Chapter 2: The Uncooperative Host

The journey to Newcastle had been conducted in relative silence, broken only by Nightingale's occasional observations about the changing landscape and Peter's attempts to research John Constantine on his phone. What he'd found hadn't been reassuring—fragments of police reports that had been heavily redacted, witness testimonies that read like fever dreams, and a psychiatric evaluation that had been sealed under the Official Secrets Act.

"Remind me why we're consulting with someone who's apparently been sectioned more times than a mental health textbook?" Peter asked as their train pulled into Newcastle Central Station.

"Because," Nightingale replied, adjusting his cufflinks with characteristic precision, "sometimes the most dangerous people are also the most necessary ones. Mr. Constantine operates in circles where traditional police work—even our particular brand of it—cannot reach."

The safehouse was exactly what Peter had expected from a man with Constantine's reputation: a Victorian terraced house in a rundown part of the city that estate agents would euphemistically describe as "up and coming." The windows were grimy, the front garden was a wasteland of dead weeds, and someone had spray-painted something illegible across the door in what Peter hoped was red paint.

Nightingale knocked with the measured authority of a man accustomed to having doors opened for him. When nothing happened, he knocked again, harder.

"Piss off!" came a voice from inside, thick with a Scouse accent and barely contained irritation. "Whatever you're selling, I'm not buying!"

"Mr. Constantine," Nightingale called through the door. "We're with the Metropolitan Police. We need to speak with you about a death in London."

There was a long pause, followed by the sound of multiple locks being unfastened. The door opened to reveal a man who looked like he'd been dragged through hell backwards—which, based on Peter's research, might not have been metaphorical. John Constantine was tall and lean, with the kind of weathered handsomeness that came from too many late nights and too many hard choices. His blonde hair was disheveled, his white shirt was wrinkled beyond redemption, and he held a lit cigarette as if it were a lifeline.

"Coppers," Constantine said, looking them up and down with pale blue eyes that held far too much knowledge for anyone's good. "Let me guess—something weird happened, something that made all your fancy forensics useless, and someone whispered the name Constantine in the right ear."

"Thomas Hartwell," Peter said. "Died this morning at King's Cross. No apparent cause, but significant vestigia suggesting magical involvement."

Constantine's expression shifted, becoming more focused. "Vestigia, is it? Well, well. Looks like the Met's got itself a proper wizard after all." He stepped back from the door. "You'd better come in then. And mind the wards—they bite if they don't like you."

The interior of the safehouse was chaos made manifest. Books were stacked in precarious towers, occult paraphernalia cluttered every surface, and diagrams covered the walls in what looked like the work of a brilliant but deeply disturbed mathematician. The air was thick with incense, cigarette smoke, and something else—an ozone smell that made Peter's teeth ache.

"Charming," Nightingale observed, stepping carefully around a chalk circle inscribed with symbols that seemed to shift when Peter wasn't looking directly at them.

"It's functional," Constantine replied, stubbing out his cigarette in an ashtray that was already overflowing. "Tea? No? More for me then." He poured himself a cup from a pot that had seen better decades and settled into an armchair that was leaking stuffing. "So, this Hartwell bloke. What exactly happened to him?"

Peter described the scene, including the witness statements and the strange magical signature. Constantine listened without interruption, his expression growing darker with each detail.

"And you felt the residue was familiar," Constantine said when Peter finished. "But corrupted."

"That's right. Like something I'd encountered before, but wrong somehow."

Constantine was quiet for a long moment, staring into his tea as if it held answers. When he looked up, his expression was grim. "The signature you detected—it was probably similar to standard English magical working, wasn't it? Same underlying structure, same mathematical principles, but twisted."

"How could you possibly know that?" Nightingale asked, his voice carrying a note of suspicion.

"Because I've been tracking the same bloody thing for weeks." Constantine stood abruptly, moving to a wall covered in newspaper clippings, photographs, and red string. "Seventeen deaths across the UK, all with the same pattern. Successful people, no apparent cause of death, all left looking like someone had drained every ounce of hope out of them."

Peter examined the wall more closely. The connections Constantine had drawn were disturbing—a web of despair stretching across the country, with Newcastle at its center.

"What aren't you telling us?" Nightingale's question was politely phrased, but carried an undertone of command that most people found difficult to resist.

Constantine, however, wasn't most people. "What makes you think I'm not telling you everything?"

"Because in my experience, men like you don't exist without secrets. And because whatever's happening, it's connected to Newcastle—which means it's connected to you."

The two men stared at each other across the cluttered room, and Peter felt the temperature drop several degrees. This was what happened when two different worlds of magic collided: Nightingale's ordered, institutional approach against Constantine's chaotic, street-level pragmatism.

"Men like me," Constantine repeated, his voice dangerously soft. "And what kind of man is that, exactly? The kind who gets his hands dirty doing the jobs you won't touch? The kind who saves the world while you're filing the proper paperwork?"

"The kind," Nightingale replied with arctic politeness, "who leaves a trail of destruction in his wake and calls it heroism."

