Constantine - The Novelization - Whoa is (Not)

"Fili Redemptor mundi, Deus, miserere nobis. Fili Redemptor mundi, Deus, miserere…"The room seemed to recede from Constantine, the way the ground recedes below a rocket, andthe electricity crescendoed to a searing flash of light that consumed all the world... and protractedinto a single line of light that stretched out to an impossible attenuation, exactly equaling infinity.His soul was between worlds, hurled there, for the moment, by the chair and Midnite, but stillconnected to his body by the Silver Cord. That cord, he knew, could stretch across a universe, solong as the spell held; and the spell was held in place by a powerful will: Papa Midnite."Pater de caelis, Deus, miserere nobis. Fili Redemptor mundi, Deus, miserere nobis..."The voice echoed between galaxies, from far away, from the beginning of time. It seemed toConstantine that he was at the end of time. It could have no end, and it had one, all at once. Allparadoxes seemed to stand out here - finitude and infinitude, space that went on forever, yetcurved; time and timelessness existing all in the same existential structure. Time... that's what heneeded, to surf the stream of time, coursing the surface of it like a speedboat over a river - able tomove against the current.Here, he could choose the place in the time-flow he wanted to occupy. If he reached out withhis psychic field and visualized what he wanted, he'd be drawn there, to a particular place - andtime. Earth...And he saw Earth turning below him. Now - he must move in time as well as space. Picturethe spear. Sangre de dio. The bloodied spear of the crucifixion...He reached out, visualizing Christ at the crucifixion....There he was. He was looking through time at the Man Himself. Ecce Homo: Behold theman.Christ was a dark-skinned man, with long black hair dirtied by blood from the crown ofthorns; he was lean, his nose hooked, his brow a bit heavy; his eyes, his black eyes, oh, his veryblack eyes -- looked back at Constantine. That should not have been possible, Constantine should havebeen invisible. Yet Christ was looking back at him!Constantine shuddered, feeling that gaze penetrate to his soul. He felt a vast pity wash overhim from the figure on the cross. Strange that a man being crucified would feel pity for anyoneelse. A crow had settled on Jesus' shoulder and was trying to peck at his eyes... and yet Jesuspitied Constantine. He pitied all the world.Was this an opportunity? A chance for redemption, a way to cash in his one-way ticket toHell? Constantine wanted to ask the figure on the cross for help - but he remembered Angela andhis mission. Whatever redemption Jesus might offer could require time. Midnite would notsustain the spell indefinitely. And as Constantine hesitated he saw the Roman soldierapproaching Jesus, driving the spear into his side to speed his end.Blood and water twined down the spear, just as the Bible had described, and a foxfire seemedto glimmer along its iron point. The sky beyond split with lightning; clouds black as judgmentgathered; somewhere was the rumble of graves erupting their dead, and the cry of Pontius Pilateawakening in the night, in terror - without knowing why.Constantine forced himself to focus on the spear and followed it, as if fast-forwarding,pursuing it through time, strobing through scenes in the life of the Roman guard, who sold it to aChristian monk, from whom it was stolen; and again it was stolen, and kept in a dark placeunderground in Rome, and then a Nazi archaeologist exposed it to the light, and put it in a box, tobe transported to their secret occult research team in Mexico...."Pater de caelis, Deus, miserere nobis. Fili Redemptor mundi, Deus..."Constantine seeing the stream of time from a particular angle, time for a human being like atunnel made of human shapes, a flow of endless buildings-up and collapsings, growth and death,lives passing in the flux of a single wave.Whenever Constantine moved through time it was not just his point of view, not some distant"scrying"; his soul was actually time-traveling. His spiritual substance took the journey - a part