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st_aurafinaTitle: Silk Cut Souvenir
Fandom: Hellblazer (comic)
Characters: John Constantine, Chas Chandler
Rating: PG for strong language and acts of sacrilege
Notes: Written for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kindkit in the Yuletide 2006 exchange
Thank you tolilacsigil and elynross for beta reading.
The title comes from the song "Heavy Heart" by You Am I.
Those familiar with Hellblazer will know that John Constantine has a less than respectful attitude towards the Church and this is reflected in this fic. If this is likely to upset you, please don't read.
Chas was dreaming when the call came in, a comfortable dream of the kind that doesn't shame you with unattainability. He and Renee were dancing at a party, one of those church hall affairs, all balloons and curling ribbon, and Chas had his hand on Renee's backside, pleasantly pissed. Renee rested her head on his shoulder, and, as they swayed comfortably to and fro, he felt love glowing in his chest with the warmth of cheap plonk. Drunken voices rose up in song all around them, and though the tune was familiar, the words were different. Something about an albatross.
"They mate for life, you know." Renee spoke, her face glassy-eyed the way people are in dreams. Chas watched the balloons sway as the wind moved through the church hall. The door was open, and a lean figure stood in the doorway, neck craned over a sputtering match held to his cigarette. Moonlight spilled through the open door and washed the colour from everyone's faces.
He was sitting up with the phone in his hand before he was really awake, and he could still taste cheap champagne and ashes on his tongue.
"I am looking for Mr Frank Chandler?" The voice was accented, far away and tinny. Chas cleared his throat a little.
"Uh, this is he. Mr Chandler." Beside him, Renee looked up at him with narrowed eyes, then turned her head away.
"Mr Chandler, you are listed here as, uh, next of kin? For a Mr John Constantine?"
Chas felt his stomach swoop down and curl over. "Next of kin? You only need to know that if, well, if he's bloody gone and died."
The voice became solicitous. "Oh, no, no, you misunderstand, please forgive me. A Mr Constantine is a patient here, in our hospital. We cannot keep him, now. He has no insurance remaining, and to be honest, Mr Chandler, I don't think he should be released without someone to take care of him." The voice was cool and uninterested now. "Ospedale Civile, Mr Chandler, Lanciano. Please come as soon as possible." In the hum and static of the disconnected line, Chas thought he heard the beating of wings.
Lanciano, as Chas discovered from the twenty-four hour travel agent, was in Italy. He packed his duffle bag with the phone tucked against his ear, calling in favours and trading shifts with mates while he rustled up the cash for a ticket. Renee watched him from the doorway, her mouth a straight line like a face in one of little Trish's drawings.
"It's a bloody long taxi-ride from here to Italy, Chas. You better have a good reason to be dropping everything to go sit by his bedside and hold his hand."
Chas tried to pull her into a hug, but her body was as unyielding as her face. He gave her shoulder a squeeze instead. "I'll be back as soon as I can, love." Renee's expression didn't soften, but she turned her body aside to let him through the door.
Stepping off the flight from Stansted to Pescara with a cheap phrase book and a handful of Euros stuffed into his bag, Chas squared his shoulders and headed for the cab rank. There was nothing more depressing than a holiday town in autumn, he thought, all those brightly coloured signs and buildings looking slightly grimy in the watery sunlight: empty shops and boarded up windows of businesses that had failed to thrive. The seabirds wheeling and mewing above the terminal fell silent as the passengers from the London flight milled around the cabs.
Chas assessed the line of taxis with a professional eye. The first cab was grimy, with an unrepaired bingle on the left side, so he was less upset than he should have been when small twin backpackers with bright mirrored glasses and oversized beanies pushed past him and slid into the back seat.
"Lovely manners, kids, thanks!" Chas raised a sarcastic hand in salute. The two flaxen heads turned in unison to stare at him with blank faces, eyes hidden behind foiled lenses.
The next cab that rolled forward met with Chas' approval – new tires, clean paintwork – and so he stuck his head through the open window. It didn't even smell too strongly of cigarettes – not that the smell of smoke bothered Chas. The last passenger had left the backseat swathed in the fragrance of overblown roses, like the cheap perfume his old gran used to dab on her hanky.
"Lanciano?" He felt sorry to be asking the driver to take a long ride this late in the afternoon, especially with little chance of a return fare, but made a mental promise to tip the guy later on. The driver rolled his eyes good-naturedly, then beckoned Chas into the cab.
"Third time today - and it's not even pilgrim season!"
Silvio, the driver, deftly negotiated the Autostrada, then took a smaller road that weaved up towards the mountains. The moment he asked after Chas' profession, he and Chas discovered a shared wealth of stories about disastrous drives and horror fares. Lanciano, further inland than Pescara, derived much of its income from historical and religious tourism; Silvio, a devout Catholic, nonetheless found the pilgrims to be the most difficult passengers.
"They are not humble – a pilgrim should be humble, but no, they are demanding, they are going to see the Miraculo, nothing is too good for them."
Chas snorted. "It's much the same in England, Silvio, mate, when people want to go kiss the tarmac of Coronation Street."
The sun was slipping behind the mountain, so Chas had only glimpses of the rocky landscape through the window, but from the way his ears popped and crackled, and the care with which Silvio carefully executed hair-pin turns, Chas felt they were rising lazily upwards, like a spiral of smoke..
Blue and red flashing lights and a rapid deceleration brought Chas blinking out of a half-dream. Silvio cursed and braked again, edging the taxi around the emergency hazard beacons that marked out an area of fallen rocks. Police cars and ambulances were parked haphazardly across the road like children's toys, and people in official jackets milled around the rubble. Safe and warm inside Silvio's taxi, Chas watched as a policeman draped a blanket over the windscreen of a half-buried car. From the bent fender, Chas recognised the taxi that had left just before his, and wondered about the surly young backpackers. The ambulance officers were not moving very fast.
"Listen, Silvio, is it safe to go on?" The taxi was passing through troughs cut into the mountain, high walls of rock on either side of the road.
Silvio laughed, but there was a nervous note in his voice. "We are not far from the city. A rockslide when the weather is so dry? I can hardly believe it."
The rest of the drive passed in sombre silence, both Chas and Silvio watching the hills carefully. As the road dipped down into the city centre, Chas watched flocks of pigeons circling the many-windowed towers, the blocky forms black against the setting sun.
Lanciano was a mix of ancient buildings and twenty-first century technology; neon lights hung on stone walls and modern cars parked higgledy-piggledy on cobblestone roads. The hospital was a series of sprawling low-rise buildings with a tumbled collection of Roman columns on the lawn, lit with spotlights and encrusted with pigeon crap.
"Uh, ricerca, mia amico, John Constantine," Chas gestured and waved his phrasebook at the glamorous attendant manning the admissions desk. She raised a supercilious eyebrow, and tapped at her keyboard.
"Mr Constantine is in the psychiatric ward. May I take your name? I will call the doctor in charge."
Chas blushed and tucked his phrasebook into his back pocket. He gave his details, then wandered around the waiting area, looking at the plaques and dedications. The hospital obviously liked to photograph the doctors with their success stories. Good idea to put them out here in the waiting room, Chas mused – it lets you tot up each doctor's score. He slumped into a hard plastic chair while the receptionist spoke on the phone. Hospitals are the same everywhere, he thought, leafing through a fashion magazine from years before his daughter was born. Everyone looks dead under the blue lights, and nobody can make out the voices on the intercom. He threw the magazine back on to the pile, and leaned his head against the glossy white wall. What the hell was John doing in a psych ward, in a backwater town in Italy?
"Chas!"
