Constantine - The Novelization - Whoa is (Not)

opened their mouths to roar, it was a sound composed of thousands of individual screams.... Andnow they roared in anticipation of fresh meat, John Constantine, fresh meat!He knew if he looked over his shoulder he would see the increasing, swarming mass of astralpredators closing on him. A living avalanche of demons, snapping at his heels.He ran round a crumpled VW Bug in which a hippie and a punk rocker strangled one anotherfor all eternity, gnashing skin each from the other's face, just a short distance from the placewhere the Priests of the Inquisition were eternally tormented ....Even as Isabel tore off her hospital bracelet and threw it from the top of the burningbuilding....Constantine ran past a totaled Mercedes built for four passengers and filled with twenty-sevenwrithing, clawing trapped souls, squirming bloodily over one another, all of them drunk driverswho'd killed some innocent before smashing themselves to Hell after a night of extremelyimportant partying…Isabel's bracelet falling... Isabel stepping out into space to follow it...And with the demons reaching for his ankles, Constantine jumped onto the hood of theMercedes, using it as a springboard to leap upward, straining, stretching out his hand, guided by amagician's finely developed intuition, to snatch the falling bracelet from the air-While Isabel, above, pitched herself off the roof and into the enormous jaws of a demon thatswallowed her up, chewed her into shreds. It quickly digested her, so that a moment later sheappeared on the rooftop again.And once more Isabel was walking to the edge. She was taking off her bracelet, throwing it.She was jumping - into the enormous jaws of a demon that swallowed her up, chewed her intoshreds....The same cycle for all eternity.Constantine's own leap, however, took him not into the jaws of a waiting demon but - as hisfree hand made the mystic mudras, the signs in the air that opened the way - back into Angela'sapartment, to the dimension of mortals.Angela had just stepped into the hallway. Just closed the door behind her. For only a momentbefore, John Constantine had said to her, "I need you to step outside.... Angela, please..." Shehad just done these things, had only time enough to think: He's sort of appealing, in a ruined, sadkind of way....And then she heard the bowl smashing, the sound of something heavy falling in the roombehind her.NINEInstinctively, Angela ran back into her living room, and found Constantine lying facedown inbroken glass, coughing, malodorous steam rising from him. Angela knelt beside him. Touchedhis shoulder, tenderly. "Constantine... what happened? Are you all right?"He got up onto an elbow. Shaking, sweating.Looked around at her place. It was back to normal. Her selection of books, the ottoman justan ottoman, the TV turned off, the wall intact. But he was still carrying Hell with him,somewhere inside, in a memory he would always regret having."Constantine?"His voice was hoarse as he answered the question that inhabited the air. ''I'm sorry."He had brought something with him from Hell.