Constantine - The Novelization - Whoa is (Not)

His power over her must be flowing from the Spear of Destiny. Suppose she could get it awayfrom him somehow...But how? Right now she felt so weak, like a two year-old faced with wrestling a gun from acommando.As she was wondering this - and struggling, kicking at the water, trying to knee him in thegroin, with no effect - he suddenly put his face close to hers, grinning.She thought he was going to force his tongue down her throat. The thought had passed fromhis mind to hers.Just for one horrible moment what was ironically called her "gift" opened a window into hismind, and Angela saw through the window into his memory. His name was Francisco, she saw.She felt a mix of pity and revulsion as she saw Francisco's childhood: abandoned on the streets,starving, having to steal food to survive; a man telling him he would have a new home... themomentary joy of it... only to be taken to a bathhouse and "rented" to sexual predators.Francisco's running away, afterward, and joining a gang. Watching as his only friend was shotdead by a couple of fat, laughing policemen purely for sport. Watching his only friend bleed todeath in a heap of trash as rats sniffed at his wounds. Learning to take and take and take.Running from the police. Learning to drive a taxi in another town. Driven away by the corruptpolice there, too - ending as a scavenger in a dump.And she saw herself in his mind. How he envisaged tearing her clothing away, thrustinghimself into her, how he fantasized that she would respond with tender acquiescence, the happyslave ready to give and give again, as he took her repeatedly on a great pile of internationalcurrency on a garish red silk bed in a mansion like a child's fantasy castle ....She sobbed, repelled, jerking her mind away from the psychic contact, and Francisco, puttingthe spearhead in a pocket, chose that moment to slap her, hard, the force of the blow spinning heraround so he could use a length of snapped electrical wire to tie her wrists behind her with vicioustightness.God, she prayed, are you really going to let this happen? It's not just me, God - it's theworld...--The sign read: CLOSED FOR RENOVATION.They pushed the doors open, knocking the sign aside, and went through into a semi abandonedwing of Ravenscar Hospital. Constantine glanced at Chaz, wondering if he was going to be anasset when he so obviously was about to jump out of his skin.As if playing with Chaz's nerves, a rat ran by around the comer ahead, and Chaz nearly shot atit."Easy," Constantine said.But he remembered the demon made of vermin who'd nearly killed him on a street comer.Could there be more of that kind, just around the comer? Would the rat be followed by scorpionsand maybe bird-eating spiders big as your hand?But they saw nothing else move as they continued down the corridor, deeper into the darkness.Chaz was chewing his lip. Sweat was beading on his temples. "Talk or don't talk?" he asked.Constantine gave him a look that answered the question."Right," Constantine said. "Don't talk."A repellent sound came murmuring to them. At first it was like the guts of a pig rumblingafter just eating its young, perhaps one of them still alive in there, swallowed whole. Then it waslike a psycho killer mumbling in his sleep, talking of someone he'd never met - of you, exactlyyou - and what he'd do to you once he got you alone in a dank basement, chained beyond hope ofescaping. Then it sounded like a guttural language. But it was all the same noise."What is that?" Chaz asked. "Hell-speak," Constantine said.They both shuddered, listening to the language of Hell. Sounding like the babbling of a