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tampered2006-12-29 11:17 am
igotadisease.livejournal.com) wrote in tampered2006-12-29 11:17 am
Log; Complete
When; Dec. 28-29 (before&after midnight)
Rating; R (language, violence, min. gore)
Characters; John Constantine (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
silkcutremix), Pestilence (igotadisease), the Corinthian (bitingnightmare)
Summary; two old acquaintances gamble at two very different games
Log;
John was at home at the poker table, his other place of power when he wasn't fucking with the demon of the week down below. Nice sight too to see faces he could not recognize, the faces that surrounded him in the shadows twisted and inhuman. The cards they had portrayed mutilations, open chests and gaping wounds, the backs uniformly addressing the moist red and pink beauty of entrails so delicately woven with care and attentive intricacy. A lot of care was put into these cards, as well as a lot of care for what made up the inside of a man.
The suicide queen with her perfect red breasts and beautiful eyes never to be seen again rolled back into her skull. Full house.
The rules of Poker John had yet to forget, namely when the beasts and creatures playing wished to decorate the table in honor of their playing cards with his own innards as they snarled while he claimed the clips. It was winding down and his pile, dwarfing the other players, was very noticeable.
One more game wouldn't hurt.
---
The lady in red, Carmilla was her name, watched this round from a crown of dim yellow light and fishnet veil. How finely she dressed for the occasion, dark bloody sanguine and black to match, teal on her eyes. She was too good for this crowd, far too rich and far too.... succulent. She raised her chin, noting the Englishman's hand, whether he was cheating with the magic or playing the hand of the man across from him. What was that saying? Men forgot their cards when a lady bared her neckline. She did so despite the cold, lowered her black coat to reveal the v-neck dress hugging her pale cleavage.
"Good show, darling," she said to the circle of players, shamelessly announcing her presence to one in particular.
---
This was John Constantine, man of mystery, man in between existences. Who knew if he was manipulating, perhaps even abusing coincidence to his own ends or he just knew? He was a man of instinct; perhaps that was what made him more prone to the creeping bestial ones. He followed them. It kept him alive, and then it kept him alive.
Then that voice. The creatures were unaffected, but a trickle of ice wintered through his veins; he knew it. Blue eyes, chilled, briefly glanced up from the heat, the thrill of gambling. Brought back the other day. A date he owed her, wasn't it?
One last game...
---
"A drink with your winnings," she purred, not even bothering to mention names as she rounded the area to hover behind the Englishman. She wouldn't touch him, not just yet, but she leaned forward to whisper hotly into his ear, "or are you trying to win your balls back, love."
---
Constantine sneered. "Found'em. You want to see them, don't you?"
---
"Oh yes, weighty and virile," she mentioned while making a gesture; slender fingers cupping them in fantasy, "but bare skinned or coated in a pelt, hmm..." Pestilence tapped her lips thoughtfully and smiled, eyes narrowed viciously.
---
John did not fold. Bluff. Hard to bluff creatures that could not emote like a man. John's face should have been as readable as a book, but his practice and experience held. The Halloween mask bestiary did not intimidate him nor did their lack of expressions, other than their malice, had hampered his winning streak. "Don't know, sweetheart. You like'em big and hairy?"
---
"I like them completely eviscerated, body and mind, my love," she replied with the sharpest consonants in her words.
---
"I like them attached." Last critter folded. Last addition to his pile added. He was through. Had to carry the chips in a bloody armful though. Time to cash in, ignoring his current nemesis crawling, slithering nearby.
---
"Oh a stubborn one tonight. Has someone else besides yourself dared to wound your pride," Pestilence asked. She took a step back so the magus could walk away from the table with his winnings but she followed him closely, the smell of rancor and plague on her skin, and still it was a divine scent. She pulled her coat back up to her shoulders and lifted her chin.
---
John was not the one to fall for a plague boat bigger than himself. Fuck, she was a cruiseliner of filth. The cashier behind those ornate but powerful bars, impervious to most supernatural beings desperate, or insane enough, to dare try to attack the shady being behind them took the pile and cashed out the appropriate amount. Good that the guy handing him his "universal" money was indifferent or he or she might have made a cute remark on how the bitch behind him was his significant other.
That remark. Shit, the world was out to stick him between the ribs, wasn't it? He didn't reply, turning away.
---
So long as Constantine wasn't comparing her trim and almost fragile looking figure to a boat. His silence was most amusing to her. She tapped her fingers along her berrywine lips again, the color hardly sticking to the tips.
"I see now, so you do like them silent and easy," she offered a vicious smile, as cutting as Desire itself.
---
"I can be the strong silent type," he growled. Drink with her? What the hell. It was a "date." He needed an alcohol hit. Not that it would hurt him any, with his creeping annoyance and newly filled pockets. To the bar in the shady gambling joint he went, the air stained and heavy with the odorous smoke of many cigarettes, both exotic and mundane. Made the bar lights glow like lanterns in the London fog.
---
"You can be, but that's not what you are is it. Perhaps I mean to say were..."
Yes, the scent of intoxication, addiction, and the carcinogens burned her lungs so beautifully. She inhaled the poison like an aphrodisiac, a date with Constantine indeed. At the bar she placed an order for a martini, specific on the amount of vermouth and twist of fruit.
---
"Stupid bitch," John growled, turning to order but finding the tender had bustled off. Couldn't catch his attention either. Dammit. He was sitting down, waiting for the tender to return again. That left him with the Lady. Snort. "So tell me, what's the name you're masquerading around with this time?"
---
"Carmilla," she tilted her head with delight that he should even ask. Of course he probably knew her real name, one so easily invoked were it not for it being attached to her family as well as her true master, the Lady Death herself. But Constantine was alone, no seven at his back, no.... "You're alone, I can smell it," Pestilence grinned again.
---
"I work best alone," the old Hellblazer grinned in return.
---
"Oh so that's the secret. I must have done you a great service to bring you to this level, darling," she said as her eyes roamed over his form. "So good at your age," she licked her lips but turned to the arriving martini instead.
---
Turned out the tender had something for John as well. "Carmilla" certainly hadn't ordered him something out of the kindness of her rotting, pale heart. He gave a glance at the concoction. "What's this."
"Stupid Bitch, just as you asked."
There was indifference. This bartender wasn't one of those kinder ones that'd listen in on the woes and joys of their patrons, but carried on as if he were old Charon boating dead souls across Styx, to Hades. The conversation ended there, leaving Constantine with two stupid bitches. He took it and gave it a weak little sip. Wasn't that bad, not as bad as what sat near him.
"Curse your name? Find you out? You sure, luv?"
---
"Would you bite the hand that gave you the gun? You wouldn't know the freedom of four legs without me, Constantine," the lady practically chirped, also amused by the irony in the man's drink. "As far as I'm concerned, you owe me," she purred.
---
John squeezed his glass a bit in subtle discomfort. "You should be familiar with Pandora's Box then."
---
"Mm... yes quite. The last thing that fluttered out was hope. Tell me Constantine, is that what I gave you when I infected you? Hope? Liberation? The silver bullet?" She sipped her martini delicately.
---
"Hope in darkness and shit, that sort of thing. Hope I'll get over this buggering fucking mess." Those blue eyes gazed into the shallow depths of his drink. "Same time, some things should never be opened."
---
"I beg to differ, love. You men choose to be stubborn and pick their wars based on power and how it will reflect their own self-worth. Rather than fight they might choose to lay down and die, and least that's the decision they made, not their enemy's decision," she spoke seriously to Constantine, as if the man before her was not John but Charles again. That is... till her smile sharpened once more.
