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tampered2006-11-12 07:13 pm
bitingnightmare.livejournal.com) wrote in tampered2006-11-12 07:13 pm
Log; Complete
When; Nov. 12 (after midnight)
Rating; PG-13 (language)
Characters; John Constantine (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
silkcutremix), The Corinthian (bitingnightmare)
Summary; a walk into the dreaming leads the seeker to the captured
Log;
There was supposed to be powder beneath John's feet, being kicked up and flung about as he ran, on both two and four legs, but he occasionally could taste it. It was crack.
What was he running from? He wasn't sure, but there was a sense of urgency forced him, the former King of the Forest, to run, to get away. He paused for a moment, next to a tree, looking back. There were only trees, and up close, those trees were many spinal cords knitted together, pulsing upwards to the intricate piny branches of blood vessels. Bone and blood, and it all was normal to him. The snow, crack, was warm, rather than cold.
The forest was one, but he was separate. He resumed running from the hunter, the stalker, the pursuer, running until his legs, two and four, would no longer go. The gravity was off though, and there was a sense of being suspended with every stride. He was twisting through space, calling it running because it all was truly natural. Even as his breaths came out in puffs, despite the fact that he was warm, was natural. Everything here was natural, and the forest throbbed red and white with him.
---
Weightless and formless shadow stalked the forest on the puffs of warmth, its feet bounding from step to step, but it made a solid landing, still graceful, but drilling deep into the blow nonetheless. The creature was tall, large, its coat the color of cremated ashes, and it moved like the wind that whistled through the branches. Panting. Sniffing. Tracking. Into the forest and between the trees, a pink tongue lolling out to taste the blood. It was pack and one in the some, running at both sides to track its quarry, bringing up the rear and racing to block off his escape all at once. A hunter of hunters.
Careful, there a things even you aren't meant to see.
And they flew to him, to bring down their prey, to show him that this was his territory, the dreamscape, the nightmare.
---
John tumbled as the things seized him, and he snapped with his teeth, swung with his fists, kicked, and cursed in between the snapping.
What was he? A man? A wolf? Maybe a little of both? His mind couldn't seem to decide, he seeing a flicker of trenchcoat here, a flash of a furry white arm there, maybe occasionally an arm with the sleeve and hand, although that was what John wanted to think it all was. If he were to stop and truly study what he had seen, all of it would have been just colored blurs he labeled and associated with himself and his body.
He managed to growl a "Piss off" as he lashed.
---
"Piss off," growled the creature, its coat turning white, its hair turning blonde, a little here and a little there. Who else was John Constantine's worse enemy than himself?
The pack receded, forming the trenchcoated man's shadow. He rubbed the back of his palm at his lip, having sustained a minor injury; this Constantine wasn't much of a fighter after all. The reflection purred, licked at the blood as the tips of its tongues flicked against his blond eyelashes. Blood began to trickle down the side of his human... no... lupine... human? Head as the man took a step back.
"Got yourself into another spot 'ave you, typical."
---
John squinted, on his back in the crack powder, feeling awareness trickle in, then his waking consciousness came as a snap, a pop of realization. There was no reason to forget that voice, the Englishman having trained himself to recognize it as a sort of lucid cue. This time it worked.
He peered down at his dream fingers, trying to shape them, make sense of them, and form them into something definite. Mind couldn't quite get it right still. Aw, sod it.
"Nothing like pryin' into me subconscious, eh, Cori? Tell you what: Ol' Naughty Nigel looked like shit in me getup. Can't say it works for you either."
---
Was the prey talking to him? Mocking him? Daring to stand up to his dreams? Interesting. Dark khaki fabric shrank back into his skin as the flesh sprouted ashen fur once more. The single solid figure bared a mark on the back of his neck, no doubt gained from a fight, but it wasn't particularly visible under his mane. The wolf with teeth for eyes lunged after the Englishman, to pin him down, show him what dreamers are supposed to do in a nightmare: lie down and take it.
