Constantine - The Novelization - Whoa is (Not)

Would he still be alive if I'd let him keep wearing this?"Shit," Constantine murmured. "Why didn't you call me…" His voice was strangely tender ashe added, "you son of a bitch."He looked again at the corkscrew wound in Hennessy's palm. A pattern in the blood.... Hardto make it out....He looked around, found some ice in the wine freezer, brought it back, pushed it intoHennessy's palm, wiping away dried blood. Not a random cut, no. It was a kind of bloodyinsignia.Constantine found a paper bag, pressed it to the palm, looked at the paper. The residual bloodhad made an imprint. He'd seen this circular symbol before.He stood and looked one last time at the remains of Father Hennessy - once a compatriot inbattle, even a friend, before the booze took hold.But all the while, even when he was grubbing for his next drink, he was a better man than me,Constantine thought. And I've been treating him like crap. He deserved better.''I'm sorry, Father."He turned away, suspecting - feeling it, really that Hennessy was at peace. Maybe in a waythat John Constantine would never be.He turned to Angela. "I need to see where Isabel died."--"This part of East L.A. used to be kind of tony," Angela said, looking out at the vacant lots anddecaying high-rises around Ravenscar as they walked out onto the hospital roof. "But when theeconomy went south..."Constantine sensed that Angela was trying to keep her mind busy, by thinking about theneighborhood. This was a painful place for her to visit.They reached the rim of the roof where Isabel had jumped to her death, and gazed out at theglimmering corpus of the nighttime city. The city pulsed with light amid swaths of velvetdarkness, its energy only a little diminished so far past midnight. Constantine thought it was likea delirious fever patient in a dormant, semicomatose state, still twitching in its sleep, stillsweating, soon to awaken babbling.And Constantine could feel Isabel's suicide here - feel it like a recent, aching burn on his skin.Terminal patients, he thought. Isabel, Los Angeles - and me. One down, two to go: me next.Los Angeles gave off a background vehicular rumbling - softer at this hour but always there.Jets bringing in tourists thumped the air from LAX. A siren wailed from somewhere nearby.Was that a distant gunshot? Another? A drive - by, perhaps.The city continued to mumble to itself: the screech of brakes, the grumble of a semitruck, acar driving nearby with its woofers booming out a hiphop beat. Someone gets shot - or someonejumps to their death from a hospital roof - and the city shrugs and goes on."Let's go down to the place she... where she fell to," Constantine said gently.They went back in, found the elevators, rode in silence down to hydrotherapy. Constantinethought he ought to say something to comfort her - only, he was pretty rotten at comfortingpeople. She led the way to the pool. Police tape still around it.Barely audible when she spoke. "I guess she was always trying to decipher it all. Make senseof it. Seances, Ouija boards, channeling... Our dad thought she was just trying to get attention."She took a long breath. Chuckled sadly. "She certainly did that. She'd tell everyone about thethings she said she saw. Crazy things. Monsters. Like you saw. She'd scare my mother to death.Then one day she just stopped talking - for almost a year."Constantine looked at her. Then away. It was so horribly inevitable: "So you had hercommitted."Angela's outbreath was ragged. "The first time no one tells you. You don't know how tohandle it. What are you supposed to do?"