"But men are quite secretive about what they keep close, women know these things. Thank you, Constantine, for letting me open Arlecchino's chest and piss on his heart," she raised her martini to him in a toast.
---
Constantine squeezed. The glass with the wretched drink exploded in his hand, shards of glass marring rough flesh, but he didn't care, blood and alcohol puddling in the crevices of his old palm. Glass shone and twinkled away in slow motion to the foggy depths of the floor in a crystalline tinkle. Drip drip. Past the ribs and twist to the tender heart caged within.
"Practiced at this, aren't you," he coolly sneered.
---
"Oops I think I broke it," she chirped under her breath as the glass shattered. She seemed unfazed by his reaction, of course amused by the alcohol seeping into his wounds. Lady Pestilence was at the top of her game, as far as she was concerned. She did set her martini down though, since the man was clearly not going to toast her, pity.
"It was a stab decades in the making, darling," she smirked.
---
"Choke it down, luv." John got up to walk away. Wasn't sure where but maybe, maybe he would like the cold little bitch to take him home, take him home so that he may show her how he really felt.
---
Oh tut tut. She didn't make any motion to touch him, to prevent him from leaving, but she spoke. "Do you remember what I asked you before, Constantine? If you would be my loyal dog," she reminded him of that night, when he had been handcuffed and captive in her bed.
---
John stopped for a moment. "You forgot: I'm not a dog. I'm a wolf. Difference. You don't keep a fucking wolf in your purse nor do you tell it to go fetch your goddamn slippers." With that, he continued.
---
“You must have thought I meant that literally,” she said with a thoughtful look into the contents of her martini glass, “I meant I’d gladly take a dog to despair such as yourself any day; a slave to despair. You don’t have it in you to prove me wrong, love.”
---
John laughed. He just laughed. That blonde head of his slightly craned if to catch a glimpse of her from the corner of his eye. "What makes you think that I am going to slave meself to the likes of you? What I've done means nothing to you?"
---
"You've already slaved yourself to despair. Why not take the last plunge and put your nose to the floor," she smiled back to him.
---
"I live on the edge. Not falling, me." Constantine, back still towards her, reached into a pocket for a cigarette and that lighter Cori gave him. Blue eyes studied its engraved message:
Sting, a sad loony cunt.
Sad and loony was he, alright. (He would look back on this and laugh; why didn't he see what was hidden before?)
---
Not biting? Hmm, her expression became serious..... seriously unamused. "I'm not impressed, Constantine," she gripped the stem of her martini glass, considered throwing it at the insolent magus.
---
The smoke from the silkie joined the heavy haze in a toxic mingle. "Nah. How much jacking off have you done at my expense at the meantime? Must be a bloody crowd, eh?"
---
"I feel centuries younger, which is more than I can say for you," she turned a sharp smile onto him again, pushed her martini away.
---
"Young and stupid." Constantine exhaled.
---
She slid from her stool to approach him, and this time she laid her hands upon Constantine, across his wide shoulders. Still a good specimen of a man, "and still so deadly."
---
John felt that sickening touch. Did not flinch. His eyes, dark, gazed out at the glow of casino lights, of desperation and deprivation. Ring, ring, ring went the machines. Growls and conversation ran underneath the blanket of noise like a hidden stream, all within this forest of sorts, of luminance and dark, ominous ambience. This place was run by luck and Darwin's law.
"You or me."
---
He was taller than her, even when she was on heels, so she stretched onto her toes to purr into his ear. "Us, creature."
---
John turned around. His own smile was sharp; it was his turn to be amused. "Creature?"
---
"There's a good dog," she returned the smile, didn't back away from him though they were now face to face. Any scent of fear she might have exuded was masked by the smell of sickness, decay, disease of everything from lycanthropy to matters of the heart.
---
The cigarette was secure in John's teeth, the end glowing. Perhaps his eyes did, with the reflective glimmer that many other creatures of the night had. Bigger than her indeed, this woman tiny and frail but her nails so sharp. His teeth were sharper, but there was nothing that could compare to her scent. Then again, with the decay, only a wolf could pick out that smell, that tiny hint of fear.
---
No doubt she detected his awareness, overstayed her welcome maybe? Her eyes narrowed briefly and she took a step back, hands off the magus. "I see, it's only a matter of time Constantine, soon. We immortals can wait forever," Pestilence reminded him with a sly smile then waved, "go home to the gutter or forest, wherever it is you wallow."
---
"No, I thought I'd stay here awhile," Constantine grinned with teeth (and with a tiny semblance of snarl). "We had a date, didn't we?" he brought up his hurt palm and licked at the dried and drying blood that stained it, perhaps licked out a bit of the glass that lingered. "To dinner... at your place, perhaps?"
---
"Don't believe me daft, I see that look in your eye. Shall I don a red hood too? I think not," she replied then boldly reached out to take his hand and assist in plucking the pieces from his wounds, should he have it.
---
"Don't know, luv." The aforementioned cruiseliner of filth was allowed the dubious privilege of cleaning his hand. "But the obvious analogies get me every time."
---
"Yes, subtlety was never your forté," she stated with a cool look, fingers working delicately over his injured hand. She was hardly going to invite him into her home again, not with that look in his eye. As soon as she pulled the last bit out she reached up to pat his cheek, smearing a light amount of blood along his jaw. "Another time, unless you plan to have me on the bar top," the lady smirked.
---
The magus licked his lips. Her mark remained. "I don't think I could resist." With cleansed fingers and palms, they rested on her shoulders, oh-so delicately gliding to her hips. The cut one made a trail, a red polluted cocktail of man, demon and beast. He leaned in, a looming shape in the dim: "Bar top it is."
---
A trail of deliciously tainted blood; Nergal's, the wolf's, creature to the lady. Her dark lips turned upwards in a devious smile. "What of the teeth in my cunt," she whispered into his ear.
---
"What of the teeth in your mouth?" John heavily hissed, urging both back, "Carmilla" facing him, Constantine facing the bar. Back, back, back...
---
"They bite," she purred to him, giving the magus' bottom lip a nip as he edged her back towards the edge of the bar top.
---
"What if I offer them?" Still they edged.
---
"Explain yourself, cryptic creature," she smirked, hands on his collar in their dangerous game. She was smarter than that, but the allure was too much for her to resist their close quarters.
---
"Alright." Carmilla's back should be at the bar top edge now, Constantine darting in to roughly kiss her. Fuck personal space; this bitch wanted to do him in the bog. She should have had no qualms here.
---
"Mmm..." She sounded into his mouth, tasting that dangerous edge, the soul of a man who walked a fine line. All Constantines were like that, no matter the generation. In truth she hardly minded the bog or the bar top. Lady Pestilence stood for cholera, plague, aids, not decency. He need only slip inside her to get a taste of something worse than the lycanthropy.
---
John shut his eyes, his tongue plunging into the depths of black and ill, to the white underbelly, to the blight that brought even the strongest man to his knees, trembling and pale. He had fucked his fair share of things, the walking embodiment of pain and suffering, a succubus, a wolf bitch that he did not dare want to get into details about. Why should Pestilence be any different?
---
No different from a certain succubus lying low in hell. Then again hadn't fucking her given John his edge, literally? She wrapped one leg around his waist, hem of her skirt rising. "Everything I touch dies, in body, in spirit," she said to him, words that made her skin tingle.
---
"Then we have something in common." John's voice was husky and low as he pulled away. The cigarette was a forgotten smolder on the floor.
---
"You see the light then, Constantine, join my company and let yourself be what you should be. Vile creature," she smirked, pressed her hips against him.
