Constantine - The Novelization - Whoa is (Not)

--Angela made up her mind.And it wasn't just about chauvinism. She could feel that she was needed - had the "feeling ofguidance from something higher" that Constantine had told her about...."I used to have it, once upon a time. Then I lost it. Maybe when I got depressed, and no helpcame, and I slashed my wrist and went to Hell - I - got mad, and it can't get in past all thatanger. Whatever guidance an angel like Gabriel offers, well, that ain't it. But I know it exists,kid. St. Francis, Ramakrishna, Rumi, Teresa of Avila - those guys were the real pros at gettingthat guidance. And I figure, maybe it's too late for me to get it. But it's not too late for you.It's... some kind of psychic opening, to the really high frequency wavelengths, the highest astrallight - it's all about energy transmission, see. Some energies are intelligent, Angela. Find themand let them guide you. You know, after... whatever happens.... "She'd been sitting in the car, trying to do just that.And getting a very distant sort of tingle, from somewhere, that came like a warm comforter onan icy cold day - just for a moment. And she seemed to hear... not a voice, exactly, not words,but a transmission of pure understanding, adding up to a sense of mission.You must help him.So she got out of the car. She checked her gun - fully loaded. She pulled off her jacket.Maybe with a little help from the Evil One, the amulet caught on a collar snap, and the chainbroke.' Stuck to her jacket, which she tossed in the car, the amulet was left behind when sheheaded for the concrete back stairs of the BZR building. She didn't notice.She went up the stairs remembering....She and Isabel as little girls, playing in the park.On swings together, side by side, sometimes in tandem, sometimes together, higher andhigher, till at once they'd both shout out, "Now!" and let go of the swing's chains, launchingthemselves into the air to come down in the sawdust, laughing. Liking it even better if theyskinned their knees a little.Isabel standing, turning - staring at someone. A man watching them. A squat, balding man ina trench coat. Staring at them with a kind smile and dead eyes... an expression so like that of theman Angela would shoot all those years later, in Echo Park.Angela and Isabel looking at him as he hesitated there, seeming to be a fixture of the dusk, likea spider is a fixture of the amber it's trapped in.Just poised there for a momentary eternity... And then the spider came impossibly out of theamber, taking a step toward them. Angela saw the other one then - he hadn't been quite visible atfirst. Not a human face - saturnine, leathery, composed yet gleeful, like a greedy child with a bigbag of sweets in front of him the morning after Halloween. He was going to feed somehow, if hecould persuade this stubby little man with the dead eyes to do it one more time....Angela and Isabel both saw it then - a flash of what the man had done before. A thirteen-yearoldgirl strangled on a lonely beach in Maine...."No one's around," the demon whispered to the man. "I promise you that. No one but you andthese two choice bits of stuff."The man couldn't hear the demon the way Angela did - to him it was just an urge forming inhim, the words somewhere in the backbrain, rising through the subconscious like methanebubbles. But Angela and Isabel heard the demon tell the man to kill them."Before they run," the demon hissed, urging the man on. And the demon frowned now, sensingthat these two had the sight - that they were aware of him. "Get them!"The man started toward them, reaching into his pocket for the ether and the ropes."There's a demon telling you what to do, mister," Isabel said. "He's standing just behind you -on your left side..."The man blinked, coming up short a moment could not resist turning to look. Did he for a