Before Constantine could respond, the walls of the house began to vibrate. Books tumbled from their stacks, and the temperature plummeted so rapidly that Peter could see his breath. Outside, something was screaming—a sound of such pure anguish that it seemed to reach directly into his chest and squeeze his heart.

"Shit," Constantine breathed, all pretense of hostility forgotten. "It's here."

"What's here?" Peter demanded, but even as he asked, he could feel it—a wave of psychic despair washing over the city like fog rolling in from the sea. Through the grimy windows, he could see people in the street stopping in their tracks, their faces going slack with the same empty hopelessness they'd seen on Thomas Hartwell.

The front door exploded inward, but nothing visible came through. Instead, the very air seemed to darken, shadows gathering into a shape that hurt to look at directly. It was tall, impossibly thin, and seemed to be composed entirely of sorrow given form. Where it passed, the wallpaper peeled, the floorboards rotted, and the very light seemed to drain away.

"Sorrow-Wraith," Constantine said, already moving toward a cabinet full of weapons that definitely weren't standard police issue. "Feeds on despair, grows stronger the more people it affects. And if I'm right about what's controlling it, this is just the opening act."

Nightingale raised his hand, silver energy crackling between his fingers. "Peter, stay back. This requires a delicate touch."

But as Nightingale unleashed a carefully controlled blast of force, the creature simply absorbed it, growing larger and more solid. The attack that should have banished it had only made it stronger.

"Delicate touch, my arse," Constantine snarled, pulling a curved knife from his belt. The blade was stained with something dark, and Peter didn't want to know what. "This thing's been feeding off structured magic like yours for weeks. You might as well be offering it dinner."

The Sorrow-Wraith turned its attention to them, and Peter felt his knees buckle as a wave of crushing despair hit him. Every failure, every disappointment, every moment of self-doubt came rushing back with magnified intensity. Beside him, he could see Nightingale struggling against the same assault, his usual composure cracking under the supernatural weight of accumulated sorrow.

Only Constantine seemed unaffected, which probably said something deeply disturbing about his mental state.

"Right then," Constantine said, drawing the blade across his palm without hesitation. Blood welled up, bright red against his pale skin. "Time to fight fire with fire."

He began to chant in a language that predated Latin, his voice growing stronger with each word. The blood from his palm began to glow with a sickly light, and the Sorrow-Wraith paused in its advance, suddenly uncertain.

"Peter!" Constantine shouted over the sound of reality tearing. "I need you to weave a binding—something complex, mathematical. Your mentor's right about one thing—this needs structure. But not his kind of structure."

Peter forced himself to focus, pushing back against the crushing weight of despair. The binding pattern came to him instinctively, but it was unlike anything Nightingale had taught him. Where traditional magic was like classical music—ordered, predictable, harmonious—this was something else entirely. Jazz, maybe, or punk rock. Chaotic, but with its own internal logic.

"Thomas!" Constantine called. "I need raw power, as much as you can manage. Don't try to control it—just let it flow."

For a moment, Peter thought Nightingale might refuse. The older man's entire magical philosophy was built on control, on the careful application of measured force. What Constantine was asking for went against every instinct he'd developed over a century of practice.

But then the Sorrow-Wraith screamed again, and more shadows began pouring through the shattered doorway. With a look of profound distaste, Nightingale opened himself to the raw currents of power that flowed through the city's ley lines.

The result was immediate and terrifying. Silver energy erupted from Nightingale's hands, uncontrolled and wild. Constantine's blood magic caught it, shaped it, while Peter's binding gave it form and purpose. The three streams of power merged into something that was more than the sum of its parts—a weapon forged from compromise and desperation.

The Sorrow-Wraith shrieked as the combined assault struck it. For a moment, it seemed to waver, its form becoming less solid. Then, with a sound like breaking glass, it dispersed into mist and was gone.

The house fell silent except for the sound of three men breathing heavily. Outside, Peter could see people in the street beginning to move again, the psychic fog lifting.

"Well," Constantine said finally, lighting a fresh cigarette with hands that shook only slightly. "That was bracing."

Nightingale straightened his tie with mechanical precision. "What," he asked quietly, "was that thing?"

Constantine took a long drag of his cigarette before answering. "A preview," he said. "Of what's coming if we don't stop it."

He moved to his wall of connections, adding a new red string to the web. "The deaths, the creature, all of it—it's connected to something that happened here thirty-one years ago. Something I've been running from ever since."

"And what would that be?" Peter asked, though he suspected he didn't want to know the answer.

Constantine turned to face them, and for the first time since they'd arrived, his mask of cynical detachment slipped completely. What Peter saw underneath was raw, unhealed pain—the kind that came from carrying a burden too heavy for any one person to bear.

"The Newcastle Incident," Constantine said quietly. "The day I got a little girl killed and damned her soul to Hell. And now something's using her as a battery to power things that should never have been allowed to exist."

The silence that followed was heavy with implications. Finally, Nightingale spoke.

"I think," he said carefully, "you'd better tell us everything."