Dangerous Habits

What John noticed first was the smell. The ordinary club smells were gone- no booze, no sweat. Only sulfur hung gratingly in the air. He found the victim contorted on top of the bar: a young, slight man. Before they went to encounter the soldier demon, Victorine caught his arm. "Wait," she said. "How do you want to do this? I know him..." she said, squinting, "His name is Leon." John glanced back at Angela, who lingered apprehensively in the private room's doorway. Chas had come out with him, and stood stolidly by his side. Although he got easily spooked, his resolve could be amazingly strong. He was a good apprentice.

At Victorine's slight touch, John again felt the tickling pulse of energy that he'd felt before, when her hand lay warmly on his chest, hovering near his box of Silk Cuts. It wasn't irritating, per se, but it was interesting. New. Something to investigate later. He wondered if it was a Voudon healing thing- Midnite, as far as he could remember, had never actually physically touched him. He didn't honestly get the feeling that it was just because of what branch of magic she practiced. It seemed too lively to stem from something like voodoo.

Dismissing the thought for now, he cast his mind on something else: testing out a probable ally.

"Seems simple," he said, wrenching the mirror into a better grip. Vintage ones were always so much heftier.

"Your power is stronger, and you've been doing this longer than me," she hissed. "Chas and I can hold the mirror." She reached for it, but he kept the mirror just out of her grip.

"I'm tired," he said obstinately. He was curious to see if her energies were something she could live up to, or if it was all just wasted potential. Yeah, he was being an asshole. But he would always be right here if something went wrong.

Victorine stared at him much in the same deer-in-the-headlights way Chas was. Two pairs of imploring eyes watched him. "Are you serious?"

"We're wasting time."

As they spoke, the possessed boy was growling low in his throat, eyeing them with unbridled hostility. There was the tell-tale ring of opalescent red around otherwise blue eyes. He laughed harshly. "What's wrong, little French slut? Afraid to meet us in hell?"

The remarks seemed to gallvanize her. She strode up to the bar, tight-lipped, knocking over a spindly stool as she pinned the figure to the smooth black glass in a fluid movement. It struggled and roared, straining against her tight grip. John never would have guessed that someone the size of Victorine could successfully throw down a demon, but she seemed to be managing just fine. He gestured to Chas that they should position the mirror in front of the scuffle. It wasn't a tall mirror, but it was wide enough to suit their purposes. He could see Leon, and the invasive soldier demon, reflected under the dim mood lighting in the mirror's dappled surface. It was a shame they were going to end up breaking it.

Odd as it was, the demon had chosen a male to inhabit. Usually, they chose females for the sheer symbolism of birth- that was, if they were successful in breaking through to the human plane. There'd been no precedent for that since the dark ages, but the way things had been turning out lately, John wouldn't count on precedent anymore. They all cringed at the disgusting outline of the demon's face in the boy's stomach, stretching skin and pulling it to a grotesque limit.

Whatever Victorine was doing to compose her abilities, and communicate with the damn soldier demon, she was silent... unlike how he usually conducted exorcisms. At this point he would be inserting choice obscenities between the traditional litanies.

But he felt the steady rise of power like a swelling ocean current before a storm. Her face was hard, and intent. From experience, he knew she had to be telepathically talking to the demon, commanding it to leave. For the first time in years, the hair on the back of his neck stood up. The delicate art deco lamps hanging above the bar flickered and popped out. Now there was hardly any light- the blacked out windows were a little less than opaque, and a minimal glow illuminated Angela's silohuette, an illusion far ahead of them.

"Shit," Chas muttered, and John found himself agreeing. The temperature dropped rapidly, causing their breath to cloud in front of them. A primal hissing- this time not from Leon- permeated the room, coming from everywhere at once, bringing to mind a huge, pissed off snake. Or, thought John, an enormous cat.

The boy thrashed violently, kicking out at Victorine's chest as the demon began to realize she was winning the battle of wills. The blow was powerful enough to make her stagger backwards, gasping, but instead of making her let go of her grip, the momentum knocked both of them to the floor. Rolling together, they became a tangle of limbs, a flurry of furious and desperate movement. Leon scratched at every piece of Victorine's exposed flesh he could reach. Chas and John jerked the mirror out of the way, propping it up against the base of the bar so that it faced the struggle.

Finally, Victorine had him pinned down, straddling the taut body at the waste. Her flame colored hair had come out of its bun and hung forward, hiding her face, but John could make out her snarling the words for an exorcism in French. Her hand came down on the boy's forehead. Despite leaving his own defenses up, John heard her internal cry of "Look!" echo loudly in his mind. And suddenly, the demon was flung headlong into the mirror, immediately after making eye contact with its own reflection. They never learned.

Briefly, John watched it pound against the glass before remembering that the best thing to do was quickly break what held it captive. Chas was the one who moved first, his fist sailing into the hundred year old glass with a satisfying crunch. A screeching howl sounded; John complimented the fist punch by adding his own. Silvery shards rained down onto the floor, onto Victorine, but she didn't seem to notice or care. The boy- a teenager really, only a little younger than Chas- was curled up on the ground, sobbing quietly. The mirror's frame, its pane rendered to bits, slid to the floor with a satisfying crash. John had to keep from inappropriately smiling. It had been so long since he'd watched someone else do that.