---
What light was there in disease's eyes? "Whatever you say," he snarled deeply from his chest, a rolling noise uncharacteristic of any man. His body, his altering body, was pressed to her, hands on her side still, the calluses grazing soft white flesh. His nails were distorting, capping emerging sharp bone. The stubble became a sharp bristle, the casino illuminating the lengthening peach fuzz. "If yourrr like them vilerrrrr."
---
"I like them bent to my every whim," she hissed to the.... shifting magician. What had he said, Pandora's box? They weren't in the friendliest of locations either, where a woman could receive help with a simple cry. Then again, the lady illness didn't need help. Her green eyes narrowed at him, careful, calculating, "yes, rape me if you will. I promise I don't scream too."
---
A risk. Guess he was still an adrenaline junkie after all; there was a thrill in shedding his humanity here, even if the Underground was a place of near anarchy. Many women cried here, but how many at the mercy of the bystander effect truly received help? John kept himself in between now, a longer pink tongue lapping at her berrywine lips. Whiskers tickled and poked at her skin.
---
"Keep losing it, Constantine, two birds with one stone," she purred against his tongue, even giving it a brief nip after her words, "right now."
---
Crunch, pop. Guess not. His shoulders gave in, deformed hands resting on her slimmer, smaller shoulders for support. He stepped out of his shoes, his feet slimmer, his tendons pulling the heels up. His trousers sagged with less waist to cling to. "'Everr 'oo 'aaayrrr."
---
Unfazed, she purred again. "Trade me, your service, your seed, belong to me, John Constantine," she parted her lips to bite again.
---
John pulled away under the guise of his back giving out, his spine clicking and grinding as it made adjustments, to the floor. He tasted, but he was not going to let her bite just yet. Too bad he looked silly with the loose coat draped over his scruffy, furry frame, but looking up at the Lady, she made this. What she saw, down there, was all her work.
Go on. Savor.
---
So soon? Constantine was up to something. Her eyes narrowed when he pulled away in that form, sickly beast, slave, her doing, and her torment. How successful an operation it had been, she couldn't help but smile down at her work despite her suspicion. "Giving in, old boy," asked the lady in red.
---
She was onto him. Knew him after all, but his head sunk, ears airplaned, as he looked up at her, panting. Whine.
---
Subservient beast. Let him lose his balls, she'd grow him a new diseased pair. Pestilence smirked and reached down to snatch him by the fur on his head, to look him straight in the eye. Mine.
---
He flinched there, his muzzle briefly wrinkling, but he stopped himself in time. Keep looking pathetic, keep looking small... He had signed his soul to the devils, he must remember if anything, if he should belong to anyone. Never her.
---
"Come with me," she smirked and tugged at the dog beast, crouched to his level. She had plans for this one, aware of his ruse, though not when he planned to show his intentions again. Turn him into a real monster, turn him into her legion, then break them both.
---
For his first act under the Lady, he obeyed, following, his head still kept low. No one seemed to notice them both, not the animal that had once been the man sweeping the table (although perhaps in hindsight it was better he kept a profile like this; those wankers looked ready to truly kill him), not the woman that had so enigmatically slipped in, a dark figure in a menagerie of shapes.
---
She was kind enough to grab his coat for him too, though not the pants, wonder why she left those, hmm. The lady made her way through the crowd, men, beast, and other alike, more than aware they didn't even notice. Was Constantine still magically inclined in that shape? A dangerous beast to be certain, especially when they were no longer inside the establishment and on the darkened red-lit walkways of the underground.
---
Guess the Lady fancied Constantine a streaker. He was going to be walking in this shape it seemed, made sense to slide out. Sort of. His skull was more streamlined but still it somewhat caught, freed by only his preference for loose clothing. Leaving the rest behind didn't bother him much; everything was in that coat.
His bestial eyes briefly flashed as they gave her a quick glance. John was at home on these red, dark streets, as a man or wolf or in between. Still, to strike here would be predictable. How far could the magus go, to stick his hand in the flame until it burned too much?
---
Not far if he paid attention to where she was leading him, darker, quieter, with an ace up her sleeve as well. In the underground disease dwelled in every crevice, empowering her though the limits of her power had yet to be seen. She was pestilence, she was Lady Pestilence, but she was not The Pestilence. Perhaps the magician knew this, perhaps not.
Blocks away from that casino, where the demons could buy their succubus and feed in the alleys she dropped his trench coat to the floor, dropped her own coat to bare her pale... pale sickly shoulders. She had a game too.
---
Those eyes watched her, watch the articles of clothing fall. Both were in their places of power. Constantine remained "subservient" but alert, the flattened ears twitching.
---
Her skin seemed to crawl, literally, with the disease and filth that boarded the cruiseliner. Things were crawling from the walls, invisible things, viruses from the fluid that trickled down the point of a needle or someone's thighs, things in the air to penetrate their lungs. Then again this was the main who had replaced his first pair.
"Come, Constantine. Let us not kid ourselves, you aren't mine yet, but you will be," she purred, "can you smell it, in your lungs."
---
Constantine panted. Oh yes, he was tasting the air in big cooling gulps. He smelled every particle of it with electric precision. He was given a second chance, an impossible second chance, and his first act was engaging in the activity that had destroyed it, just as he sat there in the shape that threatened to destroy him.
He looked up from the crumpled coats, the panting gaping maw narrowed to a toothy, tonguey "grin."
---
She made a fist with her hand as if the very gesture would be enough to suffocate his lungs and render him severely impaired before she could put the real disease inside him. Fighting dirty after all was her game, just as she had used his lycanthropy to tear a rift in his life, to tear him away from life altogether. After him, she could focus on the other one. Awfully quiet though, the dog. She glared at him menacingly, with cool green eyes that the Corinthian had carved out long ago, one to him and the other to Constantine. Not this time.
---
John's eyes sensed the movement, but nothing. Nothing. His doggy grin widened. What was she trying to do? Have a staring contest with him? Poor bitch should know that he didn't like making eye contact; that was challenge. If he could overpower her as a man...
He crept closer.
---
Not working. Where's a panic button when you need one, not that she was lacking in enough pride to even use such a thing. Staring contest it was, eye to eye, spiteful, vengeful, and most of all a little unamused that her trick wasn't working. He moved, she saw it. Green eyes narrowed. She turned on her heel to run, turned her back on a predator and that was regardless of his shape. Constantine was a predator.
---
There was no growl. Constantine let her flee a little distance, if just to get his instinct going, before taking off after her. The Lady could run, but John was swifter as a beast, faster, saw the thin woman as prey. Sharp, sharp teeth caught her calf, almost 200 pounds of wolf seeking to bring her down.
---
Teeth sank into her flesh; it tasted rancid once the tongue dipped below the surface. She fell to the floor with a growl, angry, not one to go down without a fight, especially not to trash like a Constantine. She tried to roll onto her back to face the heavy animal, transfigured magus. Her creation. "I made you."
---
But you were dumb enough not to read the fucking instruction manual before assembly.
He was too strong for her, swift and not letting her go, large paws pressing into her frail form. His hot breath puffed against the back of her neck, moist. It was Constantine, not the predator instinct that drove him, that snarled in her ear, those sharp whiskers brushing, and teeth not even an inch away.
---
Her flesh slowly began to decay, as if eaten by a cancer itself, an escape if she could keep his teeth off her throat long enough. Death would not be kind to her if they should meet over circumstances such as this. "It matters not what you do to me but rather what you do to yourself. Keep killing yourself, I like to watch," she hissed into his lupine face, hair beginning to disperse in the air.
