Constantine - The Novelization - Whoa is (Not)

Balthazar leering at him? Balthazar, who'd seduced and destroyed someone important to him?At least he could die somewhere else. Not in front of this sneering son of a bitch who justmight catch his soul as it left his body - and personally carry it down to appease Satan.Still coughing, Constantine plunged past Balthazar, out the door, down the black corridor. Hemanaged to catch his breath as he got to the stairway. Said the words that would make it carryhim up like an escalator. Managed not to fall off...Just barely.He spotted the sign for a bathroom, behind one of the bars. He stepped off the stairway andstaggered down to the bathroom door. Once inside he just got a few strides into the room beforethe blood came up, a double mouthful staining the sink red.Behind him: giggling, carnal laughter from inside a stall. He fumbled in his coat for theVicks - which he'd topped off with Jack Daniels - and chugged it, till at last the convulsion in hisbreast abated.Breathing hard but shallowly, he looked in the mirror, past his pale face, to the reflection ofthe leather wings rising over the top of the stall door behind; to the barbed tail snaking outbeneath it.He looked down at the sink again. The blood had fallen into a shape he could almost read, liketea leaves. Yes: It was a cabbalistic sigil symbolizing...Triumph through death.SEVENThe United States/Mexican BorderFrancisco left the keys in the truck. He couldn't take a truck over that fence... and driving itacross the desert to this spot had nearly wrecked it, anyway. Its radiator was steaming andthe right front tire was flat.He trudged to the fence and looked it over, shading his eyes against the baleful sun. The fencewas high, chainlink, and topped with razor wire.It cannot stop you, Francisco. It cannot hurt you. But beyond the fence... desert, andbouldery, scrubby hills. The northern reach of the Desierto de Altar. A place where manywould-be immigrants on foot had died, on a hot day like this. He had no desire to leave his bonesto be cracked by the sun.He touched the iron spike, which he'd tied to a thin piece of rope hung around his neck. At histouch, the chorus of gnawing, buzzing, the seething of a million appetites was heard... speakingto him without words. Urging him."Si," he said aloud.He smiled and he ran at the fence, jumped, caught the links in his fingers and began to climb.It was surprisingly easy. He grabbed the top of a post supporting the razor wire, gripped the linkswith the toe of his boot, and in a moment he was over the fence, dropping to the dirt on the otherside. He was distantly aware that the razor wire had cut him, he was bleeding on his arms andone thigh, but it didn't seem to matter. He could hardly feel it.He looked back at Mexico. Around here, anyway, it looked exactly like America. Brown and