Chas had only shut his eyes for a moment when he heard John's voice calling his name, close enough that he felt the breath on his neck. There was nobody in the waiting area, but across the room, he saw the door to the access stairs click shut. He looked over at the reception desk, but the receptionist was busily occupied talking into her headset and examining her nails. His boots crunched across the plastic carpet; the door was unlocked, and the handle felt warm in his palm. The stairwell was quiet, but the air hummed with residual sound, and a cloying perfume caught in the back of Chas' throat – roses and old linen. The fragrance thickened in the air, as, without warning, swarms of child-like bodies barrelled into him from above and below. There were maybe twenty of them, faces hidden beneath cowls of hessian. As the slender bodies milled around him, pressing him against the wall, Chas saw glimpses of white skin, too pale to have ever seen sun, and the curve of a cheek into which was set an eye too big to be human, dark blue, glassy and pupilless. The smell of roses was burning his nose and mouth. He gasped for air but felt his knees giving and his vision blurring. As darkness rushed towards him, he heard the pigeons whirring above, and a voice spoke, cool and resonant.
"Constantine. Tell Constantine. There is no time. Sunrise."
Chas awoke face down on the concrete stairs, retching and choking. Some bloody hospital, he thought, looking at his watch, seeing that an hour had passed since he had arrived, and nobody had discovered his unconscious body in the stairwell. He clambered to his feet and leaned against the wall, waiting as the world around him dipped and swayed, then levelled out. Nothing seemed to be broken, and from the pounding in his head, he could tell his heart was still beating. He staggered through the door and into the waiting area, where the receptionist looked at him with an expression of pity and disdain, as though he had been doing something secret and shameful in the stairwell. Chas wondered what on earth she thought he had been up to.
"Mr Chandler, you may go up to the ward now. Please follow the green line to the elevator, and go to floor five."
Chas nodded, and stumbled towards the line. The sooner he found John, the sooner this crazy stuff would be sorted and they could go home. He followed the line deep inside the hospital, to the bank of sleek elevators.
The windowless and overly warm psychiatric ward was painted an improbable primrose yellow that reminded Chas of watery custard and sent his stomach churning again. He was met at the elevator by a prim nurse with pale, upswept hair and a ridiculously pert cap, who led him to a consulting room. In the centre of the room, John sat in a wheelchair, his hands wandering over the fabric of his pyjamas, plucking at the pilled flannelette. Chas exhaled in relief, and put his hands on John's shoulders. His friend's face was covered in fading bruises, and his lower lip, hanging open a little, was puffy and split.
"Bloody hell, mate, what kind of a mess have you gotten into now?"
"He came to us like this, didn't you?" The nurse patted John's cheek, "A man threw him out of the car, not even stopping, and he is all beaten, bruised. We worried he would lose teeth, but see?" She pulled down John's lower lip, and showed Chas the crooked but intact row of slightly yellowed teeth. "Oh, I have a photograph – from the security cameras. The police, they say to call them, if this man appears – they will come to arrest him." She bustled out of the room, and returned with a blurry time-stamped photograph of a burly man with a long ponytail. "Here, this is the man."
Chas took the photo and eyed it closely: the bloke was a big bastard, but Chas could take him. He gripped John's shoulder and gave it a reassuring shake. "Don't worry, mate. I'll look after you."
John looked up into Chas' face, and his blank and friendly expression was one of the most frightening things Chas had ever seen. John's mouth worked a little, but no noise came from his lips; they were parched and cracked. The nurse held a cup to John's lips and he drank obediently from the bent straw.
"The medication," the nurse said, efficiently wiping John's mouth and tucking the cup out of reach of John's wandering hands. "It causes, dryness, yes? In the mouth." She pulled three tablet vials from her pocket. "Here: blue is every day, for the schizophrenia, he takes this every day. Red, yes? Is for sleeping, for the sedation. When he is agitated."
Chas took the vials, and peered at the labels, which were in Italian. "So, the green one? What's the green one for?"
The nurse gently lifted one of John's hands from his lap; it was trembling. "Green one, they are for the shaking. Side effect, we think, from the blue pills. But they are necessary, so we treat shaking as well." She lowered the hand again, and it joined its partner, travelling aimlessly across John's long legs. The nurse patted Chas on the arm. "It is, you know, okay to be frightened. But he will get better, they say. He is old to be diagnosed, most likely it is temporary episode, maybe he is very stressed?"
Chas shook his head. "To be honest, I didn't even know he was in Italy. How long was he a patient here?"
The nurse stroked John's hair fondly, though John seemed oblivious to the attention. "Oh, nearly a week now, I think. The police, they say he was seen attending the Miraculo Eucharistico, but nobody knows very much. His name, yes, and his details from his flight in, but nothing more."
Chas felt a great unease stir in his guts. He had been hoping that this was some ruse of John's, something he had cooked up, but his mate sat there in the wheelchair while the pretty blonde nurse petted him like a bloody guinea pig, and he didn't wink or smirk or fire off a flip remark. Chas' fear deepened when the nurse handed him John's clothes and a plastic wrapped package of incontinence pants. She smiled, and pushed the wheelchair towards the lift, waiting for the doors to open. "Sometimes, when he is sedated, he has the little accident."
At the pension that Silvio had recommended, Chas helped John out of the cab. The hospital wouldn't let Chas borrow the bloody wheelchair, but they did call him a taxi, though the driver, less philanthropic than Silvio, had grumbled at being summoned for a three minute drive. With someone supporting his weight, John could stumble along on his own feet, so Chas half-carried him in through the front door. Puffing a little with the exertion, he eased John up the stairs to his room, pausing at the landing for a breather. John was thinner than the last time Chas had seen him, but there was a deceptively leaden quality to those gangly legs. On the landing, leaning against the wall, John mumbled nonsense to himself, and fingered the wooden railing of the banister, and Chas gave up any hope that he was faking it. This person didn't even smell like the John he knew – his skin was pink and clean, his hair was soft and smelled like antiseptic shampoo, rather than smoke and a struck match.
On his floor, Chas bundled John onto one of the narrow beds, and made sure the door locked behind them. He rummaged through his duffle-bag for the bottle of duty-free scotch he'd picked up at Pescara, and tried not to look at the carton of Silk Cut he'd bought for John. He broke the seal on the bottle and sat on the end of John's bed, first taking a swig, then holding the bottle up to John's lips, who swallowed obligingly. After few such exchanges, and no further attacks of a supernatural persuasion, Chas was feeling a little more positive. John would be fine – after all, his appetite for someone else's duty-free liquor was completely unharmed. In the morning they'd fly back to England, and the National Health would sort out his friend's brain.
Chas woke up reaching for the warmth of Renee's bulk in the bed, and nearly rolled onto the floor. The room was icy cold, John's bed was empty, and Chas leapt to his feet with the sheets tangled around his legs. He had left the shutters on the window wide open, and now someone had thrown up the sash, flooding the room with cold air and moonlight. John sat, fully dressed, on the floor under the open window, the torn silver foil of the open box of Silk Cut gleamed beside him in the moonlight. Smoke drifted up in ribbons from the glowing cigarette between John's fingers, and he took a long, appreciative drag on the end.
"Pass us some of that scotch, will you, mate?"
Chas pulled the bottle out of his bag and handed it over with ill grace. "I thought you were out of your mind, you bastard. You could have come to before I hauled you up three friggin' flights of stairs." He scowled, and tried not to show how relieved he was.
John smiled, and took a swig from the bottle. "I was out of my mind, Chas. Still might be, for all I know. All hail the healing power of liquor!" He raised the bottle in a mocking toast. "Some nosy little shit has tried to have a peek inside my head. I hope the bastard is suffering now." He laughed, and it was a dry, unpleasant sound. "Insanity, Chas. It's the best defence."
Chas sat on the floor next to him and tore open the last packet of cheap airline peanuts that he had stashed in his pocket. He told John what the nurse had said, and showed him the photograph from the hospital security camera.
John took it and eyed it sourly. "Don't know him, but things are a little jumbled. Can't remember why I'm here, or anything much past getting on the plane at Gatwick. Never mind: we see him, we kick the shit out of him. Good to have a plan."