---
"Nrrroooowl!" Those claw hands popped, creating half formed digits, his body assuming a pseudo-bipedal stance to let him rest on his knees as his arms cumbersomely slapped her about, made her roll over under him and face up. Paw-hands grabbed her face; the clawed thumbs above her eyes The Lady got a faceful of that demented sentient countenance of what she created alright, teeth and all. Those deep blue eyes were now nothing less than piercing.. How was she thwarted the last time?
Take it from Cori.
With his nails, he tore her eyes out.
---
No. Rip her throat out. Tear her jugular in half. Crack open her chest and bite into her heart muscle, but not her eyes. The green gems that had been carved out before, carved out the very first time she met the nightmare and learned how he and Charles knew each other prior to her involvement. History repeating itself. Her back arched, she hissed, and the hiss became a muffled scream, a choked shriek as her failed abomination gouged her face, plucked them from her skull, and hardly the clean job of the Corinthian.
The disease making her escape halted, leaving an eyeless woman with hair and feet eaten away, and blood on her face, the delicate vitreous fluid running down like tears. Foaming tears. She blindly clawed at the wolfman in her rage. Give him infection, infect that disgusting creature, destroy the god damned Frankenstein's monster. But she wasn't very good with her aim, being blind.
---
All the meanwhile, John's muzzle was bared in a wide toothy grin, a hideous grimace; she really did not like that. No, he was not the Corinthian, but making that bitch scream and twist and scratch filled his body with that intoxicating haze of victory. Those nails tried to scratch him, tried to scratch through thick layers of hair. Felt damn good really, stepping back to let her writhe blindly. His white fur was stained red, red with her putrid blood tingling with the world's sickness, and within one of those paws were her precious green eyes. His now.
She took a lot from her. It was only fair. Eye for a fucking eye.
He threw back his head and howled.
---
Worse now, if John Constantine even knew, that the nightmare had given her the courtesy to be dead before he carved her eyes out. This one... he did this to her alive. She screamed at him, cursed his names, tossed out a few other ones related to her acquaintances, least of all daddy's poker partners. Her nails raked at him in her fury, overtaken by this crime. She swore on his soul, on his sister's soul, that he wouldn't be given a chance to burn with her. She swore to make him pay. Words on deaf ears really if that howl meant anything.
---
As soon as the wolfman had taken his leave it was only appropriate the shadows return, having vacated the scene for this was a private matter, a matter of history, blood, and claim. She really shouldn't have fucked with the bloodline, only added more to the powerful cocktail that was Constantine. Well, he would know wouldn't he? The brunette said not a word as he looked down at the woman, hands in the pockets of his gray suit. She clawed her way across the stained pavement like some pathetic animal... He smirked, embers of his cigarette catching on the silver cross that dangled beneath his collar, then he tossed the dying cancer stick and walked away, leaving her with the lonely sounds of fading footsteps.
---
Who knew how late it was when Constantine had arrived back? He was smart enough to not have his watch on; that would have been lost to the thinly boned wrist of the wolf. He was also smart enough to know that his unexplained huffy absence would worry the nightmare.
The door slowly creaked open. (Should have gotten the bloody thing oiled.)
---
Worry? Perhaps Cori was a little beyond that having sprawled out on the couch with an almost empty bottle of tequila on its side, just ready to fall off the coffee table. The shape of the thing had kept the remaining contents from spilling out. There was a shot glass too, and a capped bottle of spiced rum. Too much in one sitting, and rum and tequila mixed was an unpleasant taste.
---
John's lip curled. Might have been better for Cori to be in this state then; there had to have been questions regarding why he was in nothing but a trench coat with a jar under his arm, nestled and neatly tucked away. He shut the door behind him and approached, leaning against the back and looking down.
"Evenin'. Mornin'. Whatever. Forgot the time meself and I don't think you'd be able to help me either."
---
He threw an arm over his face, squishing the sunglasses between his arm and his eyes. What in hell, the fuck... what time was it... As if it mattered, but that was John's voice. Cori knew that much. "Fuckin'..." he huffed, alcohol on his breath, "where've you... fucking been..." he asked, a little too inebriated to pass judgment for now.
---
John didn't need a wolf's nose to smell it either. "Getting me edge back. Being a man. Shit I've been lacking in. Take it you've been getting yourself piss drunk instead."
---
"Just a little," he waved his hand, to gesture a small amount which clearly did not reflect the empty bottle. Rrrr, he dropped his arm and managed to sit up, too fast. His head sank down, down, but not quite to his knees. "Shit, what did you do," asked the nightmare, still trying to get the apartment to hold still.
---
With the space opened on the couch by the nightmare sitting up, John made his way around to sit next to him, the jar with the green pair between them.
"Picked you up a late Christmas present." The magus' image must have wobbled with the rest of the flat, distorting that all too familiar smug grin.
---
The nightmare made a low dry hum as he steadied the rest of the studio and looked to John. He seemed straight, in terms of motion sickness that is. Shit he forgot if he'd even eaten or not, maybe that's how the alcohol floored him and why he felt no need to throw the fuck up. Whoa maybe not, he leaned against the Englishman, the naked Englishman.
"You lost your skivvies," Cori stated his observation and pointed at the man's crotch, "what'd you get me."
---
"S'between us." Funny, John always thought the nightmare had a massive alcohol tolerance. He must have been drinking a shitload or six if he was that smashed. He didn't frown though, not with the prize he had brought back.
---
Massive enough to take on a bottle of the wormy all on his lonesome. But never mind the drink, so long as John didn't ask questions Cori told no tales, the same could be said for the other and his nudity. He focused his teeth eyes on the jar, at first too close for him to make out what it was, then a little too far. ".... Shit," it's what he thought they were, though to whom they belonged he didn't know just yet, "... nice color." A familiar color.
---
"Reminds you a bit of vomit, doesn't it? Or maybe diarrhea?" Still grinning.
---
The very words made him want to wretch, however he had nothing in his stomach, empty but soaked in a little crutch that helped to make him numb again. A little too numb. He touched John's arm, just to see if there was feeling in his fingertips, the other was warm, hot blooded even. He nestled his face in the crook of the other's neck. "Thanks," he sighed quietly against his skin.
---
Her taint had lingered in Constantine's skin, whether he was aware of it or not. Didn't matter, he had been looking forward to the nightmare's company all night, a hand, blood caked under the nails, cradling the white-blonde head of hair. Poor bugger's skin felt so dead, so dull. He might as well have been trying to comfort a corpse.
---
"Don't leave," he requested quietly, half coherent or perhaps restrained, too tired to do more. There was a scent on Constantine, both sickening and intoxicating at the same time. "Get pissed... in the morning," Cori offered a promise, though he didn't specify if he should be getting mad at John or if John should be mad at him, "don't leave."
---
John still glanced down at Cori. His expression changed. It wasn't hardening in anger but softened to that of a rare concerned warmth, a side of him seldom seen. "You pathetic bugger. Course I'm staying. You need it."
---
"Unh--" thank god nothing came up with that huff, though the smell on his breath probably nullified the intricate morning brushing he performed on his mouths daily. "Thanks," he muttered against John, arms circling loosely around his bare waist. Huh if the Englishman had planned to hit the bed well, he'd have to think of an interesting way to take Cori with him.
---
Nah, John decided as his nose wrinkled, the smell horrid even by his standards. Not now. The Corinthian seemed comfortable enough there for now, and John had no qualms with letting him rest there for the time being. He was tired himself, now that he thought about it, the fatigue creeping in more and more the longer he sat. He would let any creative methods of bedding the both of them down for the night stew; he, resting his eyes, might as well sit there until dawn.
