Constantine - The Novelization - Whoa is (Not)

And there it was: a place where the corridor opened into a utility room dominated by a bigtank, on the side of which was a sticker showing a flame.He reached into his coat, found the relic that Midnite had given him. He unwrapped the cloth,revealing the bright silver Christian cross. He looked the tank over, found the cap on the tank,unscrewed it, and held the cross over it.And he began to pray, to use the ancient words he knew by heart. Reaching out with hispsychic field, as Constantine had taught him, summoning, conducting, directing....--Constantine felt the air seem to thicken with malignancy as he approached the turn in thecorridor. He sensed that around that corner things would come to a head. That turn in thehallway was the cornering of his own destiny...He was aware - he could feel it - that his whole life had been building toward this moment. Hethought about Angela, and Chaz, and he figured they were going to go the way of the otherswho'd gotten close to him.He remembered Gary Lester. He had been in a band, singing, with Gary - a new wave bandcalled Mucous Membrane that used to play on the same bill with Obsession, Jerry Cornelius, andBauhaus. Gary had only wanted to play bass, but getting involved with Constantine in any wayhad a tendency to be a wrong turn, for all too many people - and Constantine'd had to sacrificeGary to the demon Mnemoth, so that he and Midnite could stop Mnemoth from eating New YorkCity alive. Sure, getting involved with Mnemoth in the first place had been Gary's own doing.But it was Constantine who'd gotten Gary interested in the supernatural. Trusting, drug-addictedGary Lester. Poor son of a bitch. Constantine sometimes still saw his ghost, trailing after him....There was no forgetting Astra Logue, either - the young girl had been an innocent bystander,caught in the cross fire when he'd botched the summoning of a dark spirit; pitiful little Astra hadbeen sucked screaming down to Hell in the demon's psychic slipstream.He'd done two years in this very institution, in another wing of Ravenscar, after that, trying toget over his sense of responsibility. Trying to let magic alone once and for all. But magicwouldn't let John Constantine alone; he was already notorious in the astral world. He was amarked man. Perhaps a cursed man.After all, he'd murdered his own twin brother in the womb, or so his father had claimed. TheGolden Boy had been strangled by Constantine's umbilicus: born dead. His own dead twin wasone of the reasons he was shaken up by this close encounter with Angela and Isabel.He was lucky that the first love of his life - the Irish girl, Kit Ryan - hadn't been murdered bythe far-right extremists he'd pissed off back in 1993. They'd come close. She'd felt betrayed whenhe'd resorted to magic again, after he'd promised to leave it alone, and she'd left him for good.Best thing for her too, he'd decided. He wondered if she was still alive....Maybe the First of the Fallen - Satan, whom Constantine had frustrated so many times - hadtaken revenge on him by going after Kit. She could be addicted to heroin, selling herself foranother fix somewhere, for all he knew; she could be dead in an alley somewhere, with ratschewing on her face, right now...No, he told himself. Don't think that way. You're playing Satan's game when you assume the worst.That’s what he wants you to do. These thoughts could well be a psychological attack from one of hismind-demons. She’s all right… somewhere, somehow, Kit is all right. She has to be.Still, the memories intruded, shoving into his mind like foul-smelling drunks pushing theirway into an already crowded elevator. There was Rick the Vic - a British vicar who'd emigratedto the States and befriended Constantine, and probably wished he hadn't. Rick hadn't been clearabout his own theology, killed himself to avoid facing Satan full-on, after getting entangled withConstantine, and found himself facing Satan in Hell.And Nigel Archer - mildly psychic, a political idealist. Constantine had used him to summonthe blade-demon Calibraxis, then embroiled him in an attempt to destroy Satan himself.