Monday, August 17, 2009

The Constantine Brothers

Ladies and Gentlemen, this is the final version of the first chapter of the first book in the series

The Constantine Brothers

Enjoy!

CHAPTER 1

Somewhere inside the warehouse there was an explosion of white which turned blue seconds later,
James Constantine was in battle with a powerful demon that had just fired a powerful curse at him and he was trying to deflect it.
James had his hands in front of his face he struggled to keep the Demons Spiritual Energy at bay as it tried to eat through his barrier that he'd conjured a split second before the curse started to really get to work, half of his face felt like it was on fire; The curse had hit it and he couldn't see anything, just a fuzzy version of the white and blue light.
"Damn that Demon." He thought to himself, veins popping, muscles bulging, all of his concentration focused on repelling the curse.
He had to run.
As cowardly as it felt, he knew that if he didn't do it, he'd probably die and that was the last thing he wanted to happen.
Changing his stance, he roared as he Changed his spell to one that did not repel, but absorbed spells; It was incredibly difficult and he'd never used it before, he only knew the theory behind it, suddenly he felt the opponents energy flowing through him, trying to choke him, trying to rip him apart every cell in his body screaming in protest;
"No," Was his only thought, "I must win, I must hold out, I cannot, will not, Die. . ."
With an effort that felt like lifting the world, he deflected the curse. Just as suddenly, it
vanished into thin air.
But he wasn't in the clear yet, the Demon screamed and hurled itself at James,
but he turned and ran as fast as he could; He hadn't slept in days tracking this demon down and it was a mistake.
He had not been ready, and this mistake almost cost him his life.
The Demon was one of the many that had ganged up on his grandfather, Arthur J. Constantine, and James wanted revenge, his rage had kept him working tirelessly tracking down these Demons, and he'd vanquished every last one of them until this one, the leader of this group of Demons.
Shooting a binding spell at the demon, he stumbled towards his car, wrenched the door open and drove off just as the Demon managed to throw off the weak binding spell.
Scanning in the rear view mirrors whilst feeling panic and terror gnawing his insides -- his gut tied in knots, leering; “If I get out of this alive and in one piece. . .”
Now at 98 mph, he scanned the mirrors, looking for the menace he knew was there.
Was it safe to slow down?
‘No!’
A massive, SUV came hurtling, seemingly out of nowhere.
Too late...
The Chevy had given him only a few seconds' time to realize what was going on and deftly swing his
car into another lane, slamming on the brakes just in time. The Chevy shot past him at 150 mph,
smashing into a Lamp post. Though the crash was not enough to disable the vehicle, it was enough to impair its maneuverability, making the situation even more dangerous to escape from.
Finally, he saw an exit, gunned the engine, went down the ramp and started to look, in vain, for a competent hiding place. Suddenly, the SUV walloped the rear of his car, the Wraith, and sent it into a spin.
He didn’t dare wait for the car to stop spinning, smashing the gas pedal to the floor, he sent the big car off into the darkness.
The psychopath in the SUV was now absolutely determined to exterminate this sucker from existence. The Wraith, however, was at the end of its tether; the timing belt sheared off with a squeal of rubber and steel wire.
The SUV smashed into the rear causing the Wraith to skid sideways and into a ditch at speed in excess of 100mph, flipped tire-over-roof and flew out onto the road; after hitting a tree broad side the front end soared into the air before landing with a crash of screaming metal.
The driver was knocked out cold. The engine gave a death rattle and died as the lights flickered and went out,
The murderous psychopath stepped out knocking his vehicles door onto the side of the road, inspected the damage and giggled madly. Then, it got into the beat-to-hell SUV, and drove away laughing like the maniac it was.
The man in the Wraith was called James Constantine, an exorcist, and this had been a textbook
example of why you never jump into things for revenge.
Stumbling out, he marveled that the door still opened and that he was still alive.
He looked sadly at the once immaculate car that had belonged to his grandfather, his only companion since his grandfather's death.
James clumsily lay down the crumpled hood, before succumbing to unconsciousness.