Rating; R (language, violence, min. gore)
Characters; John Constantine (
silkcutremix), Pestilence (igotadisease), the Corinthian (bitingnightmare)Summary; two old acquaintances gamble at two very different games
Log;
John was at home at the poker table, his other place of power when he wasn't fucking with the demon of the week down below. Nice sight too to see faces he could not recognize, the faces that surrounded him in the shadows twisted and inhuman. The cards they had portrayed mutilations, open chests and gaping wounds, the backs uniformly addressing the moist red and pink beauty of entrails so delicately woven with care and attentive intricacy. A lot of care was put into these cards, as well as a lot of care for what made up the inside of a man.
The suicide queen with her perfect red breasts and beautiful eyes never to be seen again rolled back into her skull. Full house.
The rules of Poker John had yet to forget, namely when the beasts and creatures playing wished to decorate the table in honor of their playing cards with his own innards as they snarled while he claimed the clips. It was winding down and his pile, dwarfing the other players, was very noticeable.
One more game wouldn't hurt.
---
The lady in red, Carmilla was her name, watched this round from a crown of dim yellow light and fishnet veil. How finely she dressed for the occasion, dark bloody sanguine and black to match, teal on her eyes. She was too good for this crowd, far too rich and far too.... succulent. She raised her chin, noting the Englishman's hand, whether he was cheating with the magic or playing the hand of the man across from him. What was that saying? Men forgot their cards when a lady bared her neckline. She did so despite the cold, lowered her black coat to reveal the v-neck dress hugging her pale cleavage.
"Good show, darling," she said to the circle of players, shamelessly announcing her presence to one in particular.
---
This was John Constantine, man of mystery, man in between existences. Who knew if he was manipulating, perhaps even abusing coincidence to his own ends or he just knew? He was a man of instinct; perhaps that was what made him more prone to the creeping bestial ones. He followed them. It kept him alive, and then it kept him alive.
Then that voice. The creatures were unaffected, but a trickle of ice wintered through his veins; he knew it. Blue eyes, chilled, briefly glanced up from the heat, the thrill of gambling. Brought back the other day. A date he owed her, wasn't it?
One last game...
---
"A drink with your winnings," she purred, not even bothering to mention names as she rounded the area to hover behind the Englishman. She wouldn't touch him, not just yet, but she leaned forward to whisper hotly into his ear, "or are you trying to win your balls back, love."
---
Constantine sneered. "Found'em. You want to see them, don't you?"
---
"Oh yes, weighty and virile," she mentioned while making a gesture; slender fingers cupping them in fantasy, "but bare skinned or coated in a pelt, hmm..." Pestilence tapped her lips thoughtfully and smiled, eyes narrowed viciously.
---
John did not fold. Bluff. Hard to bluff creatures that could not emote like a man. John's face should have been as readable as a book, but his practice and experience held. The Halloween mask bestiary did not intimidate him nor did their lack of expressions, other than their malice, had hampered his winning streak. "Don't know, sweetheart. You like'em big and hairy?"
---
"I like them completely eviscerated, body and mind, my love," she replied with the sharpest consonants in her words.
---
"I like them attached." Last critter folded. Last addition to his pile added. He was through. Had to carry the chips in a bloody armful though. Time to cash in, ignoring his current nemesis crawling, slithering nearby.
---
"Oh a stubborn one tonight. Has someone else besides yourself dared to wound your pride," Pestilence asked. She took a step back so the magus could walk away from the table with his winnings but she followed him closely, the smell of rancor and plague on her skin, and still it was a divine scent. She pulled her coat back up to her shoulders and lifted her chin.
---
John was not the one to fall for a plague boat bigger than himself. Fuck, she was a cruiseliner of filth. The cashier behind those ornate but powerful bars, impervious to most supernatural beings desperate, or insane enough, to dare try to attack the shady being behind them took the pile and cashed out the appropriate amount. Good that the guy handing him his "universal" money was indifferent or he or she might have made a cute remark on how the bitch behind him was his significant other.
That remark. Shit, the world was out to stick him between the ribs, wasn't it? He didn't reply, turning away.
---
So long as Constantine wasn't comparing her trim and almost fragile looking figure to a boat. His silence was most amusing to her. She tapped her fingers along her berrywine lips again, the color hardly sticking to the tips.
"I see now, so you do like them silent and easy," she offered a vicious smile, as cutting as Desire itself.
---
"I can be the strong silent type," he growled. Drink with her? What the hell. It was a "date." He needed an alcohol hit. Not that it would hurt him any, with his creeping annoyance and newly filled pockets. To the bar in the shady gambling joint he went, the air stained and heavy with the odorous smoke of many cigarettes, both exotic and mundane. Made the bar lights glow like lanterns in the London fog.
---
"You can be, but that's not what you are is it. Perhaps I mean to say were..."
Yes, the scent of intoxication, addiction, and the carcinogens burned her lungs so beautifully. She inhaled the poison like an aphrodisiac, a date with Constantine indeed. At the bar she placed an order for a martini, specific on the amount of vermouth and twist of fruit.
---
"Stupid bitch," John growled, turning to order but finding the tender had bustled off. Couldn't catch his attention either. Dammit. He was sitting down, waiting for the tender to return again. That left him with the Lady. Snort. "So tell me, what's the name you're masquerading around with this time?"
---
"Carmilla," she tilted her head with delight that he should even ask. Of course he probably knew her real name, one so easily invoked were it not for it being attached to her family as well as her true master, the Lady Death herself. But Constantine was alone, no seven at his back, no.... "You're alone, I can smell it," Pestilence grinned again.
---
"I work best alone," the old Hellblazer grinned in return.
---
"Oh so that's the secret. I must have done you a great service to bring you to this level, darling," she said as her eyes roamed over his form. "So good at your age," she licked her lips but turned to the arriving martini instead.
---
Turned out the tender had something for John as well. "Carmilla" certainly hadn't ordered him something out of the kindness of her rotting, pale heart. He gave a glance at the concoction. "What's this."
"Stupid Bitch, just as you asked."
There was indifference. This bartender wasn't one of those kinder ones that'd listen in on the woes and joys of their patrons, but carried on as if he were old Charon boating dead souls across Styx, to Hades. The conversation ended there, leaving Constantine with two stupid bitches. He took it and gave it a weak little sip. Wasn't that bad, not as bad as what sat near him.
"Curse your name? Find you out? You sure, luv?"
---
"Would you bite the hand that gave you the gun? You wouldn't know the freedom of four legs without me, Constantine," the lady practically chirped, also amused by the irony in the man's drink. "As far as I'm concerned, you owe me," she purred.
---
John squeezed his glass a bit in subtle discomfort. "You should be familiar with Pandora's Box then."
---
"Mm... yes quite. The last thing that fluttered out was hope. Tell me Constantine, is that what I gave you when I infected you? Hope? Liberation? The silver bullet?" She sipped her martini delicately.
---
"Hope in darkness and shit, that sort of thing. Hope I'll get over this buggering fucking mess." Those blue eyes gazed into the shallow depths of his drink. "Same time, some things should never be opened."
---
"I beg to differ, love. You men choose to be stubborn and pick their wars based on power and how it will reflect their own self-worth. Rather than fight they might choose to lay down and die, and least that's the decision they made, not their enemy's decision," she spoke seriously to Constantine, as if the man before her was not John but Charles again. That is... till her smile sharpened once more.
