Constantine - The Novelization - Whoa is (Not)

"This isn't a meeting?" Constantine said. "Damn!Okay, well, how about we all head home?"He heard fragments of their psychic exchanges as they glanced at one another...Who will kill him? And who feeds first?We have received no instructions, fool! We were told to wait!But he will be angry if we lose an opportunity to send him this human cur! I myself will...But someone pushed from the back of the crowd to the front. Constantine felt a sick sinkingfeeling of betrayal as she came toward him. They hadn't been close, exactly, but still... it hurt himto see Ellie with this crew."Should have known you were in the game. Cancer." He shrugged his self-deprecation."Makes you sloppy.""Oh, John," Ellie said. She said it sweetly, really.Smiling apologetically. Her tail twitching. "You know how much I love it on this side. Thehuman world. This was just an opportunity to make it permanent...."He guessed she hadn't been working with them all along - or she'd have killed him in thatmotel room. She was a recent recruit, back in the good graces of the boss. Who was definitelynot Bruce Springsteen.He figured that any moment one of them would take the lead - and shout to the others that theyneedn't wait, that it was time to kill John Constantine... right now.--Angela and Francisco waited in the pool. She no longer struggled. They were seated on thesteps, wet and shuddering, both of them; he had his left hand around her throat, tight enough tohold her, not so tight she couldn't breathe. His right hand was clasping that metal spike.She had no idea what he was waiting for here; she had an intuition that he didn't know for sureeither.He stared into space, seeming to listen, wondering what had become of the gargling shrieks,the sickening babble coming echoingly from beyond the doors behind them. Now, an eeriesilence reigned. Sometimes it seemed to her that Francisco was listening to something else,someone she couldn't hear - he would cock his head, as if harkening. Even nodding to himself inresponse.Now and then he muttered to someone that wasn't there. It might have been the mutterings ofinsanity, but lately insanity had jostled so-called reality out of the way and taken first place inline. An invisible being had carried her here, after all. She no longer had a reason to doubt theexistence of such beings. So she was inclined to think he was muttering to someone she couldn'tsee. She might be able to see it, if she extended her psychic power, but she didn't want to. Whatgood would it do? The first thing she needed to do was find a way to break away from this man.Her chance came, then. He was staring at the spearhead, muttering to himself in Spanish. Heseemed afraid of it. The hand holding it shook. Suddenly he thrust it into a coat pocket, as if toget it out of sight, and then drew his hand back out, empty.She felt a change in his power then. No longer touching the spearhead with his bare hand, henow had only the strength of an ordinary man...She had been stunned when the invisible thing had gripped her, smashed through walls tobring her here; she'd exhausted herself struggling with Francisco. She waited, now, gathering herstrength. If she could keep him from bringing the spear out... maybe grab it herself....--Constantine, still talking to Ellie, was aware that one of the half-breeds on his left had startedto edge round, trying to flank him. The creature was aware that the Holy Shotgun was noordinary weapon.Constantine kept his eyes on Ellie, but he tracked the other half-breed with his peripheral