Chas chewed on stale peanuts and nodded meditatively. "Listen, I think some, uh, associates of yours want to pass on a message." He told John about the hessian-clad bodies that had pressed him to the wall of the stairwell. "They, well, they weren't quite human, John. Big blue eyes, alien like, and a voice that went booming right through your head."
"They hurt you?" John's voice was carefully casual.
"Nah," Chas said cheerfully through a mouthful of peanuts. "Takes more than a scrum of aliens in sacks to worry me, mate."
"Right then," John stood up and put out his cigarette in the window box of poinsettias. "To the hospital we go. Find out which of the many freaks in my little black book want to have a word."
They walked together in silence through the moonlit street, and Chas wished it could always be this easy – just him and John, and nobody they loved nearby to get hurt. Together they turned the corner, a wide, cobbled street, tall buildings on either side, but well lit by lamps on wrought iron posts. Twenty steps down the road, and it all went wrong; the determination faded from John's eyes, his movements became hesitant and random, and he turned to look at Chas with distrust written across his face. Chas moved back towards him with his hands stretched out placatingly.
"It's all right, mate. Don't run." God, if he ran, Chas couldn't keep up, he'd lose him in the narrow streets, and it'd take forever to find him again, if he ever did. He encircled John's wrist with one hand, and as alarming as it should have been for John to surrender to anyone, Chas let out a sigh of relief when John let himself be pulled closer. He led John slowly back towards the pension, singing quiet nonsense under his breath, the sort of thing he'd sing to Trish when she was colicky and upset. Around the corner John pulled away from Chas' grip, his face once again sharp with edges and planes.
"Fucking hell, Chas!" John stepped back into the wider street, where long shadows cast by the tall, square buildings interrupted the moonlight. His expression slackened, and Chas, quick to understand the practical application of a theory, pulled him back into the moonlight. John swore. "I feel like a fucking mime, walking into the fucking wind. Right, it's the moonlight that's doing it, and here I was thinking it was you forgetting my pills."
The hospital was out of bounds – inaccessible by any path bathed in moonlight, and in any case, once inside the building, John would be rendered useless.
"Where did you say they saw me, Chas?" John was thumbing through Chas' guide book.
Chas struggled to remember what the nurse said. "Miraculo something, some kind of religious display. Listen, John, with this crazy moonlight business, what happens when the sun comes up?"
John flicked through the index. "We get this thing bloody well sorted before we say 'arrivederci moon' is what we do, son. Here: Miraculo Eucharistico, it's one of those bleeding communion wafers. Literally – they say the wafer turned into heart tissue, and the wine into blood, even did scientific studies, like on the shroud of Turin. Of course, it's natural to proclaim that a miracle, isn't it? Think we can we get there, without me coming over all moon calf?"
The Miraculo Eucharistico was housed in the Church of San Francesco, a wide, square complex of sixteenth century buildings with white stucco walls and broad archways that let plenty of moonlight into the well-trodden cloisters. Chas wasn't much for religion, but he winced when John wrapped his hand in his coat and punched through a window pane in a wooden door, reached through to the lock, then shook out his coat and put it on again. John stepped through the doorway, careful to keep his feet on the squares of moonlight cast through the towering windows onto the floor. Chas remained hovering on the threshold.
"Come on, Chas. In for a penny."
They easily found their way to the chamber where the Miraculo was housed for public viewing, thanks to a pile of helpful multi-lingual leaflets, complete with a map, that Chas found on a table near the door. Chas had to tug John along through a short darkened service corridor, but the chamber itself was spacious, and the external wall was lined with arched windows through which moonlight washed across the expanse. The display was obviously closed to the public – a large screen had been pulled across, and the double doors that opened into the public antechamber were closed and bolted. The pews had all been pushed against the wall, and in the empty space at the centre, a man in an expensive suit with his long hair pulled into a pony-tail knelt before a wide silver bowl, chanting in Latin. Chas didn't understand a word, but he recognised the outline of the man from the hospital security photo, the man who had thrown John from a moving car. John gave a incoherent roar of fury, shoved past Chas, and launched himself at the man.
It wasn't a fair fight – the man was taller and much fitter than John, and though John fought dirty, grinding his knee into the man's groin and jabbing thumbs into his eye sockets, the combination of a week in hospital and the effect of being dragged into the shadowed corners of the room meant that John moved slower and less nimbly than his opponent. Chas would never have interfered in the fight otherwise – John was sometimes very territorial about things like that. He hefted an iron candlestick thoughtfully, then brought it down on the well-dressed man's head. The man went down like a felled tree – eyes crossed, and blood pouring from his nose.
"Fuck!" John's nose was bleeding, too, and he had a livid spot spreading across his cheek that would shortly become a shiner to match the one fading around his other eye. He kicked the silver bowl over, and a clear liquid spilled out of it, carrying a photograph of John, slick with moisture. "Fuck! Fucking around inside my fucking head, I'll fucking teach you." He delivered a kick to the unconscious man's side.
"Ease up, John, he's already out cold." Chas put a hand on John's shoulder, but John shook it off and fell to his knees, patting the man's pockets.
"Who the hell are you, messing around inside my mind?"
Chas looked around the room for identifying papers and spotted a leather briefcase, and beside it, encased in a tooled leather sheath, a heavy sword. He dragged them both back to John, who by now was sitting astride the man's chest, ripping open the man's shirt, sending pearly buttons flying across the room. The man had a large and painful looking tattoo covering most of his chest – a medallion with broad Latin letters encircling a horse bearing two riders. Chas leaned the hilt of the sword against the man's chest – the engraving on the pommel was identical.
"Blancquefort's seal. He's a bloody Templar – this is church business." John curled his lip in a sneer. "Interfering busybody yuppie scum. I hate Templars."
Chas unsheathed the sword, and awkwardly used the point to prise the lock off the briefcase. "So, that was magic? He was making you crazy?" The brief case was filled with manila folders, each with a photograph stapled to the front. Chas flipped through them.
John picked up the photograph that had fallen from the overturned bowl. It was a grainy colour snap of John in a railway station. The image swirled as an oily substance dripped from it onto the stone floor. John fumbled for his matches, and struck a light one-handed. "Shouldn't be a problem any more, Chas." He let the yellow flame lick at the corner of the photo, and it was swallowed in seconds. "I look forward to years of lurking in shadowy alleys with no ill-effects."
Chas kept sorting through the files. "Wait a minute – I know this one." The photo was recent, so recent that Chas could see the edge of his own body in it – it had been taken at the airport in Pescara yesterday afternoon, when the twin backpackers had snaffled his taxi. He spread the rest of the files on the floor until he found the face of the other kid. "These kids, they were killed in the rockslide yesterday." He opened the files and skimmed through the paperwork. "They weren't related. That's funny, they were identical so far as I could tell."
John picked up the other file. "Well, they weren't. This one's a girl, anyway, and she's changed a bit in five months." He pulled a photo from inside the file; in it the girl had dark hair, and her body was short and curvy, not the elongated athlete's form that Chas had seen yesterday. He bent and picked up files randomly, flicking through the papers. "All the same age, give or take a year. All from the EU." He pulled out a newspaper article entitled "Miracle Op Saves Tiny Lisa" – the black and white photo showed a baby in a humidicrib on breathing apparatus, a C-shaped scar neatly stitched into her chest. "This one had heart surgery when she was wee – any of yours?"
When Chas had flicked through the files – twenty-six in all – it transpired that they had been seriously ill as infants, and all had been under the care of Professor Edoardo Barbini, an Italian cardiac specialist based in Lanciano. More than one of the photos of him holding an infant had been part of the proud wall of plaques at the hospital.
John looked over from where he was winding rope around the unconscious knight's feet. "Barbini? He's in the guidebook – he did those studies on the Miraculo, analysed the heart tissue, proved it was incorruptible human flesh, or so they claim." He dropped the knight's feet to the ground with a thud. "Those bleeding communion wafers are usually rubbish hoaxes. There might actually be something to this one."