"But men are quite secretive about what they keep close, women know these things. Thank you, Constantine, for letting me open Arlecchino's chest and piss on his heart," she raised her martini to him in a toast.
---
Constantine squeezed. The glass with the wretched drink exploded in his hand, shards of glass marring rough flesh, but he didn't care, blood and alcohol puddling in the crevices of his old palm. Glass shone and twinkled away in slow motion to the foggy depths of the floor in a crystalline tinkle. Drip drip. Past the ribs and twist to the tender heart caged within.
"Practiced at this, aren't you," he coolly sneered.
---
"Oops I think I broke it," she chirped under her breath as the glass shattered. She seemed unfazed by his reaction, of course amused by the alcohol seeping into his wounds. Lady Pestilence was at the top of her game, as far as she was concerned. She did set her martini down though, since the man was clearly not going to toast her, pity.
"It was a stab decades in the making, darling," she smirked.
---
"Choke it down, luv." John got up to walk away. Wasn't sure where but maybe, maybe he would like the cold little bitch to take him home, take him home so that he may show her how he really felt.
---
Oh tut tut. She didn't make any motion to touch him, to prevent him from leaving, but she spoke. "Do you remember what I asked you before, Constantine? If you would be my loyal dog," she reminded him of that night, when he had been handcuffed and captive in her bed.
---
John stopped for a moment. "You forgot: I'm not a dog. I'm a wolf. Difference. You don't keep a fucking wolf in your purse nor do you tell it to go fetch your goddamn slippers." With that, he continued.
---
“You must have thought I meant that literally,” she said with a thoughtful look into the contents of her martini glass, “I meant I’d gladly take a dog to despair such as yourself any day; a slave to despair. You don’t have it in you to prove me wrong, love.”
---
John laughed. He just laughed. That blonde head of his slightly craned if to catch a glimpse of her from the corner of his eye. "What makes you think that I am going to slave meself to the likes of you? What I've done means nothing to you?"
---
"You've already slaved yourself to despair. Why not take the last plunge and put your nose to the floor," she smiled back to him.
---
"I live on the edge. Not falling, me." Constantine, back still towards her, reached into a pocket for a cigarette and that lighter Cori gave him. Blue eyes studied its engraved message:
Sting, a sad loony cunt.
Sad and loony was he, alright. (He would look back on this and laugh; why didn't he see what was hidden before?)
---
Not biting? Hmm, her expression became serious..... seriously unamused. "I'm not impressed, Constantine," she gripped the stem of her martini glass, considered throwing it at the insolent magus.
---
The smoke from the silkie joined the heavy haze in a toxic mingle. "Nah. How much jacking off have you done at my expense at the meantime? Must be a bloody crowd, eh?"
---
"I feel centuries younger, which is more than I can say for you," she turned a sharp smile onto him again, pushed her martini away.
---
"Young and stupid." Constantine exhaled.
---
She slid from her stool to approach him, and this time she laid her hands upon Constantine, across his wide shoulders. Still a good specimen of a man, "and still so deadly."
---
John felt that sickening touch. Did not flinch. His eyes, dark, gazed out at the glow of casino lights, of desperation and deprivation. Ring, ring, ring went the machines. Growls and conversation ran underneath the blanket of noise like a hidden stream, all within this forest of sorts, of luminance and dark, ominous ambience. This place was run by luck and Darwin's law.
"You or me."
---
He was taller than her, even when she was on heels, so she stretched onto her toes to purr into his ear. "Us, creature."
---
John turned around. His own smile was sharp; it was his turn to be amused. "Creature?"
---
"There's a good dog," she returned the smile, didn't back away from him though they were now face to face. Any scent of fear she might have exuded was masked by the smell of sickness, decay, disease of everything from lycanthropy to matters of the heart.
---
The cigarette was secure in John's teeth, the end glowing. Perhaps his eyes did, with the reflective glimmer that many other creatures of the night had. Bigger than her indeed, this woman tiny and frail but her nails so sharp. His teeth were sharper, but there was nothing that could compare to her scent. Then again, with the decay, only a wolf could pick out that smell, that tiny hint of fear.
---
No doubt she detected his awareness, overstayed her welcome maybe? Her eyes narrowed briefly and she took a step back, hands off the magus. "I see, it's only a matter of time Constantine, soon. We immortals can wait forever," Pestilence reminded him with a sly smile then waved, "go home to the gutter or forest, wherever it is you wallow."
---
"No, I thought I'd stay here awhile," Constantine grinned with teeth (and with a tiny semblance of snarl). "We had a date, didn't we?" he brought up his hurt palm and licked at the dried and drying blood that stained it, perhaps licked out a bit of the glass that lingered. "To dinner... at your place, perhaps?"
---
"Don't believe me daft, I see that look in your eye. Shall I don a red hood too? I think not," she replied then boldly reached out to take his hand and assist in plucking the pieces from his wounds, should he have it.
---
"Don't know, luv." The aforementioned cruiseliner of filth was allowed the dubious privilege of cleaning his hand. "But the obvious analogies get me every time."
---
"Yes, subtlety was never your forté," she stated with a cool look, fingers working delicately over his injured hand. She was hardly going to invite him into her home again, not with that look in his eye. As soon as she pulled the last bit out she reached up to pat his cheek, smearing a light amount of blood along his jaw. "Another time, unless you plan to have me on the bar top," the lady smirked.
---
The magus licked his lips. Her mark remained. "I don't think I could resist." With cleansed fingers and palms, they rested on her shoulders, oh-so delicately gliding to her hips. The cut one made a trail, a red polluted cocktail of man, demon and beast. He leaned in, a looming shape in the dim: "Bar top it is."
---
A trail of deliciously tainted blood; Nergal's, the wolf's, creature to the lady. Her dark lips turned upwards in a devious smile. "What of the teeth in my cunt," she whispered into his ear.
---
"What of the teeth in your mouth?" John heavily hissed, urging both back, "Carmilla" facing him, Constantine facing the bar. Back, back, back...
---
"They bite," she purred to him, giving the magus' bottom lip a nip as he edged her back towards the edge of the bar top.
---
"What if I offer them?" Still they edged.
---
"Explain yourself, cryptic creature," she smirked, hands on his collar in their dangerous game. She was smarter than that, but the allure was too much for her to resist their close quarters.
---
"Alright." Carmilla's back should be at the bar top edge now, Constantine darting in to roughly kiss her. Fuck personal space; this bitch wanted to do him in the bog. She should have had no qualms here.
---
"Mmm..." She sounded into his mouth, tasting that dangerous edge, the soul of a man who walked a fine line. All Constantines were like that, no matter the generation. In truth she hardly minded the bog or the bar top. Lady Pestilence stood for cholera, plague, aids, not decency. He need only slip inside her to get a taste of something worse than the lycanthropy.
---
John shut his eyes, his tongue plunging into the depths of black and ill, to the white underbelly, to the blight that brought even the strongest man to his knees, trembling and pale. He had fucked his fair share of things, the walking embodiment of pain and suffering, a succubus, a wolf bitch that he did not dare want to get into details about. Why should Pestilence be any different?
---
No different from a certain succubus lying low in hell. Then again hadn't fucking her given John his edge, literally? She wrapped one leg around his waist, hem of her skirt rising. "Everything I touch dies, in body, in spirit," she said to him, words that made her skin tingle.
---
"Then we have something in common." John's voice was husky and low as he pulled away. The cigarette was a forgotten smolder on the floor.
---
"You see the light then, Constantine, join my company and let yourself be what you should be. Vile creature," she smirked, pressed her hips against him.