---
John was not the one to submit, despite having already forgotten his dream role. Forgotten also was the Corinthian's true function; here, he was powerful, in his element. What was John? Well, he didn't take shit from anyone.
"Jesus!"
The wolf said otherwise, its aspect growing more solid as it saw the lunge and growled in response, pulling back its lips once more, willing to stand its ground and not be dominated.
---
All three of its mouths snarled, fangs bared, though only the main mouth barked. It stopped short of attacking the other by half a yard. Two beasts in a perverted forest, two beasts giving in to the call of a curse that had originated in neither. This was not the correct way of things, especially for the dark mirror. He knew this. The gray wolf snapped its teeth at the white one, then its ears cocked, and he seemed to heel at someone's side, though this master, as white as the snowy landscape, was barely a ghost of an image in this dream.
Speak.
The gray one bowed his head, ears lowered as if being pet, and fingers were running through white-blonde hair again. The Corinthian sat in the snow, on his 'haunches' so to speak though now they were covered in blue denim rather than fur.
"........" Somewhat disoriented was he, but mostly... unamused.
---
This moment had allowed Constantine to get a hold of himself, and he dominated the exterior once again even if in his own vision he could not quite focus himself. The white beast was an aura waiting for the right time once again.
Bloody scary that was: Everything was automatic. Even if his body knew what to do, he did not want to see if his lupine side was shite at fighting as well, or he'd do something he'd regret out of his control. He reached up towards the nightmare's arm, to feel Cori, even if it was a dream and the laws of things were a little erratic.
"I was going to make a remark about how much better you look in fur, mate, but I think it would be better if I told you that yeah, I got meself in another cock-up again."
---
The Corinthian wasn't so sure of himself as John, considering that divine intervention. What was he, some pup waiting to be corrected? It made him bristle, and at the same time it forced him to consider that something was not right with the nightmare, he was ill. John's words barely registered before he felt the man's hand on his arm. The touch made him recoil and stagger back in the snow. This was no longer his territory, this wasn't a nightmare, and at any moment he could be unmade again for the slightest transgression.
".... John," he said the other's name in disbelief. In this dream his teeth eyes weren't a threat to anyone, the Dream Lord deemed it so.
---
John cocked a brow. Maybe it had something to do with those wounds on the back of his neck? "What is it? This isn't the first time you decided to walk into me head."
---
Indeed there were scars on the back of his neck, healed over completely but still very permanent. Cori rubbed the back of his neck instinctively. Definitely not the first time, except... "This time I wasn't trying," admitted the nightmare, "guess it was luck." He smirked, brushing off his discomfort.
---
A smile. "Eye-fangs. Thassa' nice touch." Although, after watching Cori rub at his neck... "I gave you a bad bite that last time." (Which he really would want nothing to do with ever again.) "How's that going over?"
---
"Would you have expected anything else," he replied, regarding the eyefangs. Of course he'd have triple the amount of dog teeth in that form. "It's fine," said the Corinthian, preferring not to discuss that matter and everything else attached to it, "where've you been."
---
A long time ago, John questioned if his disease might be contagious...
In both forms, his eyes were that same deep blue and they studied the nightmare's dreamshape. That couldn't be the disease he had in him, could it?
"Crawling in the shit. S'what I do best."
---
Not John's problem, not even the problem most important at hand. If he had his shades he would have adjusted them out of habit.
"You've been crawling in it for a few days now," noted the Corinthian.
---
"Few days is nothing." Long story behind that. No time, even if dreamtime happened to be slower than the normal perception of time in the waking world. "This time the shit involved is dog shit."
Suddenly, John's expression appeared hurt, distant. The lupine aura pulled back its ears in a sulk.
"Scarab came. Brought someone with her, someone in the funny business she fell into. Didn't know him but he knew which home I was going to piss meself off to was best decided by a fucking shovel to me 'ead."
---
Nothing, he said, ever the devil may care attitude, even if it was not nothing to the nightmare, but leave it be he thought to himself. As for Scarab, he knew that was inevitable, but to hear that she cooperated with this attack on the magus, the man she considered a friend... While Cori didn't have eyes, a window to the soul as they say, those mouths were just as good at expressing his sentiment. They clenched.