"I didn't know any of it was real," Leon was saying, over and over again. "Hell's real. Hell's real." John could sympathize with the keen shock of knowing, versus just believing. "Shit. Shit." He was bruised and probably could benefit from going to the hospital, but what would any of them say that was believable?

Tiredly, Victorine rolled onto her knees, smoke rising from her body in tendrils, and the lamps slowly glowed back to their full strength. She moved like every inch of her was sore, and John hesitated to offer her any help, unsure whether she would be offended. Had the demon been stuck in so deeply, that she'd briefly gone to hell and back to get it out? That would be bad. He cared mostly because he knew exactly how drained she felt. The room was also hot-boxed with psychic energy. He helped her up, and she cringed. Almost immediately, he let her go, startled. Her essence had jolted him that time, lighting up his eyes with the sort of flashes that happened after you looked at the sun.

"Sorry," she said.

Chas studied Victorine with a newfound respect and, amusedly, John counted on his sidekick developing a crush within the near future. Her lip bled profusely, and she was severely peppered with gashes, but she seemed more dazed than injured. "What do we do with him?" Chas asked, kneeling by Leon.

"We need to take him home," she said, massaging the place where he had kicked her. A blueish bruise bloomed, peaking out from her shirt's low neckline. "That is, if he remembers where to go. That thing was in. Hard. I didn't mean to drag him into hell with me, but somehow I managed." As the men watched her, John was unnerved to see that the bruise faded nearly as fast as he'd noticed it appearing. When he looked to her face, her lip wasn't bloody anymore, and the cuts looked like they'd seen a few more days' time. Was she consciously healing herself? Or, like for half breeds, did it happen on its own?

Chas volunteered to drive Leon.

"Please," Leon said, fervently. "I'm never coming back here."

They wandered out, Chas supporting Leon's limp body. For all anyone would be able to tell, they were drinking buddies. Someone had just gotten too plastered, that was all.

John turned to Victorine, who was going steadily paler. "Yeah, unfortunately me doing that is like a becon to all the dead people in a five mile radius. Fuck you," she grumbled.

Angela had reappeared, and was piling all the shards of glass into the trash can next to the bar- pragmatic, as always. She was deeply frightened, still unused to seeing things like this happen, but she hid it well, which was good because John didn't feel like dealing with anyone's hysterics- except for Leon's. Cleaning up was a sort of defense mechanism, a way to inject some normalcy into the situation, he thought. He watched her as she worked.

"You're so... quiet," John said, wavering between impressed and merely intrigued. He meant she performed exorcisms quietly. Victorine shrugged.

"Yelling is just wasted energy." Victorine slunk to the part of the floor that wasn't littered with glass, resting her back against the legs of a stool. "I use my brain to yell at them, believe me." He smiled wanly, lighting another cigarette.

"I heard."

She smiled back.

Angela asked, hesitantly, "Hey. Correct me if I'm wrong- but demons don't usually... try to... manifest? Do they?"

"A friend of mine, he calls us finger puppets," John explained. "No, the demons shouldn't be able to even try and physically come through. Bastards."

Grimly, Victorine said, "I'm sorry Angela. But there's something afoot. And Isabel's death had loads to do with it, otherwise Constantine wouldn't be involved. I never thought I'd actually get to fuck with a soldier demon." She dragged herself up and lurched over to grab a bag of salted peanuts on the nearest table. Ripping them open, she popped a handful in her mouth. "Big favor?"

Angela sighed as Victorine said, "Pass me that bottle of vodka over there."

Obliging, but unhappily, the detective uncorked the bottle and handed it over. "So, we're just gonna get drunk now?" she asked, bordering on snide.

After a hearty swig, Victorine shook her head no. "We are not. You are going to go home and pray to whatever god you wish, because the one in charge of things seems to be neglecting the balance."

She offered the bottle to John. Cigarette between the fingers of his other hand, he gulped down a third more than she had. Victorine took it back, drank again, and corked the bottle, putting it on the table with a thud. Standing this close to her, John was glad to notice her body radiated heat again, and color had come back into her cheeks. Whether or not it was because of the alcohol. He carefully picked a splinter of glass from her hair.

When Angela blanched, she insisted, "I'm perfectly serious."

"Well, forgive me for wanting to be more proactive," Angela said.

"You just saw proactive," John said, quietly. He wanted to help her, but over the few days he'd known her, she continued to annoy him with her naive, almost unwittingly arrogant assumptions about what the occult was. He didn't dislike her. She just had so much to learn.

Exasperated, she replied, "I don't mean I want to kill demons. I want to figure out why Isabel was so crucial to all of this shit."

"You will, eventually," Victorine said. "That's not necessarily good."

By the time Chas had returned from dropping Leon off, they'd cleaned everything. The overturned stool was righted, there was no glass on the floor, and blood had been wiped up. Chas reported, "Okay, so he's good. I told his older brother he was just tripped out on drugs." All three adults looked at him incredulously, John raising an eyebrow so far it was in danger of disappearing into his hair.

"What?" Chas asked, frowning. "Really. I did. Come on- now it looks like he's been doing meth. He's jittery, his pupils are all uneven... all right. I see your point. But what's done is done."

"Bravo, Mademoiselle Victorine," a smooth, British voice said, from the entryway. John swore under his breath.

Balthazar stood in the foyer, clapping his elegant hands politely. His pinstriped suit was immaculate; his glossy brown hair was slicked back perfectly.