Hellblazer 2 - Subterranean Read Online Free Page B

to see it—so that Constantine found he was giving himself the finger. He sighed and ordered another gin. His hand trembled as he pushed his empty away and he knocked it over, spilling a little ice on the bar. He looked down to see that one pyramid-shaped piece of ice was moving across the wooden counter, sliding slowly but definitely moving. He supposed it was moving from the vibrations in the bar caused by the rugby players thumping the wood at the other end as they compared exaggerations. He watched gloomily as the piece of ice moved . . . and then more closely as it moved a little faster, up and down, right and left, leaving melt in a trail that spelled out letters in water:
You are summoned t
    He smeared it away with his hand before it could finish.
    “Not me,” he muttered. Could be someone contacting him—could be his stressed-out imagination. He shook his head. Not going to answer that telephone.
    That’s when the rugby players decided to play “We Are the Champions” on the jukebox. And the barman turned it up loud.
    “Fucking Queen,” Constantine muttered. “Sod it. That does it for me.”
    He got up, slapped some money down on the bar, and walked unsteadily out the door.
    It had just stopped raining. The evening streets were slick, making iridescent petrol rainbows; the gutters gushing after the heavy downpour, a rain so recent that people passing still had their umbrellas up, though the only dripping now was from eaves and shop signs. He walked along, thinking he might go back to the card room, play some poker. He’d about run out his string in Garcy’s, however—they knew he was cheating somehow. They didn’t know he was using telepathy, but then they didn’t care how he was doing it.
    No, he couldn’t face all those glum card players, the dealer’s air of exhausted boredom. So he simply walked, without caring where.
    In Constantine’s coat pocket was a letter to Kit, in an envelope that was sealed, addressed, stamped, ready to mail. He’d been carrying it around all day. Kit had turned him away, in Ireland, three days earlier. He’d written the letter on the boat across St. George’s channel, on stationery bought in the ferry gift shop. He took out the envelope and looked at it, remembering what he’d written.
Kit, I know you think I don’t value you, but that’s all wrong . . . You have a love for life that gives me hope. When I’m with you, life means something. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you—only before, I didn’t know that. I know it now. It’s like Lou says at the end of “Coney Island Baby”: I’d give it all up for you. Just say the word and I’ll turn my back on this other life. I’ll get a square job, just so you’ll have me. Can’t remember the last one I had. Haven’t got one yet, but just say the word. The Hidden World, all that, it’s drawn me for a long time—I guess when you grow up a Scouse kid, your da in jail and your mum looking at you like she thinks “He’ll end up there himself,” and you feel you’re at the ragtag end of things, you jump at the chance to get away from this world into another, into the Hidden World. You go from no one to someone at the casting of a spell. It becomes an addiction. But there’s such a thing as recovery from addiction and you’re what I need to bear the world, not magic or drink, and if you’ll give me another chance . . .
    ~
    “What a load of bollocks,” he muttered now. He’d meant it all—but him sounding like a poncey greeting card, it’d ring all false to her. And ringing false or not, she’d turn him down. What woman in her right mind wouldn’t? He had no real career, he just got by a week at a time, sometimes a day at a time. He owned no property, and more important, yeah, he had baggage, tons of baggage. And she was right: in some of that luggage there were demons, literal demons, just waiting for the clasp to be opened.
    It was hopeless. Like everything else. You lived, you died, you