Chas looked at the files strewn around him, and all the faces caught in polaroids looked back at him – faces hidden behind dark glasses, large hats or long flaxen hair. He pulled the leaflet from his pocket, and scanned the cheaply printed text: it was filled with praise for the eminent heart surgeon who had examined the perfectly preserved tissue. "I think there might be at that, John."
John strode over to the glass display case. "Nothing fills the church with self-satisfied glee more than a little bit of proof. You'd think they weren't in the faith business, or something." He pried open a pocket knife, and jabbed at the lock on the door of the case. "I don't really like the sound of this Barbini – sounds like he tried to bring church and science together, in a fairly unpleasant way." He lifted the crystal goblet out of the case, and swirled it, then raised the lid. There was a faint smell of roses; John breathed it in, his eyes far away. "Reckon I know what I came here for, Chas. Give me your peanuts."
Chas handed them over. John emptied the remaining nuts onto the floor and carefully slid the gelatinous contents of the goblet into the empty bag, folding the end over carefully. "This miracle operation that the doctor performed, I'll bet he made it a bit more miraculous with a little slice of the magic wafer here." He gestured with the bag. "Grafting. Like growing pears on an apple tree – there's no sane reason to want to do it, other than to see if it can be done." He tucked the bag away in a pocket.
"So, those kids, they've got a piece of that grafted onto their hearts?" Chas was turning green. "What is it? What does that do to them?"
"It makes them abominations." The Templar knight spoke with a mouthful of blood, his hair matted against his cheek. "Constantine, in fraternising with those filthy creatures you are interfering in the Lord's great plan, and in the sanctioned work of the Church. You would do well to tell me where the nest is located."
"So, I was fraternising with them, was I? Well, I'm not going to argue theology with scum like you." John delivered a kick to the knight's stomach, and the injured man doubled over with a gasp. "If there's a God out there, I doubt his great plan involved dropping rocks on taxis."
Chas' nausea settled, replaced by a cool anger. "You killed those kids?" He bent over the knight, and pushed the man's head upright, enraged by the smug expression on his elegant face. "And the poor driver? Did you think about him?" He drew back a fist, destined for those perfect white teeth, but stopped when a familiar scent drifted up from the crisp cuffs of the charcoal suit. Roses, and linen. Chas stood up. "Jesus, John, I think he's been around one of them. I can smell it on his clothes."
"Right," said John, and retrieved the plastic bag of oozy tissue from his pocket. "Cough it up, brave Sir Robin." He raised the bag up to his mouth. "Or your holy host is going down my gullet."
The knight stared at him in horrified fascination. "You would not dare!"
John gave the edge of the bag an experimental lick. "I'd reckon your order knows me well enough, sunshine, to remember that I'm not too fussy about what I put in my mouth."
The knight made a strangled noise, and Chas pressed his knee into the man's groin. "Just tell him, and we'll leave you be."
"The creature is restrained in my vehicle. But be warned that I will not rest until the Host is returned to the chalice, and the monsters are destroyed!"
John pulled Chas out of the way, and delivered a swift kick to the knight's head. The man's eyes rolled back, and more blood trickled out of his mouth. "You'll rest as long as I bloody well tell you to, son."
There was a sleek black BMW parked in front of the church, and when Chas opened the boot with the knight's keys, they found a young figure bundled inside a ski-jacket, tied hand and foot. The smell of roses was everywhere, as though it rose up from the flossy strands of hair, or seeped through the porcelain skin. Chas couldn't tell whether it was a girl or a boy. The face had become androgynous, but eerily beautiful; the cheekbones were long and flawless, the eye-sockets wide and perfectly round. John cut the ropes with his pocket knife, and lifted the body into Chas' arms – it was nearly weightless, barely more than the mass of the clothes that it wore. The eyelids fluttered open – the eyes were cobalt blue, and they welled up with tears.
"I, I have been left behind…" The voice issued from a tiny slit of a mouth, but echoed through Chas' head as though he was inside a church-bell.
John smoothed the long strands of hair. "No, love, you've not. See?" He turned Chas by the shoulders so that they faced the sky; still velvety blue, but beginning to lighten along the line of mountains. "You've still got time. Sunrise isn't here yet."
"I must go, they are calling, they are leaving." The creature struggled in Chas' arms, and he gently lowered his arms until the narrow feet, kicking free from the ill-fitting trainers, were touching the stones.
Chas and John followed the creature as it zigzagged across the town, circling like a homing pigeon, bringing them closer and closer to the medieval quarter of Lanciano. Abandoned buildings with glassless windows clustered around narrow streets, and Chas was hard put to keep up with John as they loped along behind the figure flitting ahead of them.
The nest was in the highest tower, up flights and flights of stone stairs. By the time Chas staggered to the top, the newest arrival was in the centre of a cluster of identical figures. A low cooing sound rolled around the partially collapsed chamber as the pale and naked bodies stroked and nuzzled together, divesting the new arrival of its ski-jacket and pants. The smell of roses was everywhere, but something fresher mingled with the scent, a sharp odour that reminded Chas of the ocean, and every figure bore a C-shaped scar on its chest, the skin there a milky blue and gently puckered.. The tallest of the creatures, still recognisably human, stood wrapped in a cowl of hessian sacking, a little apart from the others, and turned to face them as John approached.
"You have it?" The voice, lower than the others, echoed through Chas' bones, making his teeth ache.
John held up the plastic packet, and Chas could have sworn the tissue inside the bag moved by itself.
"They won't be making any more of you, not without their precious host." John's face turned crafty. "You going to take it with you?"
The creature tilted its head to examine the bag. "It is of no purpose to us, save that it is no longer ill-used. You may dispose of it as you will."
The sun appeared over the crest of the mountains, and a shuddering whisper echoed around the chamber. All heads turned to the open side of the tower, and the room became silent with anticipation.
The tallest creature turned away from Chas and John, shed his robe of hessian, and moved to the head of the group, which had arranged itself into an inverted V. There was a moment when Chas felt air rushing around his body, then they were gone with a mighty clapping sound, leaving the tower ringing with silence.
On the plane home, comfortably ensconced in first class, thanks to John's winning way with the ticket clerk, Chas poked his dinner with a heavy silver fork. He really had no appetite for his duck – that heavy, greasy kind of food turned his stomach. He forked his piece onto John's plate, and watched speculatively as John shovelled the food away neatly and efficiently. After a few minutes, John paused in the middle of a mouthful, fork halfway to his mouth with the next, and raised his eyebrows.
"You want it back, mate?"
Chas shook his head. "You still have that, that thing?" He had hoped - in vain, knowing John - that he had thrown it away.
John resumed chewing, and patted his shirt pocket with his fingertips. Unsurprisingly, Customs had failed to detect the Miraculo Eucharistico tucked away in the peanut bag. "Safe and sound, close to my own heart." He looked back at Chas and his expression was deliberately casual. "Collector's item, this is. Fetch a pretty penny among a certain group of interested parties."
Chas didn't want to think about the way the tissue squirmed inside the plastic bag, and the kind of person who would find such a thing desirable. "So that's why you helped them, those poor kids? To get your pound of flesh, so to speak?" It was comforting, in a way, to know that there was a mercenary motive behind the gentleness John had shown towards the creature in the knight's car.
"I've got a use for the flesh, no worries about that. And it's always a pleasure to kick some dirt over the Templars, if I can." John stabbed the fork into the glazed beans with an unreadable expression. "I don't hold with calling people abominations on nothing more than the circumstance of their birth." He forked up some beans, chewed and swallowed with vigour, then grinned. "To properly earn the title of abomination, Chas, my old china, you've really got to work at it."
Chas gave him a friendly shove, and settled down in his seat, watching the great silver wing of the plane scythe through the trailing clouds.
***
Lanciano, in the Abruzzo region of Italy, really does house a religious artefact called the Miraculo Eucharistico. Obviously, the events in this story are the product of my own twisted mind.