He dreamed that he was with his grandfather when he was still a trainee Exorcist

“James, when you kill a demon you have to strike fast and without emotion, do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“Excellent, now, go into that square” Said his grandfather indicating the large square in the middle of the floor.
“And Eliminate every Demon that attacks you, in fact, you should eliminate them all regardless;
Remember, strike fast and without mercy."
"No.” he said, looking at the puzzled look on his Grandfathers face before saying;
"Why should I kill a Demon if has not attacked me or anyone else? I've read about tame Demons-"
"A load of codswallop, I don't know where you've read that fiction but you'd better put it out of your head right now, you understand me? You're about to face class Fours and Fives." Arthur Then released a spell and suddenly demons were everywhere inside the huge circle cum pentagram; James could feel
the heady rush of purpose in destruction, the destruction of Demons. His eyes glowed red and he whipped out his Soul Slayer and slashed every demon in front of him down without so much as a tickle of emotion. More Demons appeared, he could not get his Soul Slayer around in time, so he pulled a huge gun out of its holster and fired indiscriminately at the Demons, each one falling to the ground and slowly turning to ash...
“Since when did minor demons get the better of you, a Constantine?” Chuckled Arthur,
“Never.”
“'Atta boy. But beware! Evil times lay ahead of you, times where you will have to chose between what is right, and what is easy.”
Then, suddenly a huge Demon appeared out of thin air, James instantly recognized it as a class ten out of twenty, but he'd never faced anything like this before.
"James! Get of there NOW!" Yelled Arthur, but James did not seem to hear him; Sure enough, inside the Pentagram James had not heard a thing, he could see his Grandfather panicking behind the shield,
but it did not matter, he could take this Demon out. Out of ammunition he re-holstered his gun and pulling himself out of the human plane into another dimension sidestepping the Demon and
reappearing behind it flying through the air and bringing his weapon down upon the Demons head and sliced through it's brain, buried the Soul Slayer inside it's heart before whipped his blade in a circular motion and severing the Demons heart which fell out with a bloody splat.
It Collapsed and started to turn into ash, the Pentagrams defense system came down and Arthur Constantine stared at his Grandson with mingled incredulity and amazement.
"James, I am dissapointed in you, I thought you would follow the normal procedures and just get heck out of dodge, but I would be stupid not congratulate you, it appears that your training as an Exorcist is almost at an end, we can finally start going onto the bigger things of the underworld."

And with that, the scene vanished, only to be replaced by a whole world of pain.
After summoning up a great deal of strength, James got up, grabbed a mirror out of his pants' pocket and directed it in the
direction of the rapidly disappearing SUV. He could not chase the Demon, but he could contain it
temporarily.
He closed his eyes, and muttered, “Ego order quod cohibeo vos everto ut profundus secui abyssus nunquam ut reverto ut humanus universitas. deus misericordia vestri animus. ”
A ghastly scream pierced the silent fog that had settled, and suddenly there was a demon struggling to get out of the mirror-- and was beginning to succeed, when Constantine smashed the mirror to the ground, and the demon was no more.
Constantine collapsed from exhaustion, and thought to himself;
“In the end, demons can never turn away from their calling to Hell.”
As he regained consciousness properly, he winced, and shuddered. The scar on the side of his face throbbed painfully, a grisly remainder of the fatal curse the demon had let loose.
Constantine knew that if he had hesitated for even a split second with the deflector spell, he would’ve been a goner.
The curse had been a powerful one, a curse he’d seen and heard before. The spell itself was ancient,
designed for maximum damage to the opponent of a person with a lot of stamina -- supernatural stamina, in fact. And this meant only one thing, the creatures of the underworld were getting stronger. A lot stronger.
There was a screech of brakes as another car appeared out of the darkness, it's passengers got out one
started yelling something about curses around James, he fell unconscious, uncertain of the fate that lay ahead of him.

Tuesday, March 10, 2009