---

“I want to know why,” John asked as the door swung closed behind him, plunging him into the darkness of the kitchen, the only light coming from the cherries of his and his doppelganger's cigarettes. “Why the girls, for God's sake? It can't be just revenge, right? You loved them, too, when you were a part of me.”

The Demon Constantine smiled his rows of razorblade teeth, plumes of smoke exhaling from his rotting nostrils. A maggot fell from the great hole in his cheek, landing with a squirm on the collar of his coat before he flicked it off into the darkness. “Sex magic is a potent brew, old son,” he answered with a hiss, “and murdering every twat you stuck your prick into over the years is just one piece of the pie. I turned each of them into a Scarlet Woman, like ol' Aleister Crowley taught me to do down in Hell, and with each dead cunt the spell gets that much stronger. Five girls dead now, Johnny boy, that makes me a fuck sight more powerful than you these days.”

“That doesn't tell me fuck-all, asshole,” John countered as he stepped further into the black room. His double had taken a seat at the dining table, one leg hefted up onto his knee as he sat back in recline, an arm slung over the seat back. “What gave you this sodding plan after all these years? You sure as shite didn't get my bloody brains when I made you, so somebody else had to have turned you on. Stop me if you've heard this one, you git.”

“Maybe so,” the Demon answered as he stamped out his cigarette on the tablecloth, “maybe no.”

It was so very dark in the kitchen and John had trouble making out exactly what his copy was doing at the table. His finger ran across the tablecloth, around where he'd put out his fag, but what was he really doing? The double raised his bloodshot eyes to gaze at John as his finger traced along the cloth. “Even after everything you did to me, John, even after Hell, all I ever wanted was to be just like you. I ached for a return to what had been our life before you sold me off like some old, dusty curio at an auction. I came back from the Pit five months ago, aren't you curious what I was doing all that time?”

“Don't give two tugs of a dead dog's cock, mate,” John answered, “you murdering me girlfriends has kind of put me off having a chit-chat, y'know?”

“Have it your way, then,” the Demon responded as he stood from the table, shedding the brown trenchcoat from his shoulders and tossing it into the corner. “We'll have a chance for chit-chat soonish like, I promise.”

Suddenly, the pitch dark of the room shattered as the kitchen door behind John swung open fiercely, causing the true Constantine to turn blinded, a hand raised up over his eyes to try and force an adjustment to the sudden influx of light. “Arsehole!” he heard screamed, Kit's voice ragged with rage and pain, and his vision corrected itself just in time to see the butcher's blade coming at him in her hand. The knife stabbed deep into his left shoulder, followed by a kick of her shoe in his breadbasket, knocking him over onto the ceramic tile floor.

She landed another kick to his ribs before the Demon lurched forward, yelling her name as he tackled her back through the door into the sitting room. Through the pain, the sharp piercing pain of the blade stuck in his shoulder, John took to his feet and staggered out through the back door of the house, Kit's screaming still ringing in his ears. What the fuck had just happened?

It hit him as he stumbled out into the Belfast night, his ‘fight or flight’ response carrying him desperately out of harm's way, to wherever he might find safety or sanctuary. The fucking double took off his coat just before Kit attacked, mirroring what John himself had done in the sitting room when he discarded his own coat. The two were wearing identical clothes, and – fuck! The tablecloth, the sodding ashes from his fag! He drew a fucking sigil in the ashes, a glamour spell! He hadn't just made himself look like ‘normal’ Constantine , he made John look like the demon!

And now John was running, bleeding to death in the moonlight while gunfire played out in the distance (it was Belfast , after all). He'd left his companions in the company of a demon, a demon who most likely was getting ready to go on the hunt. His identity had just been stolen, and now he was just another demon to be squashed by the bloody great John Constantine...

---

“Kit, what the bloody hell were you playing at in there?” John – the Demon John, glamoured up to hide his true appearance – asked as he pushed Kathy back into the sitting room, where Mercury waited to catch her as she fell backward.

“He's gone out the back,” Shocka said as he cracked open the kitchen door, very much afraid of what might have been on the other side, “so what's the plan, mate?”

“That thing killed my sister and my brother!” Kit yelled, slapping Mercury's hands off her shoulders. “It was here to kill me, too, wasn't it?”

“Aye, luv,” Constantine answered, a seemingly genuine look of regret on his face, “that it was. Don't worry, though, ol' John's here to sort it out right. I promise.”

“I will never forgive you for this, John Constantine,” Kit swore, daggers stabbing from her cold eyes.

“I'm going after the bugger,” John said, brushing off Kit's epitaph, “you three hold down the fort here and I'll be back quick as cats.”

