tightened.

"If he has he's doing a bloody good job of hiding it".

The pair sat in silence from there, occasionally peeking at the short, skinny boy stood at the counter. The killer stood with an air of confidence around him, perfect posture complemented by being almost completely still. Despite his relatively small stature, the killer being in the same room as John sent a shiver down the magician's spine. Even if he wasn't super natural, if he was just a mentally ill man with a knife, he'd butchered an innocent girl and gleefully threatened to do the same to John. The very thought made both Kit and John nervous. In under thirty seconds he was back outside, sipping his tea as he strolled through the door. John and Kit hastily followed, leaving their drinks behind.

"You distract him with your Merlin nonsense, I'll smash his bleedin' head in", Kit told John as they followed the kid quietly down the high street, keeping their distance.

"Why do I have to distract him when it's my plan?"

"Because I have eight stone anorexic model friends that could beat seven shades of shit out of you with one hand", Kit retorted as she pushed John into a clothes shop, the mannequin standing in the shop window keeping them hidden as they watched the killer through the great glass windows.

"And you haven't tried setting me up with a single one of them", John said back, his serious tone removing any trace of humour from his 'joke'. "He's gone off down there", John told Kit, pointing at a narrow side street between two shops. The two strode across the high street, drawing a few strange looks as they power walked side by side. Kit balled up her hands into fists as John began to mutter an incantation to cause dizziness in the target, needing only to channel energy from a source to finish casting the spell. Kit and Constantine turned into the side street to see, to their surprise, that the killer had seemingly vanished into thin air. An elderly man with a tangled mess of a beard stained with bread crumbs sat sipping a can of lager by a lamp post, with an old overcoat covering his legs from the cold and a ripped up jacket slung over his shoulders.

"Did you see somebody just go down here?", John inquired of the vagrant while fishing for the change from his coffee in his pocket.

"Nah, last I saw some nebby lump tried running off with me coat, but that was an hour ago, mon", the old man stammered at John, who nodded in understanding then handed him a few coins of charity.

"What bloody language was that?", Kit asked John as the two looked around the alley, trying to work out where the kid had gone. They looked up at the tall buildings stood on either side, baring down and blocking out the light like the titans of myth.

"Geordie, he's from Newcastle".

"Ah. So, looks like the lad just disappeared into thin air. Guess he's not your normal psycho".

"Your zombie Jack the Ripper seems likely at this point, but that doesn't help when we dunno where the bastard is", John sighed as leaned against the wall of the alley. John looked over at the old man, eyeing him up. The tramp looked up at John and politely nodded before going back to sipping his drink. "Unless..." Confidently, John walked back across the alley, with Kit behind him. With all the strength he could muster John went to kick the tramp, but instead found himself driving his foot into the brick wall, sending a pain shooting up from his toes into his leg. John hopped backwards into the arms of Kit, who muttered something to him about him being an idiot while keeping him on his feet. Standing around fifteen feet away from them was the old man, stood perfectly upright, a smile now spread across his haggard face.

"How did you know it was me, Johnny?", the tramp asked. Instead of a bouncy, upbeat Geordie accent, a clear, crisp, almost "proper" Victorian London accent which should belong to a man much younger than the vagrant slivered from his lips.

"I didn't", John said as he straightened himself up. "Was worth a guess, weren't it?"

"Indeed", the old man's filthy coat turned into a slightly longer, clean over coat, which wrapped around him tightly. From beneath his coat the killer withdrew a six inch long lancet, coated in blood which had dried on the shiny steel. The beard seemed to retract into the killers face as his wrinkles and imperfections disappeared, replaced by a face shrouded in shadow, like it didn't really exist in the same plain as his surroundings.

"Why're you doing this?", John asked bluntly as Kit came to stand by his side, rolling up her sleeves.

"I had always been a practitioner of the dark arts", the killer started whilst lovingly holding the blade in both hands like a mother reunited with her child. "Since I was a child, and I had The Demon Barbatos talk sweet little Pretty Polly into following me into the woods, I had a connection with beings more important than you or I, sweet Johnny. Soon, however, I became aware of how short life was. I was conversing with creatures who bore witness to the birth of the universe, and I was destined to die in forty, maybe fifty years? It was unthinkable. So I made a deal. The First of the Fallen gave me immortality".

"In exchange for what, your soul?", John sighed.

"No, my soul remains mine. That's the fun of it, Johnny! My soul was transformed into something more, something different. Something dark and dangerous, like you. The First of the Fallen cannot be present on all plains at once, not even he is that capable, so he used me. I bled dry London's harlots. I took their tortured souls and gave them to my master, through my own. And in return, I was allowed to live on". Constantine and Kit stood firm, possibly in fear or possibly in defiance, listening to the man tell his tale. "Alas, my immortality had to be earned. My master came to me, and told me I had to make more tributes. Can you believe that, my sweet Johnny? So it was back to the streets of London, to carving up her ladybirds into a suitable offering. I could tell you that I do it only for the longevity it provides, but I would be lying to us all".

"So why me? I'm not a historian or anything, but I don't think I fit the shared characteristic of your victims. If I did I'd never be out of the mirror, you know?"

"Always the joker, aren't you Johnny?", the killer gave John an almost loving smile which chilled the magician to his very core. "No, you may not be of the fairer sex, but your soul? Your soul is too delicious to pass up on, with all of your history, with all you've seen. I could live for centuries from your essence, my sweetness!"

"Well, I'm here", Constantine looked the killer dead in his eyes, showing not an ounce of fear.

"If you're done puffing yer damn chests out", Kit stepped forward.

"Oh, yeah, I forgot about that whole plan when the bastard started shape shifting", John shrugged at Kit as he reached into his pocket, searching for anything he could use. As he did this Kit charged at the killer, her clenched fists raised up to strike. In one swift move the killer side-stepped Kit's attack, threw her down and raised his blade up. "Kit!". John yelled at the top of his lungs as he tackled the killer, sending the two of them down to the worn away pavement in a mess of limbs and overcoat. As he fell, John felt a sharp pain in his leg, followed by what he could only describe as somebody running their thin, cold, bony fingers across his brain, letting their nails dig into the soft organ as they touched every inch of it. John screwed up his eyes, trying to resist, but the hands keep rubbing his brain, molesting his mind with both experience and glee.

"Hmmm", John heard the killers voice hissing in his ear as the pain in his thigh heightened. "There's a branch higher up your tree for me to pick the fruit from. Maybe that loss will ripen you up, so to speak". John let out a garbled reply as the hands let go of his brain all too suddenly, making him heave up a mouthful of vomit down onto the pavement. "I feel that a degree of anguish over such a loss can blacken even the purest of souls, never mind one as filthy as yours. Yes, it would be such a waste for me to carve up the succulent joint now, when with just the flick of a knife I can add so much more to it, don't you think?". The killer chuckled as he reached down to John's leg, withdrawing the blade which he'd left embedded in his victims leg. John grunted loudly in pain, masking the sound of the killer strolling out of the alley, whistling a tune as he went.

"You OK, John?", Kit called over as she pulled herself up, holding her head in her hands.

"You have a car, right?"

"Yeah I-"

"He's going after my dad, Kit". John spat the last of the vomit from his mouth down onto the ground with disgust. "He read my mind, then whispered in my ear. We need to get to Liverpool. Now".

-To Be Continued-