---
What light was there in disease's eyes? "Whatever you say," he snarled deeply from his chest, a rolling noise uncharacteristic of any man. His body, his altering body, was pressed to her, hands on her side still, the calluses grazing soft white flesh. His nails were distorting, capping emerging sharp bone. The stubble became a sharp bristle, the casino illuminating the lengthening peach fuzz. "If yourrr like them vilerrrrr."
---
"I like them bent to my every whim," she hissed to the.... shifting magician. What had he said, Pandora's box? They weren't in the friendliest of locations either, where a woman could receive help with a simple cry. Then again, the lady illness didn't need help. Her green eyes narrowed at him, careful, calculating, "yes, rape me if you will. I promise I don't scream too."
---
A risk. Guess he was still an adrenaline junkie after all; there was a thrill in shedding his humanity here, even if the Underground was a place of near anarchy. Many women cried here, but how many at the mercy of the bystander effect truly received help? John kept himself in between now, a longer pink tongue lapping at her berrywine lips. Whiskers tickled and poked at her skin.
---
"Keep losing it, Constantine, two birds with one stone," she purred against his tongue, even giving it a brief nip after her words, "right now."
---
Crunch, pop. Guess not. His shoulders gave in, deformed hands resting on her slimmer, smaller shoulders for support. He stepped out of his shoes, his feet slimmer, his tendons pulling the heels up. His trousers sagged with less waist to cling to. "'Everr 'oo 'aaayrrr."
---
Unfazed, she purred again. "Trade me, your service, your seed, belong to me, John Constantine," she parted her lips to bite again.
---
John pulled away under the guise of his back giving out, his spine clicking and grinding as it made adjustments, to the floor. He tasted, but he was not going to let her bite just yet. Too bad he looked silly with the loose coat draped over his scruffy, furry frame, but looking up at the Lady, she made this. What she saw, down there, was all her work.
Go on. Savor.
---
So soon? Constantine was up to something. Her eyes narrowed when he pulled away in that form, sickly beast, slave, her doing, and her torment. How successful an operation it had been, she couldn't help but smile down at her work despite her suspicion. "Giving in, old boy," asked the lady in red.
---
She was onto him. Knew him after all, but his head sunk, ears airplaned, as he looked up at her, panting. Whine.
---
Subservient beast. Let him lose his balls, she'd grow him a new diseased pair. Pestilence smirked and reached down to snatch him by the fur on his head, to look him straight in the eye. Mine.
---
He flinched there, his muzzle briefly wrinkling, but he stopped himself in time. Keep looking pathetic, keep looking small... He had signed his soul to the devils, he must remember if anything, if he should belong to anyone. Never her.
---
"Come with me," she smirked and tugged at the dog beast, crouched to his level. She had plans for this one, aware of his ruse, though not when he planned to show his intentions again. Turn him into a real monster, turn him into her legion, then break them both.
---
For his first act under the Lady, he obeyed, following, his head still kept low. No one seemed to notice them both, not the animal that had once been the man sweeping the table (although perhaps in hindsight it was better he kept a profile like this; those wankers looked ready to truly kill him), not the woman that had so enigmatically slipped in, a dark figure in a menagerie of shapes.
---
She was kind enough to grab his coat for him too, though not the pants, wonder why she left those, hmm. The lady made her way through the crowd, men, beast, and other alike, more than aware they didn't even notice. Was Constantine still magically inclined in that shape? A dangerous beast to be certain, especially when they were no longer inside the establishment and on the darkened red-lit walkways of the underground.
---
Guess the Lady fancied Constantine a streaker. He was going to be walking in this shape it seemed, made sense to slide out. Sort of. His skull was more streamlined but still it somewhat caught, freed by only his preference for loose clothing. Leaving the rest behind didn't bother him much; everything was in that coat.
His bestial eyes briefly flashed as they gave her a quick glance. John was at home on these red, dark streets, as a man or wolf or in between. Still, to strike here would be predictable. How far could the magus go, to stick his hand in the flame until it burned too much?
---
Not far if he paid attention to where she was leading him, darker, quieter, with an ace up her sleeve as well. In the underground disease dwelled in every crevice, empowering her though the limits of her power had yet to be seen. She was pestilence, she was Lady Pestilence, but she was not The Pestilence. Perhaps the magician knew this, perhaps not.
Blocks away from that casino, where the demons could buy their succubus and feed in the alleys she dropped his trench coat to the floor, dropped her own coat to bare her pale... pale sickly shoulders. She had a game too.
---
Those eyes watched her, watch the articles of clothing fall. Both were in their places of power. Constantine remained "subservient" but alert, the flattened ears twitching.
---
Her skin seemed to crawl, literally, with the disease and filth that boarded the cruiseliner. Things were crawling from the walls, invisible things, viruses from the fluid that trickled down the point of a needle or someone's thighs, things in the air to penetrate their lungs. Then again this was the main who had replaced his first pair.
"Come, Constantine. Let us not kid ourselves, you aren't mine yet, but you will be," she purred, "can you smell it, in your lungs."
---
Constantine panted. Oh yes, he was tasting the air in big cooling gulps. He smelled every particle of it with electric precision. He was given a second chance, an impossible second chance, and his first act was engaging in the activity that had destroyed it, just as he sat there in the shape that threatened to destroy him.
He looked up from the crumpled coats, the panting gaping maw narrowed to a toothy, tonguey "grin."
---
She made a fist with her hand as if the very gesture would be enough to suffocate his lungs and render him severely impaired before she could put the real disease inside him. Fighting dirty after all was her game, just as she had used his lycanthropy to tear a rift in his life, to tear him away from life altogether. After him, she could focus on the other one. Awfully quiet though, the dog. She glared at him menacingly, with cool green eyes that the Corinthian had carved out long ago, one to him and the other to Constantine. Not this time.
---
John's eyes sensed the movement, but nothing. Nothing. His doggy grin widened. What was she trying to do? Have a staring contest with him? Poor bitch should know that he didn't like making eye contact; that was challenge. If he could overpower her as a man...
He crept closer.
---
Not working. Where's a panic button when you need one, not that she was lacking in enough pride to even use such a thing. Staring contest it was, eye to eye, spiteful, vengeful, and most of all a little unamused that her trick wasn't working. He moved, she saw it. Green eyes narrowed. She turned on her heel to run, turned her back on a predator and that was regardless of his shape. Constantine was a predator.
---
There was no growl. Constantine let her flee a little distance, if just to get his instinct going, before taking off after her. The Lady could run, but John was swifter as a beast, faster, saw the thin woman as prey. Sharp, sharp teeth caught her calf, almost 200 pounds of wolf seeking to bring her down.
---
Teeth sank into her flesh; it tasted rancid once the tongue dipped below the surface. She fell to the floor with a growl, angry, not one to go down without a fight, especially not to trash like a Constantine. She tried to roll onto her back to face the heavy animal, transfigured magus. Her creation. "I made you."
---
But you were dumb enough not to read the fucking instruction manual before assembly.
He was too strong for her, swift and not letting her go, large paws pressing into her frail form. His hot breath puffed against the back of her neck, moist. It was Constantine, not the predator instinct that drove him, that snarled in her ear, those sharp whiskers brushing, and teeth not even an inch away.
---
Her flesh slowly began to decay, as if eaten by a cancer itself, an escape if she could keep his teeth off her throat long enough. Death would not be kind to her if they should meet over circumstances such as this. "It matters not what you do to me but rather what you do to yourself. Keep killing yourself, I like to watch," she hissed into his lupine face, hair beginning to disperse in the air.