"Who was it," not Vincent, anyone but that pussy of a padre for the Red God.
---
John squinted for a moment in thought. Christ, waking up to a headache in another shithole... "Familiar with a Henry?"
---
"Townsend," the Corinthian finished for the other, in a low and ice cold tone. Who else could it be, they were all in league with that shit.
---
A grimace. "You are then." A grumbling mutter typical of the Englishman: "Shit, mate, I want nothing to do with this." His tone went back to normal. "Any idea where they're hauling my cold, dead carcass then?"
---
"Yeah, to the Red God, calls himself...." The nightmare thought better of saying the creature's name out loud. Instead he wrote it in the snow, the blow powder; X-u-l-c-h-i-l-b-a-r-a. After he finished writing the name he rubbed his palm over his teeth eyes. "Fuck, I cut the shit out of one of them," he said to John, angry.
---
"Why? Couldn't help it?" John studied the name, furrowing his brow in thought but unable to recall anything immediate. A feeling told him that he might have, somewhere, at one time.
---
"Fucking rat was staking out the whole time," that and there was the hunger, the need to slake his thirst for blood and violence, a little misguided anger. "You're a god damned bartering chip," said the nightmare as he thrust his fingers into the white-scrawled name and tossed the snow up.
---
John's jaw momentarily slacked. The wolf bristled its hackles. What a time for the tables to be reversed; he was the one that used and manipulated, men and buggering gods!
"Fuck me sideways."
---
"Too late."
His temper was flaring up, evidence of his frustration with the situation, frustration with Scarab. Damn her, damn Morpheus too for not telling them the full story. There were too many mysteries, too many old threads from a time before even the Corinthian, the first one, had been created. He wanted a smoke and a dream cigarette wouldn't do.
"Motherfucker," Cori hissed, "I need to find you."
---
"Wish I knew where I was. All I can tell you that I was kidnapped by a pack of wankers paid to steal some poor kiddiewink's best friend and shove'em in a pit to drown in their shit until someone else finds them a better way to die. Where Scarab and her friend call 'home' is beyond me."
---
"And I'm shit at scrying," he shook his head. Cori had dabbled in a little of that sparingly, both times leading to a firm punishment as well as his one year banishment from the Dreaming. He rubbed the back of his neck again, teeth eyes closed for a subdued moment. "Just keep your skin on, I'll think of something."
---
The fear in John's eyes was noticeable. As a man, being toted off to some dark unknown was merely a worry, the magician sure of his methods. As a wolf, shit, he didn't know. If his captors were smart, they'd muzzle him, and that killed any sort of real self defense he had.
"You better be quick about it."
---
... No protest? No, 'Shit mate I can take care of meself, thanks.' That was a new one, but John Constantine couldn't have lived to his ripe age of 50-something whatever by not knowing how to pick his battles. Fear, the beast inside him could smell it, wanted to lick it off the magician's viscera before tearing into the ropes of pink. It made the nightmare feel defeated. However he wouldn't choose to give up.
"I'm working on it, old man," Cori said.
---
John rubbed his face. Living as a wolf back at the studio wasn't too bad, his major concern being lighting up without torching the place or getting the lighter lost between the couch cushions. Dealing with the supernatural and its skewed odds without his hands or a voice was a different matter entirely. "Well, if it doesn't work, I'll ask'em if they can send me remains back over in a nice little matchbox."
---
"Fuck don't talk like that," said the Corinthian as he averted his toothy gaze.
---
"Never know when you're going to kick the bucket." John wanted to reach for a cigarette, even a dream one, that did not exist.
---
"Yeah well you won't this time because I'm involved," said the Corinthian. Sure John could doubt him, that'd only make proving the Englishman wrong all the sweeter.
---
The Corinthian was a loyal phantom indeed; how could he doubt him? It was only like him to talk like that to josh him, gloomy as the situation seemed. His thing really. "Great stuff. So how's the studio?"