Fandom: Hellblazer (comic)
Characters: John Constantine, Chas Chandler
Rating: PG for strong language and acts of sacrilege
Notes: Written for
kindkit in the Yuletide 2006 exchangeThank you to
lilacsigil and elynross for beta reading. The title comes from the song "Heavy Heart" by You Am I.
Those familiar with Hellblazer will know that John Constantine has a less than respectful attitude towards the Church and this is reflected in this fic. If this is likely to upset you, please don't read.
Chas was dreaming when the call came in, a comfortable dream of the kind that doesn't shame you with unattainability. He and Renee were dancing at a party, one of those church hall affairs, all balloons and curling ribbon, and Chas had his hand on Renee's backside, pleasantly pissed. Renee rested her head on his shoulder, and, as they swayed comfortably to and fro, he felt love glowing in his chest with the warmth of cheap plonk. Drunken voices rose up in song all around them, and though the tune was familiar, the words were different. Something about an albatross.
"They mate for life, you know." Renee spoke, her face glassy-eyed the way people are in dreams. Chas watched the balloons sway as the wind moved through the church hall. The door was open, and a lean figure stood in the doorway, neck craned over a sputtering match held to his cigarette. Moonlight spilled through the open door and washed the colour from everyone's faces.
He was sitting up with the phone in his hand before he was really awake, and he could still taste cheap champagne and ashes on his tongue.
"I am looking for Mr Frank Chandler?" The voice was accented, far away and tinny. Chas cleared his throat a little.
"Uh, this is he. Mr Chandler." Beside him, Renee looked up at him with narrowed eyes, then turned her head away.
"Mr Chandler, you are listed here as, uh, next of kin? For a Mr John Constantine?"
Chas felt his stomach swoop down and curl over. "Next of kin? You only need to know that if, well, if he's bloody gone and died."
The voice became solicitous. "Oh, no, no, you misunderstand, please forgive me. A Mr Constantine is a patient here, in our hospital. We cannot keep him, now. He has no insurance remaining, and to be honest, Mr Chandler, I don't think he should be released without someone to take care of him." The voice was cool and uninterested now. "Ospedale Civile, Mr Chandler, Lanciano. Please come as soon as possible." In the hum and static of the disconnected line, Chas thought he heard the beating of wings.
Lanciano, as Chas discovered from the twenty-four hour travel agent, was in Italy. He packed his duffle bag with the phone tucked against his ear, calling in favours and trading shifts with mates while he rustled up the cash for a ticket. Renee watched him from the doorway, her mouth a straight line like a face in one of little Trish's drawings.
"It's a bloody long taxi-ride from here to Italy, Chas. You better have a good reason to be dropping everything to go sit by his bedside and hold his hand."
Chas tried to pull her into a hug, but her body was as unyielding as her face. He gave her shoulder a squeeze instead. "I'll be back as soon as I can, love." Renee's expression didn't soften, but she turned her body aside to let him through the door.
Stepping off the flight from Stansted to Pescara with a cheap phrase book and a handful of Euros stuffed into his bag, Chas squared his shoulders and headed for the cab rank. There was nothing more depressing than a holiday town in autumn, he thought, all those brightly coloured signs and buildings looking slightly grimy in the watery sunlight: empty shops and boarded up windows of businesses that had failed to thrive. The seabirds wheeling and mewing above the terminal fell silent as the passengers from the London flight milled around the cabs.
Chas assessed the line of taxis with a professional eye. The first cab was grimy, with an unrepaired bingle on the left side, so he was less upset than he should have been when small twin backpackers with bright mirrored glasses and oversized beanies pushed past him and slid into the back seat.
"Lovely manners, kids, thanks!" Chas raised a sarcastic hand in salute. The two flaxen heads turned in unison to stare at him with blank faces, eyes hidden behind foiled lenses.
The next cab that rolled forward met with Chas' approval – new tires, clean paintwork – and so he stuck his head through the open window. It didn't even smell too strongly of cigarettes – not that the smell of smoke bothered Chas. The last passenger had left the backseat swathed in the fragrance of overblown roses, like the cheap perfume his old gran used to dab on her hanky.
"Lanciano?" He felt sorry to be asking the driver to take a long ride this late in the afternoon, especially with little chance of a return fare, but made a mental promise to tip the guy later on. The driver rolled his eyes good-naturedly, then beckoned Chas into the cab.
"Third time today - and it's not even pilgrim season!"
Silvio, the driver, deftly negotiated the Autostrada, then took a smaller road that weaved up towards the mountains. The moment he asked after Chas' profession, he and Chas discovered a shared wealth of stories about disastrous drives and horror fares. Lanciano, further inland than Pescara, derived much of its income from historical and religious tourism; Silvio, a devout Catholic, nonetheless found the pilgrims to be the most difficult passengers.
"They are not humble – a pilgrim should be humble, but no, they are demanding, they are going to see the Miraculo, nothing is too good for them."
Chas snorted. "It's much the same in England, Silvio, mate, when people want to go kiss the tarmac of Coronation Street."
The sun was slipping behind the mountain, so Chas had only glimpses of the rocky landscape through the window, but from the way his ears popped and crackled, and the care with which Silvio carefully executed hair-pin turns, Chas felt they were rising lazily upwards, like a spiral of smoke..
Blue and red flashing lights and a rapid deceleration brought Chas blinking out of a half-dream. Silvio cursed and braked again, edging the taxi around the emergency hazard beacons that marked out an area of fallen rocks. Police cars and ambulances were parked haphazardly across the road like children's toys, and people in official jackets milled around the rubble. Safe and warm inside Silvio's taxi, Chas watched as a policeman draped a blanket over the windscreen of a half-buried car. From the bent fender, Chas recognised the taxi that had left just before his, and wondered about the surly young backpackers. The ambulance officers were not moving very fast.
"Listen, Silvio, is it safe to go on?" The taxi was passing through troughs cut into the mountain, high walls of rock on either side of the road.
Silvio laughed, but there was a nervous note in his voice. "We are not far from the city. A rockslide when the weather is so dry? I can hardly believe it."
The rest of the drive passed in sombre silence, both Chas and Silvio watching the hills carefully. As the road dipped down into the city centre, Chas watched flocks of pigeons circling the many-windowed towers, the blocky forms black against the setting sun.
Lanciano was a mix of ancient buildings and twenty-first century technology; neon lights hung on stone walls and modern cars parked higgledy-piggledy on cobblestone roads. The hospital was a series of sprawling low-rise buildings with a tumbled collection of Roman columns on the lawn, lit with spotlights and encrusted with pigeon crap.
"Uh, ricerca, mia amico, John Constantine," Chas gestured and waved his phrasebook at the glamorous attendant manning the admissions desk. She raised a supercilious eyebrow, and tapped at her keyboard.
"Mr Constantine is in the psychiatric ward. May I take your name? I will call the doctor in charge."
Chas blushed and tucked his phrasebook into his back pocket. He gave his details, then wandered around the waiting area, looking at the plaques and dedications. The hospital obviously liked to photograph the doctors with their success stories. Good idea to put them out here in the waiting room, Chas mused – it lets you tot up each doctor's score. He slumped into a hard plastic chair while the receptionist spoke on the phone. Hospitals are the same everywhere, he thought, leafing through a fashion magazine from years before his daughter was born. Everyone looks dead under the blue lights, and nobody can make out the voices on the intercom. He threw the magazine back on to the pile, and leaned his head against the glossy white wall. What the hell was John doing in a psych ward, in a backwater town in Italy?
"Chas!"