Then he left, with no one giving a word of protest, through the kitchen door on the trail of his other. He stopped for a moment, retrieving the coat he'd tossed into the corner of the kitchen, and was off to eliminate the real John Constantine. It hadn't been part of the plan, of course, but improvisation could most certainly be a good thing for them.

After his departure, Kit sat down, ignoring her two guests in favor of a cigarette and silence. Shocka made his way to Mercury, calling her attention to the chair beside the door. “John forgot his coat,” he remarked, noticing the trenchcoat that Constantine had discarded upon entering the house.

“That wasn't John,” Mercury corrected as she picked up the coat and slipped it on. She closed her eyes, a hand held to her forehead as if she had just picked up an intense migraine. When she opened them, a smile danced across her lips. “Our John, the real John, is on the run, and he left us instructions.”

“You're kidding,” Shocka said in disbelief while Mercury fished through the coat's pockets. She produced the contents and held them up to the New Orleans native. “Oh Christ,” he groaned before taking the object from her hand, “roll up your sleeve, doll...”

---

He barely made it a kilometer through the city before collapsing in the drainage ditch dug out on the right side of the street. Constantine fell in a bloody heap, his shoulder fucking killing him and a blood loss-induced headache that made his skull throb and pulse. The ditch was cold and wet, soaking through his white dress-shirt after only a few seconds of laying face down in the muck.

What a way to spend a night in sodding Belfast, he thought as he rolled over onto his back, hand pressed to the bloody knife wound in his shoulder.

He'd been played by a fucking Xerox copy of himself, led right into a trap that he fell for hook, line and sinker. He still didn't understand, though, why the bastard had come after Kit out of all the ex-girlfriends they'd had throughout the years. Yes, Kit was the one that John loved more than any other, at least at the time, but there was a big damn bloody reason that he wouldn't have considered her a target had he known who the killer truly was.

“So I bet I can guess what you're thinking, Johnny,” a voice that sound like his own, but filtered through a mix-master, said from the street above him. Crouching down to get a better look at his fleeing victim, the Demon Constantine smiled and sucked on the end of his cigarette.

“For someone that used to be a part of me,” John spat back from the ditch, “you know fuck-all about what I think.”

“You're wondering why I went after Kit,” the Demon continued, the smoke from his cigarette forming a ghostly halo around his putrefied features. “To tell you the truth, I don't know if I'd really had it in me to finish the job before you came riding in like the cavalry. I've been here, in her presence, the better part of the day – killed her brother, killed her sister's oafish husband – but I'd look at her face and all the things we shared came rushing back. I'm sure you thought you were doing me a solid when you left me your ‘gift', mate, but what you did was more of a torture than anything Hell could attempt.”

And there it was, the answer to John's unspoken question. When Constantine created him, cast the spell and annexed the negative parts of his soul, he decided he couldn't completely damn the poor bastard. He left him one shining ray of hope; he left him all the love that John had felt for Kit Ryan. Constantine had clear, vivid memories of his time spent with Kit, but the emotions attached to those memories were gone now. He'd given them to his double as an act of kindness, and look at what that gift had done.

“If you still feel one sodding ounce of the love I felt for Kit,” John said as he sat up with his back against the dirt and grass wall of the ditch, “there's no way you could've killed her.”

“You're probably right,” the Demon said as he stubbed out his fag, then reached inside his coat pocket for another. He produced two cigarettes from the pack, lit them both and passed one down to John.

“Cheers,” John said as he took a draw, “guess you're not a total bastard, huh?”

“One last smoke for the condemned man,” the Demon replied, still squatting over the disabled and defenseless Constantine . “Truthfully, old squire, it was our love for Kit that allowed me to hold on to the last scrap of humanity my soul had left. You passed along everything bad to me, John, how did you really think I was going to turn out, especially with demon blood factored in? But Kit, jaysis, thinking of her, it made me long for what I had before you split us up. I wanted to be you again, the John Constantine! But I was in Hell, where I thought I’d be for eternity; where you sent me, you bastard. That's where an old friend found me, John; found and rescued me. I still had all the badness inside me, I always had, and what this old friend offered me in return for my services - well, let's just say a few slaughtered women was a small price to pay.”

“So what's the plan now, mate?” Constantine asked. “Hero or villain, which part you playing now?”

“Now,” the Demon replied, “I think I'll just kill you and take your place. Why settle for a copycat existence when I can have the real thing, y'know?”

“Not bad,” John said, suddenly smiling in the face of impending death, “too bad there's just one fatal fucking flaw, you tosser.”

At that moment, thin, lithe arms wrapped around the Demon's neck, yanking him backwards onto his ass. It was Mercury, still wrapped in John's coat, and something sharp was gripped in her hand. It was the needle, the same sodding cursed hypodermic that John had taken from Shocka a few days before – the needle capable of shooting more than just drugs into a person's system. She stabbed into the Demon Constantine's neck before he could dislodge her, plunging a red liquid straight into his hellish veins.

