Constantine - The Novelization - Whoa is (Not)

essence of Hades. He was already flipping through the book, scowling over it, muttering.Angela shook her head. "Where did that book come from?"She looked at the shelves. None missing. Constantine was looking through the "New Testament"correspondence in Hell's own bible. "Thirteen twenty-nine... thirteen-thirty... Here." Hetapped the page, finding the entry he wanted. "'The sins of the father would only be exceeded bythe sins of the son.'""Uh - whose son?""That symbol on Hennessy's hand." He looked at her in sudden realization. "It's not ademonic sign. That's why I didn't recognize it. Could be something much more powerful than amere demon.""John - what are you talking about?"Constantine mused aloud. "But he can't cross over... impossible for the son to cross over..."Shuddering inwardly at the implications. Soon it would be party time for devils."Whose son?" Angela asked desperately. "God's?""No. The other one."She looked at him, not wanting to understand. But understanding dawned slowly on heranyway. "The Devil had a son too?"--There was a reason Beeman lived in the back of a bowling alley, behind the lanes, at the endof that narrow strip of noisy corridor where the maintenance was done on the pinsettingmachines. Back in the clatter and smash of the pins, most of the day and night. There was a bitof extra storage space at the end of that corridor.Beeman suffered from a particularly nasty form of tinnitus - ringing in the ears, from theexplosion of an alchemical beaker. He'd been a hair away from the Philosopher's Stone itself,working from the only known copy of the alchemical diary of Abremalin the Mage, and he'd putin a grain too much brimstone. The explosion had knocked him across the room and consumedthe book he'd worked from. He'd always figured that wasn't an accident. Something, someone -maybe the Angel Gabriel - hadn't wanted him to have the Philosopher's Stone. It led toimmortality, and that led to cheating death, and that broke the rules for mortals. And Gabriel hadwarned him once. Maybe the tinnitus afterward was a cruel reminder....The constant buzzing in his damaged inner ear, the whistling, whirring, loud as a guitar ampturned two thirds the way up - it made him nuts unless he was somewhere noisier than thebuzzing. Something, anything, to mask that sound. And he'd always loved bowling.So now he sat at his desk, talking by phone to Constantine and peering at a page of scrollsunder the glow of a goose necked desk lamp with the bowling pins clashing behind him - but onlyone lane going, since it was early morning: The manager always played a solo game or twobefore he started getting ready to open.Beeman had a telephone - dialed to the absolute loudest setting - held by his shoulder to hisear. His neck ached from holding the phone there."16:19... 16:30... Yes, here we go," he told Constantine. ''I've got it." On the page was anetching of that same damnably recurrent symbol. Underneath were ink drawings of a devil risingup through a human body.Above the beast, a familiar figure on a crucifix, weeping, welcomed the beast into the humanworld.--"Oh my," Beeman added, from the speakerphone in Angela's SUV. "This is certainly notgood..."She was driving, nursing a Starbucks coffee. Constantine was riding shotgun. "This worldhas been invaded, all right," she muttered, "by Starbucks. And we all let it happen...."