Chas had only shut his eyes for a moment when he heard John's voice calling his name, close enough that he felt the breath on his neck. There was nobody in the waiting area, but across the room, he saw the door to the access stairs click shut. He looked over at the reception desk, but the receptionist was busily occupied talking into her headset and examining her nails. His boots crunched across the plastic carpet; the door was unlocked, and the handle felt warm in his palm. The stairwell was quiet, but the air hummed with residual sound, and a cloying perfume caught in the back of Chas' throat – roses and old linen. The fragrance thickened in the air, as, without warning, swarms of child-like bodies barrelled into him from above and below. There were maybe twenty of them, faces hidden beneath cowls of hessian. As the slender bodies milled around him, pressing him against the wall, Chas saw glimpses of white skin, too pale to have ever seen sun, and the curve of a cheek into which was set an eye too big to be human, dark blue, glassy and pupilless. The smell of roses was burning his nose and mouth. He gasped for air but felt his knees giving and his vision blurring. As darkness rushed towards him, he heard the pigeons whirring above, and a voice spoke, cool and resonant.
"Constantine. Tell Constantine. There is no time. Sunrise."
Chas awoke face down on the concrete stairs, retching and choking. Some bloody hospital, he thought, looking at his watch, seeing that an hour had passed since he had arrived, and nobody had discovered his unconscious body in the stairwell. He clambered to his feet and leaned against the wall, waiting as the world around him dipped and swayed, then levelled out. Nothing seemed to be broken, and from the pounding in his head, he could tell his heart was still beating. He staggered through the door and into the waiting area, where the receptionist looked at him with an expression of pity and disdain, as though he had been doing something secret and shameful in the stairwell. Chas wondered what on earth she thought he had been up to.
"Mr Chandler, you may go up to the ward now. Please follow the green line to the elevator, and go to floor five."
Chas nodded, and stumbled towards the line. The sooner he found John, the sooner this crazy stuff would be sorted and they could go home. He followed the line deep inside the hospital, to the bank of sleek elevators.
The windowless and overly warm psychiatric ward was painted an improbable primrose yellow that reminded Chas of watery custard and sent his stomach churning again. He was met at the elevator by a prim nurse with pale, upswept hair and a ridiculously pert cap, who led him to a consulting room. In the centre of the room, John sat in a wheelchair, his hands wandering over the fabric of his pyjamas, plucking at the pilled flannelette. Chas exhaled in relief, and put his hands on John's shoulders. His friend's face was covered in fading bruises, and his lower lip, hanging open a little, was puffy and split.
"Bloody hell, mate, what kind of a mess have you gotten into now?"
"He came to us like this, didn't you?" The nurse patted John's cheek, "A man threw him out of the car, not even stopping, and he is all beaten, bruised. We worried he would lose teeth, but see?" She pulled down John's lower lip, and showed Chas the crooked but intact row of slightly yellowed teeth. "Oh, I have a photograph – from the security cameras. The police, they say to call them, if this man appears – they will come to arrest him." She bustled out of the room, and returned with a blurry time-stamped photograph of a burly man with a long ponytail. "Here, this is the man."
Chas took the photo and eyed it closely: the bloke was a big bastard, but Chas could take him. He gripped John's shoulder and gave it a reassuring shake. "Don't worry, mate. I'll look after you."
John looked up into Chas' face, and his blank and friendly expression was one of the most frightening things Chas had ever seen. John's mouth worked a little, but no noise came from his lips; they were parched and cracked. The nurse held a cup to John's lips and he drank obediently from the bent straw.
"The medication," the nurse said, efficiently wiping John's mouth and tucking the cup out of reach of John's wandering hands. "It causes, dryness, yes? In the mouth." She pulled three tablet vials from her pocket. "Here: blue is every day, for the schizophrenia, he takes this every day. Red, yes? Is for sleeping, for the sedation. When he is agitated."
Chas took the vials, and peered at the labels, which were in Italian. "So, the green one? What's the green one for?"
The nurse gently lifted one of John's hands from his lap; it was trembling. "Green one, they are for the shaking. Side effect, we think, from the blue pills. But they are necessary, so we treat shaking as well." She lowered the hand again, and it joined its partner, travelling aimlessly across John's long legs. The nurse patted Chas on the arm. "It is, you know, okay to be frightened. But he will get better, they say. He is old to be diagnosed, most likely it is temporary episode, maybe he is very stressed?"
Chas shook his head. "To be honest, I didn't even know he was in Italy. How long was he a patient here?"
The nurse stroked John's hair fondly, though John seemed oblivious to the attention. "Oh, nearly a week now, I think. The police, they say he was seen attending the Miraculo Eucharistico, but nobody knows very much. His name, yes, and his details from his flight in, but nothing more."
Chas felt a great unease stir in his guts. He had been hoping that this was some ruse of John's, something he had cooked up, but his mate sat there in the wheelchair while the pretty blonde nurse petted him like a bloody guinea pig, and he didn't wink or smirk or fire off a flip remark. Chas' fear deepened when the nurse handed him John's clothes and a plastic wrapped package of incontinence pants. She smiled, and pushed the wheelchair towards the lift, waiting for the doors to open. "Sometimes, when he is sedated, he has the little accident."
At the pension that Silvio had recommended, Chas helped John out of the cab. The hospital wouldn't let Chas borrow the bloody wheelchair, but they did call him a taxi, though the driver, less philanthropic than Silvio, had grumbled at being summoned for a three minute drive. With someone supporting his weight, John could stumble along on his own feet, so Chas half-carried him in through the front door. Puffing a little with the exertion, he eased John up the stairs to his room, pausing at the landing for a breather. John was thinner than the last time Chas had seen him, but there was a deceptively leaden quality to those gangly legs. On the landing, leaning against the wall, John mumbled nonsense to himself, and fingered the wooden railing of the banister, and Chas gave up any hope that he was faking it. This person didn't even smell like the John he knew – his skin was pink and clean, his hair was soft and smelled like antiseptic shampoo, rather than smoke and a struck match.
On his floor, Chas bundled John onto one of the narrow beds, and made sure the door locked behind them. He rummaged through his duffle-bag for the bottle of duty-free scotch he'd picked up at Pescara, and tried not to look at the carton of Silk Cut he'd bought for John. He broke the seal on the bottle and sat on the end of John's bed, first taking a swig, then holding the bottle up to John's lips, who swallowed obligingly. After few such exchanges, and no further attacks of a supernatural persuasion, Chas was feeling a little more positive. John would be fine – after all, his appetite for someone else's duty-free liquor was completely unharmed. In the morning they'd fly back to England, and the National Health would sort out his friend's brain.
Chas woke up reaching for the warmth of Renee's bulk in the bed, and nearly rolled onto the floor. The room was icy cold, John's bed was empty, and Chas leapt to his feet with the sheets tangled around his legs. He had left the shutters on the window wide open, and now someone had thrown up the sash, flooding the room with cold air and moonlight. John sat, fully dressed, on the floor under the open window, the torn silver foil of the open box of Silk Cut gleamed beside him in the moonlight. Smoke drifted up in ribbons from the glowing cigarette between John's fingers, and he took a long, appreciative drag on the end.
"Pass us some of that scotch, will you, mate?"
Chas pulled the bottle out of his bag and handed it over with ill grace. "I thought you were out of your mind, you bastard. You could have come to before I hauled you up three friggin' flights of stairs." He scowled, and tried not to show how relieved he was.
John smiled, and took a swig from the bottle. "I was out of my mind, Chas. Still might be, for all I know. All hail the healing power of liquor!" He raised the bottle in a mocking toast. "Some nosy little shit has tried to have a peek inside my head. I hope the bastard is suffering now." He laughed, and it was a dry, unpleasant sound. "Insanity, Chas. It's the best defence."
Chas sat on the floor next to him and tore open the last packet of cheap airline peanuts that he had stashed in his pocket. He told John what the nurse had said, and showed him the photograph from the hospital security camera.
John took it and eyed it sourly. "Don't know him, but things are a little jumbled. Can't remember why I'm here, or anything much past getting on the plane at Gatwick. Never mind: we see him, we kick the shit out of him. Good to have a plan."