“Cunt!” the Demon screamed as he tossed Mercury aside, sending her flailing into the ditch to be caught by John. “What did you fucking spike me with?”

The answer to his question came as he fell to his knees, muscles locking in spasms and convulsions as thick foam came bubbling from his mouth. Choking and writhing on the street, the Demon was attacked by his own body, assailed by whatever the little cum-rag had injected him with. Images played across his mind's eye, visions of each woman he'd murdered over the past week, their pain now his to feel through every agonizing moment of their deaths. The most painful by far was the death of the woman named Marj, Mercury's mother, and the pain was enough to cause even a demon to weep bloody tears.

“How's it feel to be played, you arrogant prick?” Constantine spat as he and Mercury climbed from the ditch. “Have you ever known me to discard me coat like that? There's a reason I wear that bloody thing every sodding day; it's connected to me through sympathetic magic. I knew I couldn't just talk openly with you in the room, so I left a psychic message imprinted on the coat, just waiting for Merc here to put it on and receive.”

The Demon could barely hear the words, but the meaning behind them was clear even through the agony he was feeling. John crouched over his convulsing body, the cursed syringe held in his open palm. “This needle is damned, cursed by all of the vile shite it's put into people over the years. Mercury here, if you remember, is an empath. She felt the sympathetic pains of every girl you chopped up, each one leaving a psychic impression in her mind. What she shot you up with was her own blood, amplified by the needle's curse; we injected you with empathy, arsehole! How's it fucking feel?”

“All I wanted,” the Demon choked out, “was to be whole again. It's not over, she's still out there...”

“Who's still out there?” John asked, lifting the demon up by the lapel of his coat. “Another victim, another girl you've left dead out there in the world?”

“Not quite,” the Demon answered with a smile through the pain, “she's the one who freed me from Hell, the one who came up with the plan to make your life a reeking wound.”

“Fucking WHO?” John asked again, slamming the Demon's head against the pavement as incentive.

“She's in America now,” the Demon Constantine laughed with his last breath, “hunting down the rest of your loves. You won't reach them in time, and I'll be waiting for them. Waiting in Hell!”

With those final damned words, the Demon Constantine died, overwhelmed by the empathic feelings of death and misery that had been inflicted by his own hands. Mercury came and put her arms around John, trying her best to comfort him. “Kit's okay,” she said. “Shocka stayed with her.”

“She may be alive,” John responded as he and Mercury began the walk back to the house, “but I think she's pretty fucking far from okay.”

---

The Demon Constantine had died, she could feel it in her womb.

She ignored the nervous stares of the other people sitting around her on the plane, impervious to their whispers and silent judgment. She'd long grown accustomed to the reaction her appearance always seemed to spark. She was a child of the 1980s, and her fashion still reflected her upbringing. Her bleached-blonde hair was nearly white, and stiff like straw from the amount of hairspray she'd applied that evening. The mascara around her eyes was thick and highlighted in red, marking her like a raccoon, and the number of gold necklaces was immense (and she'd long forgotten exactly how many she wore these days). Topped off with a black dress, wrapped beneath a corset the color of blood, she'd often been accused of looking like a witch.

It made her smile to recall, because a witch was exactly what she had become.

Her name was Zed, and it had been seventeen years since she last saw John Constantine, the man that had soiled her loins with his seed. She was born and bred to be the mother to the new messiah, the Holy Mary of the Resurrection Crusaders, until Constantine ruined her chance for divinity. He'd been infused with demon's blood and sent out to defile her womb, an act of sex that she cursed herself for falling for all those years ago. She was pure and holy no longer, and in an attempt to escape what had happened to her Zed returned to the Earth. She became a pagan priestess, worshiping the Earth Mother and making use of the Celtic magic of the ancient Druids. She was reunited with Constantine, and with Marj and Mercury the four of them briefly became a family.

Until he left her for a second time, never to return.

Her life had not been easy since then, a hard road topped with hard sacrifices. In truth, during her search for more magical attributes to call her own, poor Zed became an addict. Power was all she dreamed of now, and it was during her nomadic journeys that she chanced across the legend of the Laughing Magician. It was a simple task to charm the Demon Constantine to her side, sending him out to murder and defile the other women who dared to share a bed with the man she herself was destined to love.

But now the Demon was dead, most likely at the hands of Constantine himself. She was on her way to America , seated in the cramped passenger jet with a notepad on her lap and a pen tapping, rapping against it. The rest of the holy mission would have to be done alone, she decided, but that wasn't so bad. She'd happily killed the woman in Belfast to keep their activities a secret a bit longer, what would a few more murders mean in the long run?