---
Manipulative old bastard.... Cori raised his chin slightly, for a brief moment suspicious that John was pulling his chain. Well not like it'd be the first time, tch. "It's fine," a little empty, tossed The Table.
---
Oh, good. He was catching on. John was grinning in that usual manner of his; everything would be all right, even if he was afraid. Even he got scared. "Must be quiet then. How's everyone on the terminal?"
---
Seeing John grin eased Cori's nerves. Despite that painful ordeal, despite the capture and manipulation, at least one of them had to be the cocksure bastard.
"Pretty quiet. Not much else going on otherwise except--"
The deal Rosiel had proposed to him. Hell even the choir wanted a piece of this mess. The nightmare would have explained the interesting matter of becoming the angel's corpse guard, but something within the dreamscape had changed. The red was eclipsing the white. Someone or something had caught on to his presence, their presence. Cori glanced aside, listening, then he looked to John again.
"Never let them see you sweat, right," he said to the blonde Englishman, bidding farewell.
---
"Would I ever?"
John felt the awareness, the lucidity slip away. He was settling back into his dream role, as the dethroned King, the hunted, the pursued. The wolf aura began to absorb him; at the least, his subconscious seemed to know what he was, what he should be now. Before the Englishman disappeared under that bulky primal face with its large snout and ears, falling back into the acceptance brought on by the dream, he added:
"If you can't think of anything, look, I'll get back home somehow, right? If I can get into a bleedin' nun's knickers, you sure as hell can bet that whatever these wankers will throw at me will be nothing I can't handle." John was but a faint human-shaped halo irregularly surrounding the mostly solidified canine body. "I'm John fucking Constantine after all."
---
The Corinthian crouched, knees low, one hand in the soft powdery white, whiter than his hair. He considered John's words, took them to heart or whatever he had that substituted for one. Home, that was a nice name for it. Of course the magus would keep his skin on. He offered a three-way smile disguised as a cocky grin.
"Yeah, and I'm just a serial killer," said the nightmare before the man broke into a sprint, all four paws in the snow, ashen gray pelt racing across the landscape, beating the red shadow.
Rating; PG-13 (language)
Characters; John Constantine (
silkcutremix), The Corinthian (bitingnightmare)Summary; a walk into the dreaming leads the seeker to the captured
Log;
There was supposed to be powder beneath John's feet, being kicked up and flung about as he ran, on both two and four legs, but he occasionally could taste it. It was crack.
What was he running from? He wasn't sure, but there was a sense of urgency forced him, the former King of the Forest, to run, to get away. He paused for a moment, next to a tree, looking back. There were only trees, and up close, those trees were many spinal cords knitted together, pulsing upwards to the intricate piny branches of blood vessels. Bone and blood, and it all was normal to him. The snow, crack, was warm, rather than cold.
The forest was one, but he was separate. He resumed running from the hunter, the stalker, the pursuer, running until his legs, two and four, would no longer go. The gravity was off though, and there was a sense of being suspended with every stride. He was twisting through space, calling it running because it all was truly natural. Even as his breaths came out in puffs, despite the fact that he was warm, was natural. Everything here was natural, and the forest throbbed red and white with him.
---
Weightless and formless shadow stalked the forest on the puffs of warmth, its feet bounding from step to step, but it made a solid landing, still graceful, but drilling deep into the blow nonetheless. The creature was tall, large, its coat the color of cremated ashes, and it moved like the wind that whistled through the branches. Panting. Sniffing. Tracking. Into the forest and between the trees, a pink tongue lolling out to taste the blood. It was pack and one in the some, running at both sides to track its quarry, bringing up the rear and racing to block off his escape all at once. A hunter of hunters.
Careful, there a things even you aren't meant to see.
And they flew to him, to bring down their prey, to show him that this was his territory, the dreamscape, the nightmare.
---
John tumbled as the things seized him, and he snapped with his teeth, swung with his fists, kicked, and cursed in between the snapping.