Chas chewed on stale peanuts and nodded meditatively. "Listen, I think some, uh, associates of yours want to pass on a message." He told John about the hessian-clad bodies that had pressed him to the wall of the stairwell. "They, well, they weren't quite human, John. Big blue eyes, alien like, and a voice that went booming right through your head."
"They hurt you?" John's voice was carefully casual.
"Nah," Chas said cheerfully through a mouthful of peanuts. "Takes more than a scrum of aliens in sacks to worry me, mate."
"Right then," John stood up and put out his cigarette in the window box of poinsettias. "To the hospital we go. Find out which of the many freaks in my little black book want to have a word."
They walked together in silence through the moonlit street, and Chas wished it could always be this easy – just him and John, and nobody they loved nearby to get hurt. Together they turned the corner, a wide, cobbled street, tall buildings on either side, but well lit by lamps on wrought iron posts. Twenty steps down the road, and it all went wrong; the determination faded from John's eyes, his movements became hesitant and random, and he turned to look at Chas with distrust written across his face. Chas moved back towards him with his hands stretched out placatingly.
"It's all right, mate. Don't run." God, if he ran, Chas couldn't keep up, he'd lose him in the narrow streets, and it'd take forever to find him again, if he ever did. He encircled John's wrist with one hand, and as alarming as it should have been for John to surrender to anyone, Chas let out a sigh of relief when John let himself be pulled closer. He led John slowly back towards the pension, singing quiet nonsense under his breath, the sort of thing he'd sing to Trish when she was colicky and upset. Around the corner John pulled away from Chas' grip, his face once again sharp with edges and planes.
"Fucking hell, Chas!" John stepped back into the wider street, where long shadows cast by the tall, square buildings interrupted the moonlight. His expression slackened, and Chas, quick to understand the practical application of a theory, pulled him back into the moonlight. John swore. "I feel like a fucking mime, walking into the fucking wind. Right, it's the moonlight that's doing it, and here I was thinking it was you forgetting my pills."
The hospital was out of bounds – inaccessible by any path bathed in moonlight, and in any case, once inside the building, John would be rendered useless.
"Where did you say they saw me, Chas?" John was thumbing through Chas' guide book.
Chas struggled to remember what the nurse said. "Miraculo something, some kind of religious display. Listen, John, with this crazy moonlight business, what happens when the sun comes up?"
John flicked through the index. "We get this thing bloody well sorted before we say 'arrivederci moon' is what we do, son. Here: Miraculo Eucharistico, it's one of those bleeding communion wafers. Literally – they say the wafer turned into heart tissue, and the wine into blood, even did scientific studies, like on the shroud of Turin. Of course, it's natural to proclaim that a miracle, isn't it? Think we can we get there, without me coming over all moon calf?"
The Miraculo Eucharistico was housed in the Church of San Francesco, a wide, square complex of sixteenth century buildings with white stucco walls and broad archways that let plenty of moonlight into the well-trodden cloisters. Chas wasn't much for religion, but he winced when John wrapped his hand in his coat and punched through a window pane in a wooden door, reached through to the lock, then shook out his coat and put it on again. John stepped through the doorway, careful to keep his feet on the squares of moonlight cast through the towering windows onto the floor. Chas remained hovering on the threshold.
"Come on, Chas. In for a penny."
They easily found their way to the chamber where the Miraculo was housed for public viewing, thanks to a pile of helpful multi-lingual leaflets, complete with a map, that Chas found on a table near the door. Chas had to tug John along through a short darkened service corridor, but the chamber itself was spacious, and the external wall was lined with arched windows through which moonlight washed across the expanse. The display was obviously closed to the public – a large screen had been pulled across, and the double doors that opened into the public antechamber were closed and bolted. The pews had all been pushed against the wall, and in the empty space at the centre, a man in an expensive suit with his long hair pulled into a pony-tail knelt before a wide silver bowl, chanting in Latin. Chas didn't understand a word, but he recognised the outline of the man from the hospital security photo, the man who had thrown John from a moving car. John gave a incoherent roar of fury, shoved past Chas, and launched himself at the man.
It wasn't a fair fight – the man was taller and much fitter than John, and though John fought dirty, grinding his knee into the man's groin and jabbing thumbs into his eye sockets, the combination of a week in hospital and the effect of being dragged into the shadowed corners of the room meant that John moved slower and less nimbly than his opponent. Chas would never have interfered in the fight otherwise – John was sometimes very territorial about things like that. He hefted an iron candlestick thoughtfully, then brought it down on the well-dressed man's head. The man went down like a felled tree – eyes crossed, and blood pouring from his nose.
"Fuck!" John's nose was bleeding, too, and he had a livid spot spreading across his cheek that would shortly become a shiner to match the one fading around his other eye. He kicked the silver bowl over, and a clear liquid spilled out of it, carrying a photograph of John, slick with moisture. "Fuck! Fucking around inside my fucking head, I'll fucking teach you." He delivered a kick to the unconscious man's side.
"Ease up, John, he's already out cold." Chas put a hand on John's shoulder, but John shook it off and fell to his knees, patting the man's pockets.
"Who the hell are you, messing around inside my mind?"
Chas looked around the room for identifying papers and spotted a leather briefcase, and beside it, encased in a tooled leather sheath, a heavy sword. He dragged them both back to John, who by now was sitting astride the man's chest, ripping open the man's shirt, sending pearly buttons flying across the room. The man had a large and painful looking tattoo covering most of his chest – a medallion with broad Latin letters encircling a horse bearing two riders. Chas leaned the hilt of the sword against the man's chest – the engraving on the pommel was identical.
"Blancquefort's seal. He's a bloody Templar – this is church business." John curled his lip in a sneer. "Interfering busybody yuppie scum. I hate Templars."
Chas unsheathed the sword, and awkwardly used the point to prise the lock off the briefcase. "So, that was magic? He was making you crazy?" The brief case was filled with manila folders, each with a photograph stapled to the front. Chas flipped through them.
John picked up the photograph that had fallen from the overturned bowl. It was a grainy colour snap of John in a railway station. The image swirled as an oily substance dripped from it onto the stone floor. John fumbled for his matches, and struck a light one-handed. "Shouldn't be a problem any more, Chas." He let the yellow flame lick at the corner of the photo, and it was swallowed in seconds. "I look forward to years of lurking in shadowy alleys with no ill-effects."
Chas kept sorting through the files. "Wait a minute – I know this one." The photo was recent, so recent that Chas could see the edge of his own body in it – it had been taken at the airport in Pescara yesterday afternoon, when the twin backpackers had snaffled his taxi. He spread the rest of the files on the floor until he found the face of the other kid. "These kids, they were killed in the rockslide yesterday." He opened the files and skimmed through the paperwork. "They weren't related. That's funny, they were identical so far as I could tell."
John picked up the other file. "Well, they weren't. This one's a girl, anyway, and she's changed a bit in five months." He pulled a photo from inside the file; in it the girl had dark hair, and her body was short and curvy, not the elongated athlete's form that Chas had seen yesterday. He bent and picked up files randomly, flicking through the papers. "All the same age, give or take a year. All from the EU." He pulled out a newspaper article entitled "Miracle Op Saves Tiny Lisa" – the black and white photo showed a baby in a humidicrib on breathing apparatus, a C-shaped scar neatly stitched into her chest. "This one had heart surgery when she was wee – any of yours?"
When Chas had flicked through the files – twenty-six in all – it transpired that they had been seriously ill as infants, and all had been under the care of Professor Edoardo Barbini, an Italian cardiac specialist based in Lanciano. More than one of the photos of him holding an infant had been part of the proud wall of plaques at the hospital.
John looked over from where he was winding rope around the unconscious knight's feet. "Barbini? He's in the guidebook – he did those studies on the Miraculo, analysed the heart tissue, proved it was incorruptible human flesh, or so they claim." He dropped the knight's feet to the ground with a thud. "Those bleeding communion wafers are usually rubbish hoaxes. There might actually be something to this one."