So she ran down the list, marking down each name on the paper pad. There was the dark-skinned one, the reporter, who had last been seen in Opal City. There would have to be a brief stop-over in New York City, where the ghost of John's first love was still known to wander. The sorcerer's daughter, too, of course; San Francisco was where she hung her top-hat these days. Who else, who else? Chantinelle, the succubus, would be a powerful addition to her menagerie. And others, always others, because John Constantine had a dick that just wouldn't quit.

He'd be coming after her, she decided, wondering if the Demon had given up her name before he died at Constantine’s hands. The thought thrilled her, excited her nethers and made her blush with delight; the chase was almost as nice as the murders. John Constantine would give her one hell of a chase, too, that was assured.

It was too bad about Kit Ryan escaping, though. She'd have to double back around for that one.

---

Mercury and John came through the front door of the Ryan household, finding Shocka alone in the sitting room, watching the telly of all sodding things. “John, thank Christ,” the Orleans expatriate greeted them, standing up from the sofa, “er, that is really you, right?”

“Piss off, Smythe,” Constantine said as he brushed past the young man. “Where's Kit?”

“She's in the kitchen with her sister,” Shocka answered. “They're still kinda in shock about all this mess.”

“Wait, Uncle John,” Mercury said, stopping Constantine before he could enter the kitchen, “take this, it's yours. Thank you for trusting me with it.”

She removed the brown trenchcoat from her shoulders, handling it like it was some form of holy relic, an artifact fragile to the touch. She folded it, doubled it over and handed it back to John who quickly threw it over his arms. “You were perfect, love,” he told her, stepping over to place a kiss on the girl's forehead, “just bloody perfect.”

John turned back toward the kitchen, not seeing how Mercury blushed from both his kiss and his praise. Shocka noticed, though, and shot her a look of disbelief. “You're kidding, right?”

“Piss off, Shocka,” was Mercury's reply as she took a seat, “and turn the telly back on, would you?”

John entered the kitchen and found Kathy and Claire sitting at the dining table, cups of tea smoldering in their hands. Their conversation stopped dead in mid-sentence when he entered the room, both women turning to glare their hateful stares at the man responsible for the misery of the past twenty-four hours. “Kathy,” her younger sister Claire said as she placed a hand on Kit's shoulder, “you want I should stay?”

“No, dear,” Kit said with a reassuring smile, “John and I have some shite to work through, I think. I'll be up to your room soon, go get some rest.”

Claire nodded and stood from the table. She paused as she moved past Constantine, steeling herself for the confrontation. “You're a disease,” she said whilst fighting back tears, “and if you love my sister at all you need to leave and never, ever look back.”

John said nothing, just lowered his head in shame as Claire Ryan moved past him on her way up the stairs. “So,” Kit began, offering her sister's seat to him, “what's the story? How else is John frigging Constantine going to ruin my life while he's on holiday in Ireland?”

“I can't say how sorry I am about your siblings, Kit,” John replied, his head still hung low, “just tell me you believe me when I say I didn't know this was happening until it was too late. When I found out, you were the first person I came to find, I swear.”

“So in comes John, riding in like my personal white knight to save the day and rescue the poor wee damsel?” Kit remarked, her tone growing bitterer with each word. “The sad truth of the matter is that I do believe you, John. That's what makes this so bloody hard, right?”

“So where do we go from here?” Kit asked when John failed to respond to her first question.

“I don't know, Kit,” he answered sadly, “I just don't fucking know anymore...”

---

---

To Be Continued...

---

- Kit Ryan was Constantine 's love interest during Garth Ennis' run on the series. She broke up with John and moved back to Belfast after she was attacked by neo-Nazi thugs that John had pissed off in the “Fear and Loathing” story. She and her siblings were last seen in the “Heartland” one-shot produced by Ennis and Steve Dillon.

- The Demon Constantine was first introduced in the “Critical Mass” story by Paul Jenkins and Sean Phillips. John was caught in a trap by the First of the Fallen and a demon named Buer that would quickly end with John's soul being dragged down to Hell. In order to escape this fate, John created a doppelganger of himself via earth and magic, into which he poured all of the negative aspects of his personality, the demon blood injected into him by Nergal, and the one shining light: his love for Kit Ryan. This doppelganger was taken to Hell in Constantine 's stead, but due to John's spells the double remained in Hell unharmed. When John later discovered that he needed to reunite with his double to regain a sense of balance to his self, he found the double had advanced to a demonic state. The newly demonic Constantine refused to reunite with John and the two parted ways.

- Zed was introduced way back in Hellblazer #4 by original series writer Jamie Delano and appeared semi-regularly throughout his run. She hasn't been seen since his final story, “The Magus”, in issue # 40. I briefly capped her history in this issue, but I'll get into it in more detail during the second arc.

Chris Munn - 11/13

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