Hellblazer 1 - War Lord by John Shirley Page B

Constantine said, glancing around.
    “Wow, John Constantine! That’s so fucking cool! This one guy in the third circle of limbo, man, he said you made Lucifer suck his own dick!”
    “Don’t believe everything you hear. And it might be best not to invoke—never mind, who the bloody hell are you?”
    “Me? I’m Spoink Johnson, man! Just call me Spoink! Oh—the body! I understand why you’re looking at me like that!” Spoink put his hands out in front of him like a Motown singer. Stop! “You don’t get the bod, dude!” He put a finger over his lips and sidled up to Constantine, lowering his voice a fraction. “You like it? It was the body of this terrorist dude—he was a big planner for them and there was, like, an explosion of some bomb that he was supposed to deliver to some airport in Paris; it went off, like, early?”
    “Go on,” Constantine said, looking around nervously.
    “Well the dude wasn’t standing right by the bomb, but he was close enough that he was like, all fucked up in the explosion, right? He went into a coma, and some comas, you know, the soul hangs around—but lots of times it just goes, ‘This sucks!’ and it, like, cruises, and the body’s just this soulless husk waiting to die, you feel?”
    “Yeah, I—right. So you possessed this bastard’s body, eh? What happened to your body?”
    “Oh that. I fucked up. You know how they were saying that, like, Ecstasy, the drug I mean, MDMA, it was all, like, healthy and harmless? Well it isn’t, after a few times. After you get really up enough times, it fucks with your brain and then you get really down, and I, you know, got really depressed, and I killed myself with sleeping pills; but then when you’re in limbo they give you back your perspective on shit, and I was, like, all floating and in limbo and I’m going, whoa! And then all these angry people were coming into limbo and crying and shit and I said, Dude, what’s the matter, and they said, it was war in the Middle East, like in Jerusalem and Iraq, and this angel told me, ‘Dude,’ he said—”
    “An angel said ‘dude’?”
    “Well not exactly, but that’s what he meant, he said I could find a body and use it, a body that would, all, pass muster locally, because there’s a big confrontation coming down, and he thought I had some gift that could help chill shit out and I’d be able to help John Constantine and I said, Whoa, I’ve heard of John Constantine, and not just in limbo—I was like into this occult chick in Santa Monica, and she said ‘There’s this guy in England named John Constantine, he used to be in that band Mucous Membrane that almost no one heard of,’ and she said he learned how to do magic, and he—”
    “You’re telling me I’m some kind of urban myth in California, then?”
    “You look real to me, dude.” Spoink scratched his beard. Then he scratched his groin. “So what we going to do?” He became especially interested in his groin, flipping his penis about through the cloth.
    “You’re going to stop touching your pink oboe, first of all, before we get arrested. You see that woman walking alone now, on the beach, in the chador? She’s staring at us because you’re mucking about with your bloody groin. This is Iran, you berk. And number two—you’re going to fuck off and leave me alone.”
    “What? I was sent across the universe, like the Beatles song, to party with you, Johnny C!”
    “Don’t bloody call me Johnny C. There’s been a bureaucratic cock-up, mate. If you’re my liaison, I do believe I’ll just go home to London and let this thing sort itself out. Don’t much believe that stuff about Mercury anyway.”
    “Dude! You’re not going to go all British snob on me, are you?”
    “Yeah, I bloody am and with pleasure. Now fuck off, before you get me arrested—and will you stop touching your crotch?”
    “Why—you wanta touch it? Don’t be so hung up, bro, this is all, the twenty-first century! Damn it’s good to