Chas looked at the files strewn around him, and all the faces caught in polaroids looked back at him – faces hidden behind dark glasses, large hats or long flaxen hair. He pulled the leaflet from his pocket, and scanned the cheaply printed text: it was filled with praise for the eminent heart surgeon who had examined the perfectly preserved tissue. "I think there might be at that, John."
John strode over to the glass display case. "Nothing fills the church with self-satisfied glee more than a little bit of proof. You'd think they weren't in the faith business, or something." He pried open a pocket knife, and jabbed at the lock on the door of the case. "I don't really like the sound of this Barbini – sounds like he tried to bring church and science together, in a fairly unpleasant way." He lifted the crystal goblet out of the case, and swirled it, then raised the lid. There was a faint smell of roses; John breathed it in, his eyes far away. "Reckon I know what I came here for, Chas. Give me your peanuts."
Chas handed them over. John emptied the remaining nuts onto the floor and carefully slid the gelatinous contents of the goblet into the empty bag, folding the end over carefully. "This miracle operation that the doctor performed, I'll bet he made it a bit more miraculous with a little slice of the magic wafer here." He gestured with the bag. "Grafting. Like growing pears on an apple tree – there's no sane reason to want to do it, other than to see if it can be done." He tucked the bag away in a pocket.
"So, those kids, they've got a piece of that grafted onto their hearts?" Chas was turning green. "What is it? What does that do to them?"
"It makes them abominations." The Templar knight spoke with a mouthful of blood, his hair matted against his cheek. "Constantine, in fraternising with those filthy creatures you are interfering in the Lord's great plan, and in the sanctioned work of the Church. You would do well to tell me where the nest is located."
"So, I was fraternising with them, was I? Well, I'm not going to argue theology with scum like you." John delivered a kick to the knight's stomach, and the injured man doubled over with a gasp. "If there's a God out there, I doubt his great plan involved dropping rocks on taxis."
Chas' nausea settled, replaced by a cool anger. "You killed those kids?" He bent over the knight, and pushed the man's head upright, enraged by the smug expression on his elegant face. "And the poor driver? Did you think about him?" He drew back a fist, destined for those perfect white teeth, but stopped when a familiar scent drifted up from the crisp cuffs of the charcoal suit. Roses, and linen. Chas stood up. "Jesus, John, I think he's been around one of them. I can smell it on his clothes."
"Right," said John, and retrieved the plastic bag of oozy tissue from his pocket. "Cough it up, brave Sir Robin." He raised the bag up to his mouth. "Or your holy host is going down my gullet."
The knight stared at him in horrified fascination. "You would not dare!"
John gave the edge of the bag an experimental lick. "I'd reckon your order knows me well enough, sunshine, to remember that I'm not too fussy about what I put in my mouth."
The knight made a strangled noise, and Chas pressed his knee into the man's groin. "Just tell him, and we'll leave you be."
"The creature is restrained in my vehicle. But be warned that I will not rest until the Host is returned to the chalice, and the monsters are destroyed!"
John pulled Chas out of the way, and delivered a swift kick to the knight's head. The man's eyes rolled back, and more blood trickled out of his mouth. "You'll rest as long as I bloody well tell you to, son."
There was a sleek black BMW parked in front of the church, and when Chas opened the boot with the knight's keys, they found a young figure bundled inside a ski-jacket, tied hand and foot. The smell of roses was everywhere, as though it rose up from the flossy strands of hair, or seeped through the porcelain skin. Chas couldn't tell whether it was a girl or a boy. The face had become androgynous, but eerily beautiful; the cheekbones were long and flawless, the eye-sockets wide and perfectly round. John cut the ropes with his pocket knife, and lifted the body into Chas' arms – it was nearly weightless, barely more than the mass of the clothes that it wore. The eyelids fluttered open – the eyes were cobalt blue, and they welled up with tears.
"I, I have been left behind…" The voice issued from a tiny slit of a mouth, but echoed through Chas' head as though he was inside a church-bell.
John smoothed the long strands of hair. "No, love, you've not. See?" He turned Chas by the shoulders so that they faced the sky; still velvety blue, but beginning to lighten along the line of mountains. "You've still got time. Sunrise isn't here yet."
"I must go, they are calling, they are leaving." The creature struggled in Chas' arms, and he gently lowered his arms until the narrow feet, kicking free from the ill-fitting trainers, were touching the stones.
Chas and John followed the creature as it zigzagged across the town, circling like a homing pigeon, bringing them closer and closer to the medieval quarter of Lanciano. Abandoned buildings with glassless windows clustered around narrow streets, and Chas was hard put to keep up with John as they loped along behind the figure flitting ahead of them.
The nest was in the highest tower, up flights and flights of stone stairs. By the time Chas staggered to the top, the newest arrival was in the centre of a cluster of identical figures. A low cooing sound rolled around the partially collapsed chamber as the pale and naked bodies stroked and nuzzled together, divesting the new arrival of its ski-jacket and pants. The smell of roses was everywhere, but something fresher mingled with the scent, a sharp odour that reminded Chas of the ocean, and every figure bore a C-shaped scar on its chest, the skin there a milky blue and gently puckered.. The tallest of the creatures, still recognisably human, stood wrapped in a cowl of hessian sacking, a little apart from the others, and turned to face them as John approached.
"You have it?" The voice, lower than the others, echoed through Chas' bones, making his teeth ache.
John held up the plastic packet, and Chas could have sworn the tissue inside the bag moved by itself.
"They won't be making any more of you, not without their precious host." John's face turned crafty. "You going to take it with you?"
The creature tilted its head to examine the bag. "It is of no purpose to us, save that it is no longer ill-used. You may dispose of it as you will."
The sun appeared over the crest of the mountains, and a shuddering whisper echoed around the chamber. All heads turned to the open side of the tower, and the room became silent with anticipation.
The tallest creature turned away from Chas and John, shed his robe of hessian, and moved to the head of the group, which had arranged itself into an inverted V. There was a moment when Chas felt air rushing around his body, then they were gone with a mighty clapping sound, leaving the tower ringing with silence.
On the plane home, comfortably ensconced in first class, thanks to John's winning way with the ticket clerk, Chas poked his dinner with a heavy silver fork. He really had no appetite for his duck – that heavy, greasy kind of food turned his stomach. He forked his piece onto John's plate, and watched speculatively as John shovelled the food away neatly and efficiently. After a few minutes, John paused in the middle of a mouthful, fork halfway to his mouth with the next, and raised his eyebrows.
"You want it back, mate?"
Chas shook his head. "You still have that, that thing?" He had hoped - in vain, knowing John - that he had thrown it away.
John resumed chewing, and patted his shirt pocket with his fingertips. Unsurprisingly, Customs had failed to detect the Miraculo Eucharistico tucked away in the peanut bag. "Safe and sound, close to my own heart." He looked back at Chas and his expression was deliberately casual. "Collector's item, this is. Fetch a pretty penny among a certain group of interested parties."
Chas didn't want to think about the way the tissue squirmed inside the plastic bag, and the kind of person who would find such a thing desirable. "So that's why you helped them, those poor kids? To get your pound of flesh, so to speak?" It was comforting, in a way, to know that there was a mercenary motive behind the gentleness John had shown towards the creature in the knight's car.
"I've got a use for the flesh, no worries about that. And it's always a pleasure to kick some dirt over the Templars, if I can." John stabbed the fork into the glazed beans with an unreadable expression. "I don't hold with calling people abominations on nothing more than the circumstance of their birth." He forked up some beans, chewed and swallowed with vigour, then grinned. "To properly earn the title of abomination, Chas, my old china, you've really got to work at it."
Chas gave him a friendly shove, and settled down in his seat, watching the great silver wing of the plane scythe through the trailing clouds.
***
Lanciano, in the Abruzzo region of Italy, really does house a religious artefact called the Miraculo Eucharistico. Obviously, the events in this story are the product of my own twisted mind.