What was he? A man? A wolf? Maybe a little of both? His mind couldn't seem to decide, he seeing a flicker of trenchcoat here, a flash of a furry white arm there, maybe occasionally an arm with the sleeve and hand, although that was what John wanted to think it all was. If he were to stop and truly study what he had seen, all of it would have been just colored blurs he labeled and associated with himself and his body.
He managed to growl a "Piss off" as he lashed.
---
"Piss off," growled the creature, its coat turning white, its hair turning blonde, a little here and a little there. Who else was John Constantine's worse enemy than himself?
The pack receded, forming the trenchcoated man's shadow. He rubbed the back of his palm at his lip, having sustained a minor injury; this Constantine wasn't much of a fighter after all. The reflection purred, licked at the blood as the tips of its tongues flicked against his blond eyelashes. Blood began to trickle down the side of his human... no... lupine... human? Head as the man took a step back.
"Got yourself into another spot 'ave you, typical."
---
John squinted, on his back in the crack powder, feeling awareness trickle in, then his waking consciousness came as a snap, a pop of realization. There was no reason to forget that voice, the Englishman having trained himself to recognize it as a sort of lucid cue. This time it worked.
He peered down at his dream fingers, trying to shape them, make sense of them, and form them into something definite. Mind couldn't quite get it right still. Aw, sod it.
"Nothing like pryin' into me subconscious, eh, Cori? Tell you what: Ol' Naughty Nigel looked like shit in me getup. Can't say it works for you either."
---
Was the prey talking to him? Mocking him? Daring to stand up to his dreams? Interesting. Dark khaki fabric shrank back into his skin as the flesh sprouted ashen fur once more. The single solid figure bared a mark on the back of his neck, no doubt gained from a fight, but it wasn't particularly visible under his mane. The wolf with teeth for eyes lunged after the Englishman, to pin him down, show him what dreamers are supposed to do in a nightmare: lie down and take it.
---
John was not the one to submit, despite having already forgotten his dream role. Forgotten also was the Corinthian's true function; here, he was powerful, in his element. What was John? Well, he didn't take shit from anyone.
"Jesus!"
The wolf said otherwise, its aspect growing more solid as it saw the lunge and growled in response, pulling back its lips once more, willing to stand its ground and not be dominated.
---
All three of its mouths snarled, fangs bared, though only the main mouth barked. It stopped short of attacking the other by half a yard. Two beasts in a perverted forest, two beasts giving in to the call of a curse that had originated in neither. This was not the correct way of things, especially for the dark mirror. He knew this. The gray wolf snapped its teeth at the white one, then its ears cocked, and he seemed to heel at someone's side, though this master, as white as the snowy landscape, was barely a ghost of an image in this dream.
Speak.
The gray one bowed his head, ears lowered as if being pet, and fingers were running through white-blonde hair again. The Corinthian sat in the snow, on his 'haunches' so to speak though now they were covered in blue denim rather than fur.
"........" Somewhat disoriented was he, but mostly... unamused.
---
This moment had allowed Constantine to get a hold of himself, and he dominated the exterior once again even if in his own vision he could not quite focus himself. The white beast was an aura waiting for the right time once again.
Bloody scary that was: Everything was automatic. Even if his body knew what to do, he did not want to see if his lupine side was shite at fighting as well, or he'd do something he'd regret out of his control. He reached up towards the nightmare's arm, to feel Cori, even if it was a dream and the laws of things were a little erratic.
"I was going to make a remark about how much better you look in fur, mate, but I think it would be better if I told you that yeah, I got meself in another cock-up again."
---
The Corinthian wasn't so sure of himself as John, considering that divine intervention. What was he, some pup waiting to be corrected? It made him bristle, and at the same time it forced him to consider that something was not right with the nightmare, he was ill. John's words barely registered before he felt the man's hand on his arm. The touch made him recoil and stagger back in the snow. This was no longer his territory, this wasn't a nightmare, and at any moment he could be unmade again for the slightest transgression.
".... John," he said the other's name in disbelief. In this dream his teeth eyes weren't a threat to anyone, the Dream Lord deemed it so.
