Free Constantine by John Shirley, Kevin Brodbin Page A

with his free hand. It didn’t respond this time.
    So he smashed it on the ground.
    The beetle let out a painfully high-pitched death shriek that made blood start from Constantine’s eardrums. The sound ripped into the demon, and the amalgam of small animals shuddered, the parts shivering apart. Constantine could see the street behind the creature through stretching seams of mucus…
    He jerked his arm free, got to his feet, swiped the vermin off his face and head, and grabbed the nearest thing that could be used for a weapon - the road barricade. He swung the flashing barricade with all his might at the demon just as it was pulling itself back together…
    He struck hard in its squirming center and, caught in a moment of weakness, the demon flew into living rags, the shape coming asunder with a kind of chaotic finality, to become streams of scattering creatures.
    Heart thudding, Constantine stomped the scorpions and let the rest scamper and scuttle into the city’s shadows.
    Trying to catch his breath, he took off his coat, checked it for bonus-sized spiders and other crawlers, put it back on, walked five unsteady steps… and threw up in the gutter.
    On his knees, staring into a sewer grating, he thought:
    That was no random attack. That was an assassin, sent from Hell. Someone suddenly doesn’t want to wait for me to die of cancer.
    Constantine stood up, feeling vaguely unclean, and was actually glad when the rain started again.
    --
    Angela typed in: John Constantine. .. Los Angeles. ..
    She waited, staring into the police computer. She wasn’t using it for an LAPD case search.
    She’d already tried that, and there wasn’t much of a record on Constantine. Sure, dozens of parking violations, a number of speeding tickets, a few cases of reckless endangerment. His driver’s license had been revoked. But nothing like real crime.
    She’d shifted to the Internet, Googling him now.
    The search engine turned up a great many entries on a Constantine based in Los Angeles.
    Typical was the selection from a Society of Skeptics article:

    CONSTANTINE, JOHN

    …rumors of this paid investigator into the supernatural being a supernatural creature himself…
    supposed evidence of his psychic abilities… these hysterical legends were probably propounded by Constantine himself in order to promote his business, which is vaguely defined at best… Like most charlatans, he…
    Angela glanced at the precinct office window, hearing the rain starting up again, pattering at the glazed glass. It’s not that it never rained in Los Angeles, but this much of it was strange. The soft sound seemed almost loud in the empty room. She looked at the other desks, each with its monitor and stack of manila folders. She’d chosen a staff room that wasn’t being used much now, for privacy, but she almost wished someone else were here. She wasn’t sure why.
    She rocked back in her swivel chair and scrolled down through articles mentioning Constantine. They had headlines like:
    OCCULT ACTIVITY ON THE RISE
    and
    CLAIMED POSSESSION REFUTED BY BISHOP
    and
    SATANIC CULT DISSOLVED
    Some of the photos with the articles were disturbing. Patterns drawn in blood on a wall. Symbols burned into a ceiling. A crucifix burned to little more than ashes. And there was Constantine himself, in handcuffs and a rueful expression, looking at a mother holding her infant son in her arms. A man standing with them, unhandcuffed; caption said he was a Father Hennessy.
    A line from the article struck her:… insufficient evidence to prosecute. ..
    She scrolled down, seeing the variety of cities where Constantine had made waves. London, Paris, Rome, Budapest, Moscow… Los Angeles.
    She went back to the LAPD case files, and scanned down… till she found Constantine’s last known address. She highlighted it and told the computer to print it.
    The printer started to hum, hissily shuffling paper inside itself. And then the phone rang - seeming so loud in the quiet room she jumped