---
"Nrrroooowl!" Those claw hands popped, creating half formed digits, his body assuming a pseudo-bipedal stance to let him rest on his knees as his arms cumbersomely slapped her about, made her roll over under him and face up. Paw-hands grabbed her face; the clawed thumbs above her eyes The Lady got a faceful of that demented sentient countenance of what she created alright, teeth and all. Those deep blue eyes were now nothing less than piercing.. How was she thwarted the last time?
Take it from Cori.
With his nails, he tore her eyes out.
---
No. Rip her throat out. Tear her jugular in half. Crack open her chest and bite into her heart muscle, but not her eyes. The green gems that had been carved out before, carved out the very first time she met the nightmare and learned how he and Charles knew each other prior to her involvement. History repeating itself. Her back arched, she hissed, and the hiss became a muffled scream, a choked shriek as her failed abomination gouged her face, plucked them from her skull, and hardly the clean job of the Corinthian.
The disease making her escape halted, leaving an eyeless woman with hair and feet eaten away, and blood on her face, the delicate vitreous fluid running down like tears. Foaming tears. She blindly clawed at the wolfman in her rage. Give him infection, infect that disgusting creature, destroy the god damned Frankenstein's monster. But she wasn't very good with her aim, being blind.
---
All the meanwhile, John's muzzle was bared in a wide toothy grin, a hideous grimace; she really did not like that. No, he was not the Corinthian, but making that bitch scream and twist and scratch filled his body with that intoxicating haze of victory. Those nails tried to scratch him, tried to scratch through thick layers of hair. Felt damn good really, stepping back to let her writhe blindly. His white fur was stained red, red with her putrid blood tingling with the world's sickness, and within one of those paws were her precious green eyes. His now.
She took a lot from her. It was only fair. Eye for a fucking eye.
He threw back his head and howled.
---
Worse now, if John Constantine even knew, that the nightmare had given her the courtesy to be dead before he carved her eyes out. This one... he did this to her alive. She screamed at him, cursed his names, tossed out a few other ones related to her acquaintances, least of all daddy's poker partners. Her nails raked at him in her fury, overtaken by this crime. She swore on his soul, on his sister's soul, that he wouldn't be given a chance to burn with her. She swore to make him pay. Words on deaf ears really if that howl meant anything.
---
As soon as the wolfman had taken his leave it was only appropriate the shadows return, having vacated the scene for this was a private matter, a matter of history, blood, and claim. She really shouldn't have fucked with the bloodline, only added more to the powerful cocktail that was Constantine. Well, he would know wouldn't he? The brunette said not a word as he looked down at the woman, hands in the pockets of his gray suit. She clawed her way across the stained pavement like some pathetic animal... He smirked, embers of his cigarette catching on the silver cross that dangled beneath his collar, then he tossed the dying cancer stick and walked away, leaving her with the lonely sounds of fading footsteps.
---
Who knew how late it was when Constantine had arrived back? He was smart enough to not have his watch on; that would have been lost to the thinly boned wrist of the wolf. He was also smart enough to know that his unexplained huffy absence would worry the nightmare.
The door slowly creaked open. (Should have gotten the bloody thing oiled.)
---
Worry? Perhaps Cori was a little beyond that having sprawled out on the couch with an almost empty bottle of tequila on its side, just ready to fall off the coffee table. The shape of the thing had kept the remaining contents from spilling out. There was a shot glass too, and a capped bottle of spiced rum. Too much in one sitting, and rum and tequila mixed was an unpleasant taste.
---
John's lip curled. Might have been better for Cori to be in this state then; there had to have been questions regarding why he was in nothing but a trench coat with a jar under his arm, nestled and neatly tucked away. He shut the door behind him and approached, leaning against the back and looking down.
"Evenin'. Mornin'. Whatever. Forgot the time meself and I don't think you'd be able to help me either."
---
He threw an arm over his face, squishing the sunglasses between his arm and his eyes. What in hell, the fuck... what time was it... As if it mattered, but that was John's voice. Cori knew that much. "Fuckin'..." he huffed, alcohol on his breath, "where've you... fucking been..." he asked, a little too inebriated to pass judgment for now.
---
John didn't need a wolf's nose to smell it either. "Getting me edge back. Being a man. Shit I've been lacking in. Take it you've been getting yourself piss drunk instead."
---
"Just a little," he waved his hand, to gesture a small amount which clearly did not reflect the empty bottle. Rrrr, he dropped his arm and managed to sit up, too fast. His head sank down, down, but not quite to his knees. "Shit, what did you do," asked the nightmare, still trying to get the apartment to hold still.
---
With the space opened on the couch by the nightmare sitting up, John made his way around to sit next to him, the jar with the green pair between them.
"Picked you up a late Christmas present." The magus' image must have wobbled with the rest of the flat, distorting that all too familiar smug grin.
---
The nightmare made a low dry hum as he steadied the rest of the studio and looked to John. He seemed straight, in terms of motion sickness that is. Shit he forgot if he'd even eaten or not, maybe that's how the alcohol floored him and why he felt no need to throw the fuck up. Whoa maybe not, he leaned against the Englishman, the naked Englishman.
"You lost your skivvies," Cori stated his observation and pointed at the man's crotch, "what'd you get me."
---
"S'between us." Funny, John always thought the nightmare had a massive alcohol tolerance. He must have been drinking a shitload or six if he was that smashed. He didn't frown though, not with the prize he had brought back.
---
Massive enough to take on a bottle of the wormy all on his lonesome. But never mind the drink, so long as John didn't ask questions Cori told no tales, the same could be said for the other and his nudity. He focused his teeth eyes on the jar, at first too close for him to make out what it was, then a little too far. ".... Shit," it's what he thought they were, though to whom they belonged he didn't know just yet, "... nice color." A familiar color.
---
"Reminds you a bit of vomit, doesn't it? Or maybe diarrhea?" Still grinning.
---
The very words made him want to wretch, however he had nothing in his stomach, empty but soaked in a little crutch that helped to make him numb again. A little too numb. He touched John's arm, just to see if there was feeling in his fingertips, the other was warm, hot blooded even. He nestled his face in the crook of the other's neck. "Thanks," he sighed quietly against his skin.
---
Her taint had lingered in Constantine's skin, whether he was aware of it or not. Didn't matter, he had been looking forward to the nightmare's company all night, a hand, blood caked under the nails, cradling the white-blonde head of hair. Poor bugger's skin felt so dead, so dull. He might as well have been trying to comfort a corpse.
---
"Don't leave," he requested quietly, half coherent or perhaps restrained, too tired to do more. There was a scent on Constantine, both sickening and intoxicating at the same time. "Get pissed... in the morning," Cori offered a promise, though he didn't specify if he should be getting mad at John or if John should be mad at him, "don't leave."
---
John still glanced down at Cori. His expression changed. It wasn't hardening in anger but softened to that of a rare concerned warmth, a side of him seldom seen. "You pathetic bugger. Course I'm staying. You need it."
---
"Unh--" thank god nothing came up with that huff, though the smell on his breath probably nullified the intricate morning brushing he performed on his mouths daily. "Thanks," he muttered against John, arms circling loosely around his bare waist. Huh if the Englishman had planned to hit the bed well, he'd have to think of an interesting way to take Cori with him.
---
Nah, John decided as his nose wrinkled, the smell horrid even by his standards. Not now. The Corinthian seemed comfortable enough there for now, and John had no qualms with letting him rest there for the time being. He was tired himself, now that he thought about it, the fatigue creeping in more and more the longer he sat. He would let any creative methods of bedding the both of them down for the night stew; he, resting his eyes, might as well sit there until dawn.