---
John cocked a brow. Maybe it had something to do with those wounds on the back of his neck? "What is it? This isn't the first time you decided to walk into me head."
---
Indeed there were scars on the back of his neck, healed over completely but still very permanent. Cori rubbed the back of his neck instinctively. Definitely not the first time, except... "This time I wasn't trying," admitted the nightmare, "guess it was luck." He smirked, brushing off his discomfort.
---
A smile. "Eye-fangs. Thassa' nice touch." Although, after watching Cori rub at his neck... "I gave you a bad bite that last time." (Which he really would want nothing to do with ever again.) "How's that going over?"
---
"Would you have expected anything else," he replied, regarding the eyefangs. Of course he'd have triple the amount of dog teeth in that form. "It's fine," said the Corinthian, preferring not to discuss that matter and everything else attached to it, "where've you been."
---
A long time ago, John questioned if his disease might be contagious...
In both forms, his eyes were that same deep blue and they studied the nightmare's dreamshape. That couldn't be the disease he had in him, could it?
"Crawling in the shit. S'what I do best."
---
Not John's problem, not even the problem most important at hand. If he had his shades he would have adjusted them out of habit.
"You've been crawling in it for a few days now," noted the Corinthian.
---
"Few days is nothing." Long story behind that. No time, even if dreamtime happened to be slower than the normal perception of time in the waking world. "This time the shit involved is dog shit."
Suddenly, John's expression appeared hurt, distant. The lupine aura pulled back its ears in a sulk.
"Scarab came. Brought someone with her, someone in the funny business she fell into. Didn't know him but he knew which home I was going to piss meself off to was best decided by a fucking shovel to me 'ead."
---
Nothing, he said, ever the devil may care attitude, even if it was not nothing to the nightmare, but leave it be he thought to himself. As for Scarab, he knew that was inevitable, but to hear that she cooperated with this attack on the magus, the man she considered a friend... While Cori didn't have eyes, a window to the soul as they say, those mouths were just as good at expressing his sentiment. They clenched.
"Who was it," not Vincent, anyone but that pussy of a padre for the Red God.
---
John squinted for a moment in thought. Christ, waking up to a headache in another shithole... "Familiar with a Henry?"
---
"Townsend," the Corinthian finished for the other, in a low and ice cold tone. Who else could it be, they were all in league with that shit.
---
A grimace. "You are then." A grumbling mutter typical of the Englishman: "Shit, mate, I want nothing to do with this." His tone went back to normal. "Any idea where they're hauling my cold, dead carcass then?"
---
"Yeah, to the Red God, calls himself...." The nightmare thought better of saying the creature's name out loud. Instead he wrote it in the snow, the blow powder; X-u-l-c-h-i-l-b-a-r-a. After he finished writing the name he rubbed his palm over his teeth eyes. "Fuck, I cut the shit out of one of them," he said to John, angry.
---
"Why? Couldn't help it?" John studied the name, furrowing his brow in thought but unable to recall anything immediate. A feeling told him that he might have, somewhere, at one time.
---
"Fucking rat was staking out the whole time," that and there was the hunger, the need to slake his thirst for blood and violence, a little misguided anger. "You're a god damned bartering chip," said the nightmare as he thrust his fingers into the white-scrawled name and tossed the snow up.
---
John's jaw momentarily slacked. The wolf bristled its hackles. What a time for the tables to be reversed; he was the one that used and manipulated, men and buggering gods!
"Fuck me sideways."
---
"Too late."
His temper was flaring up, evidence of his frustration with the situation, frustration with Scarab. Damn her, damn Morpheus too for not telling them the full story. There were too many mysteries, too many old threads from a time before even the Corinthian, the first one, had been created. He wanted a smoke and a dream cigarette wouldn't do.
"Motherfucker," Cori hissed, "I need to find you."
---
"Wish I knew where I was. All I can tell you that I was kidnapped by a pack of wankers paid to steal some poor kiddiewink's best friend and shove'em in a pit to drown in their shit until someone else finds them a better way to die. Where Scarab and her friend call 'home' is beyond me."
