After The Ending

Constantine: After the Ending

Chapter One

A few weeks after John and Angela parted from the rooftop, fate had brought them together once more.

Having a now full awareness of her psychic abilities, Angela had located more crooks than usual and now had an aura of calm surrounding her since she now adjusted to the rushes of emotion that she received on a regular basis. She could now block out the vibes that were of no concern to her.

On a routine drug raid, Angela stilled instantly once she entered the house with its dark green door and black shutters. The white paint surrounding the house was splattered with mud and eroding from lack of care. She smelled burnt sulfur.

Upon entering the house, the rest of her squad started vomiting due to the smell of the sulfur, which Angela had become accustomed to since Constantine had used it to save her from the demons last month.

~I never thought I’d get used to the smell~ she thought to herself while her heart pounded, knowing that she could very possibly be coming face-to-face with a demon or possibly Constantine himself.

She could not sense any demons, but stayed put just inside the door.

“Do you here something Angela?” asked one of the squad members behind her while a rag covered his mouth and face keeping out the smell.

Her rich brown eyes lingered over the living room in front of her and then she turned to him, her dark black hair bobbing in her pony-tail.

“No, I was just trying to find the source of the sulfur”, she replied easily as she eased herself gracefully into a standing position.

The rest of the squad rose with her and waited for her to lead them.

She spotted a door with stairs leading down and motioned for everyone to follow her.

She held her gun by the side of her head, ready to fire if needed. She leaned her body weight against the right wall, and kept moving forward since she didn’t feel the need to hide at this moment.

When she reached the bottom of the stairs, she saw many heating lamps that we focused on growing weed plants. This would be a decent-sized haul for the police department, but still, where did the sulfur smell come from?

The sulfur smell was not in the basement, and none of the suspects were found, so Angela headed back up the stairs with her gun now at her side.

Sulfur was once again apparent, but not nearly as strong as it was when they first got there.

Leaving the team behind her, she ventured to the kitchen, where the smell seemed to be coming from.

She was met with a pile of ash with a pair of jeans in the middle of it.

~Half-breed…~ Angela scorned. ~Why would Constantine bother killing this one? This is probably my drug dealer…~

She had gone to Constantine’s apartment before above the bowling alley to talk to him about the things that she saw now but he was never home. Fear and consumed her for a while every time she saw visions, but now she had learned to cope with it.

A sound to her right pulled her out of her musings, and she instinctively pulled the gun in the direction of the noise.

“Constantine…” she whispered as her eyes widened. She then pulled the gun back down to the side of her hip.

“Angela” he said as he leaned his sleek muscular frame against the wall next to the pile of fried demon. His dark brown eyes burrowed into hers as he tucked his dark black hair behind his ear, his black suit looked perfect and his black tie was casually loosened against white button-down shirt.

Angela spotted the sulfur cloth that Constantine had burned the end of still wrapped around his hand.

He followed her gaze and raised it up as if to confirm that he had indeed used the material. He smiled.

“You were a little late to watch me kill this half-breed”, he said easily, with a tint of humor in his voice.

“I wanted to see if it was my drug dealer that I was sent to arrest today”, she said while she took out a picture of her suspect.

Constantine took the picture into his hands.

“Yes”, he said, now looking into her eyes, “This is the half-breed, take a closer look Angela” he said her name silkily.

She raised her brow, but took the picture back from his outstretched arm. As she looked more closely at his face, she noticed now that it looked like the red-eyed look that was supposedly from the camera was actually the real color of his eyes. She also noticed that it looked as though yellow flesh was rotting of the side of his face ever so slightly by his temple.

“Do you notice anything else in that picture Angela?” Constantine whispered into her ear.

Angela nearly jumped from his sudden closeness but instead chose to ignore how close his face was to hers and focus instead on the picture in her hand that was taken by an officer that was posted right outside the house they were in.

The suspect was getting into a car, holding his coat close to him. It was then that she noticed it.

The picture was taken at sunset, but something was odd about the suspects shadow.

He had two shadows.

One was facing the way it was supposed to, but another was lingering behind him, as if following his every step.

Angela then looked up at Constantine, who was still standing very close to her, being a tall wall against the glare of the sunlight from the outside.

“It’s a shadow demon”, he again whispered in her ear.

Her head started spinning. She loved the way he smelled without cigarette smoke combined. His voice and his breath on her ear caused her body to shiver, and the heat of his body made her feel a kind of yearning she had never felt before.

“H-How do you get rid of shadow demons?” she asked, her voice all breathy and low in volume.

Constantine looked down at the half-breeds ashes. “You kill the body that it possesses” he then took a step away from Angela, making her feel suddenly very cold and vulnerable. “And usually that does the trick most of the time”

“Most of the time?” she asked.

“This one found someone else to possess”, he said.

“Do you know who?”

“No, but I’m going to find out soon. It wasn’t attached to this half-breed when I obliterated him”

Angela heard her team moving about in the living room barking out orders to take the plants out of the basement and load it into the truck that waited outside.

He noticed her changed attention, and started leaving out the back door, not even sparing her a backward glance.

“Asshole” she muttered to herself as she put her gun away seeing his retreating figure go through the backyard fence.

She glared at his lack of presence and then stomped back to her team and told them that the victim set himself on fire in the kitchen.

The sulfur smell wasn’t even questioned.