Constantine - The Novelization - Whoa is (Not)

NINETEENConstantine and Chaz burst into the hydrotherapy room, crossed to the pool, and hesitated,taking in the scavenger - standing in the therapeutic pool, his hands trailing in the water - andAngela: floating... unmoving, inert, her hair swirling across the surface like seaweed.She was floating facedown. Drowned, Constantine realized. Murdered.Constantine pointed the shotgun at the scavenger, desperate for an excuse to fire. "Move! Getaway from her, now!"The scavenger looked at him - just a confused, frightened man without the spearhead.Constantine sensed the power had gone out of the man, as he no longer had the Spear of Destiny.So who did?The scavenger backed away from Angela's body... got out of the pool, continuing to movebackward...Constantine thought he ought to knock this guy out, see if he could do anything for Angela.Wondering if it was too late for CPR, or if maybe a real doctor could be found.Then he heard a thrashing in the water, turned to see Angela stand up in the pool - she waslooking right into his eyes.But hers were black, solid black without whites. "Shit," Constantine said, as she snarled athim. She was possessed. By something powerful... and he suspected he knew who it was.Mammon himself.Constantine dropped the shotgun and jumped feet-first into the pool, charging her, shoving herhard with his forearm across her chest, trying to knock her off balance. If he gave her half achance, she'd claw his eyes out, or bite right through his jugular vein with a single snap.She staggered back, hissing, and he pressed her against the inner wall of the pool, with his freehand dragging out his key chain. He pressed an exorcism charm - the St. Anthony - to the side ofher head, wondering if he could really pull off an exorcism on the fly. Her flesh sizzled and sheflailed and roared in pain."In nomine Patris et Fili et Spiritus Sancti extinguatur in te ominus virtus diaboli!"Constantine cried, putting all his personal force in the words. "In nomine Patris et Fili etSpiritus Sancti extinguatur in te ominus..."Mammon reacted by trying to come through into the human world, instead of allowing himselfto be propelled back into Hell. All along he had envisioned Angela as the doorway into thehuman world, the spearhead as the key to that door.Now her body undulated as his shape tried to come through: grotesque, gnarled, and texturedlike a housefly, but with the face of an obscenely evil youth. The image pulsated in and out ofvisibility in her arms, her chest - and her face.It made Constantine feel sick to see Mammon's visage forcing itself over the face of thewoman he'd been falling in love with..."In nomine Patris et Fili-!" Constantine shouted, ever more insistently. "Et Spiritus Sancti-"But it was so hard to hold her - to hold her and concentrate - he was losing control -Suddenly Chaz was there, rushing into the room, jumping into the pool. Chaz helped him dragher thrashing to the concrete floor near the pool, the two of them pushing her thrashing bodydown onto her back. Chaz slapped his own hand to Angela's forehead, intoning: "Perimpositionem manum nostrarum et per invoctionem..."John held her down, chanting with Chaz, "Gloriosae et sanctae dei genetricis virginis Mariae.In nomine Patris et Pili et Spiritus Sancti..."Feeling a strange connection with Chaz, then. Something ancient, a communing going backbefore there were Latin invocations - to the earliest time men called, together, for the help ofSomeone Higher.Angela - or Mammon - must have felt driven back, toward Hell. In desperation she turned her