---
"And I'm shit at scrying," he shook his head. Cori had dabbled in a little of that sparingly, both times leading to a firm punishment as well as his one year banishment from the Dreaming. He rubbed the back of his neck again, teeth eyes closed for a subdued moment. "Just keep your skin on, I'll think of something."
---
The fear in John's eyes was noticeable. As a man, being toted off to some dark unknown was merely a worry, the magician sure of his methods. As a wolf, shit, he didn't know. If his captors were smart, they'd muzzle him, and that killed any sort of real self defense he had.
"You better be quick about it."
---
... No protest? No, 'Shit mate I can take care of meself, thanks.' That was a new one, but John Constantine couldn't have lived to his ripe age of 50-something whatever by not knowing how to pick his battles. Fear, the beast inside him could smell it, wanted to lick it off the magician's viscera before tearing into the ropes of pink. It made the nightmare feel defeated. However he wouldn't choose to give up.
"I'm working on it, old man," Cori said.
---
John rubbed his face. Living as a wolf back at the studio wasn't too bad, his major concern being lighting up without torching the place or getting the lighter lost between the couch cushions. Dealing with the supernatural and its skewed odds without his hands or a voice was a different matter entirely. "Well, if it doesn't work, I'll ask'em if they can send me remains back over in a nice little matchbox."
---
"Fuck don't talk like that," said the Corinthian as he averted his toothy gaze.
---
"Never know when you're going to kick the bucket." John wanted to reach for a cigarette, even a dream one, that did not exist.
---
"Yeah well you won't this time because I'm involved," said the Corinthian. Sure John could doubt him, that'd only make proving the Englishman wrong all the sweeter.
---
The Corinthian was a loyal phantom indeed; how could he doubt him? It was only like him to talk like that to josh him, gloomy as the situation seemed. His thing really. "Great stuff. So how's the studio?"
---
Manipulative old bastard.... Cori raised his chin slightly, for a brief moment suspicious that John was pulling his chain. Well not like it'd be the first time, tch. "It's fine," a little empty, tossed The Table.
---
Oh, good. He was catching on. John was grinning in that usual manner of his; everything would be all right, even if he was afraid. Even he got scared. "Must be quiet then. How's everyone on the terminal?"
---
Seeing John grin eased Cori's nerves. Despite that painful ordeal, despite the capture and manipulation, at least one of them had to be the cocksure bastard.
"Pretty quiet. Not much else going on otherwise except--"
The deal Rosiel had proposed to him. Hell even the choir wanted a piece of this mess. The nightmare would have explained the interesting matter of becoming the angel's corpse guard, but something within the dreamscape had changed. The red was eclipsing the white. Someone or something had caught on to his presence, their presence. Cori glanced aside, listening, then he looked to John again.
"Never let them see you sweat, right," he said to the blonde Englishman, bidding farewell.
---
"Would I ever?"
John felt the awareness, the lucidity slip away. He was settling back into his dream role, as the dethroned King, the hunted, the pursued. The wolf aura began to absorb him; at the least, his subconscious seemed to know what he was, what he should be now. Before the Englishman disappeared under that bulky primal face with its large snout and ears, falling back into the acceptance brought on by the dream, he added:
"If you can't think of anything, look, I'll get back home somehow, right? If I can get into a bleedin' nun's knickers, you sure as hell can bet that whatever these wankers will throw at me will be nothing I can't handle." John was but a faint human-shaped halo irregularly surrounding the mostly solidified canine body. "I'm John fucking Constantine after all."
---
The Corinthian crouched, knees low, one hand in the soft powdery white, whiter than his hair. He considered John's words, took them to heart or whatever he had that substituted for one. Home, that was a nice name for it. Of course the magus would keep his skin on. He offered a three-way smile disguised as a cocky grin.
"Yeah, and I'm just a serial killer," said the nightmare before the man broke into a sprint, all four paws in the snow, ashen gray pelt racing across the landscape, beating the red shadow.