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/-\
The first thing John Constantine noticed wasn't the taste of blood in his mouth or the way his ribs screamed in protest when he tried to breathe. It wasn't even the stench of piss and garbage that seemed to cling to every surface of the narrow alley where he'd found himself sprawled like yesterday's refuse.
No, the first thing that made his world tilt sideways was the silence.
Not the absence of sound Christ knew New York was never quiet. Car horns blared in the distance, sirens wailed their eternal urban lullaby, and somewhere a radio crackled with what sounded like a baseball game. But underneath it all, beneath the familiar urban symphony, something was missing. That low, constant hum he'd grown so accustomed to that he'd barely noticed it anymore. The whisper of the synchronicity highway, the gentle pulse of probability bending around him like a warm current.
It was gone.
"Bloody hell," he muttered, pushing himself upright against a dumpster that reeked of rotting fish and something else something that made his nose wrinkle in disgust. His voice came out as a croak, throat dry as sandpaper. How long had he been out?
Constantine's fingers automatically went to his coat pocket, muscle memory guiding him toward the familiar comfort of his cigarettes. The battered pack of Silk Cut was still there, along with his zippo the one with the protective ward etched into its silver surface. Small mercies. But as he lit up, hands trembling slightly, that wrongness hit him again like a physical blow.
The flame was just a flame. No whisper of power, no sense of the mystical energies that should have been dancing around the small metal case. Even his cigarettes tasted different harsher, more chemical.
He was still wearing his signature trench coat, the same tan Burberry that had seen him through a decade of supernatural bollocks. It hung heavy on his shoulders, familiar and comforting, but even that felt... off. Like putting on a favorite shirt after losing weight the same, but not quite right.
"Where the fuck am I?" Constantine stood slowly, his legs unsteady beneath him. The alley stretched in both directions, narrow brick walls rising on either side like the throat of some urban beast. Fire escapes zigzagged up the buildings, and somewhere above him, he could hear the distant thrum of an air conditioning unit struggling against what felt like a muggy summer evening.
The architecture was wrong too. Oh, it was still New York the style was unmistakable but the details nagged at him. Building facades that should have been there weren't. Street signs he glimpsed at the mouth of the alley were positioned differently. It was like looking at a photograph of a familiar place that had been altered just enough to unsettle you.
Constantine took a long drag of his cigarette and tried to remember how he'd gotten here. The last thing he could recall was... what? There'd been something about the First of the Fallen, hadn't there? A final confrontation that had been building for months. He remembered standing in his flat in London, the taste of gin still sharp on his tongue, preparing for what he'd known would likely be his last gambit.
And then... nothing. A void where his memories should have been, black as the space between stars.
"Right then," he said to the empty alley, his Liverpool accent cutting through the humid air. "When in doubt, find the nearest pub and ask awkward questions."
But before he could take more than three steps toward what he assumed was the street, voices echoed from the alley's mouth rough, urban voices speaking in accents that were distinctly American but carried an edge he recognized from every major city he'd ever visited. The kind of voices that usually preceded violence.
" told you, Mickey, the shipment was supposed to be here two hours ago. Fisk ain't gonna be happy if we keep him waiting."
"Fisk can kiss my ass. You seen what happened to Turk Barrett when he tried to muscle in on Hell's Kitchen? Man got his skull cracked by some lunatic in a devil costume."
Constantine pressed himself against the brick wall, cigarette dangling from his lips as he listened. Fisk that name rang a bell, though he couldn't quite place it. And Hell's Kitchen... that was definitely New York, but not the part of it he was familiar with. He'd spent time in the city before, usually chasing down some supernatural nasty that had jumped the pond, but he'd never operated in this particular neighborhood.
Three men rounded the corner, their footsteps echoing off the narrow walls. They moved with the casual confidence of predators who owned their territory, all leather jackets and visible weapons. The leader a stocky man with arms covered in prison tattoos carried a baseball bat like it was an extension of his arm.
"What the hell?" The tattooed man stopped short when he spotted Constantine. "Yo, English, this is private property."
Constantine took another drag of his cigarette, studying the three men with the practiced eye of someone who'd spent his life evaluating threats. They were dangerous, certainly, but in a mundane way. Street muscle, probably moving drugs or guns for whoever this Fisk character was. Under normal circumstances, he'd have simply walked away let them have their little criminal enterprise while he dealt with the real monsters.
But these weren't normal circumstances. He was lost, confused, and more than a little pissed off about the whole situation.
"Private property?" Constantine straightened up, his voice carrying that particular tone of posh condescension that never failed to irritate the working classes. "Funny, I don't see any signs. Though I suppose reading might be a challenge for you lot."
The insult hit its mark. The tattooed man's face flushed red, and his grip tightened on the baseball bat. "You got a smart mouth, limey. Maybe we should do something about that."
"Maybe you should," Constantine agreed, flicking his cigarette butt at the man's feet. "Though I should warn you I'm having a rather shit day, and I'm not in the mood for amateur hour theatrics."
He'd expected the rush of power that usually came with confrontation, the way probability would bend around him to ensure he came out on top. Instead, he got nothing. No supernatural luck, no whisper of synchronicity guiding him toward the best outcome.
Just three angry criminals advancing on him with weapons, and Constantine with nothing but his wits and whatever mundane fighting skills he'd picked up over the years.
The first man swung his bat in a wide arc, aiming for Constantine's head. Under normal circumstances, the weapon would have mysteriously caught on something, or the man would have slipped on debris that hadn't been there a moment before. Instead, Constantine had to duck the hard way, throwing himself sideways and feeling the whoosh of air as the bat passed inches from his skull.
He came up rolling, grabbing a broken bottle from the alley floor and slashing at the second attacker's reaching hand. The man screamed and stumbled backward, clutching his bleeding fingers.
"Jesus Christ, he cut me!"
"Hold him down," the leader snarled, advancing more cautiously now. "We're gonna teach this foreign piece of shit some manners."
Constantine backed toward the dead end of the alley, broken glass in one hand, the other reaching into his coat for... what? His usual arsenal of mystical protections felt as dead as yesterday's newspaper. The protective wards stitched into his coat's lining might as well have been decorative embroidery.
For the first time in longer than he cared to remember, John Constantine was just a man facing down three thugs with nothing but natural cunning and a piece of broken glass.
And he was absolutely terrified.
The tattooed leader raised his bat again, this time more careful with his positioning, when a voice cut through the tension like a blade through silk.
"Now, now, gentlemen. Is this any way to welcome a guest to our fair city?"
All four men turned toward the voice. Standing at the mouth of the alley, barely visible in the shadow cast by the buildings, was a figure in an expensive suit. Constantine couldn't make out the details the light was wrong, as if the shadows clung to the stranger more than they should but something about the voice, the casual authority in it, made his skin crawl.
"Who the hell are you?" the tattooed man demanded, but Constantine noticed his grip on the bat had loosened considerably.
The figure stepped forward just enough for the distant streetlight to catch the edge of a sardonic smile. "Someone who's been waiting a very long time for this particular conversation." The smile widened, revealing teeth that seemed just a little too sharp. "Though I must say, Mr. Constantine, you've certainly made quite an entrance."
Constantine felt the blood drain from his face. "How do you know my name?"
"Oh, I know much more than that, I'm afraid." The stranger's voice carried an accent Constantine couldn't quite place cultured, but with something underneath it that suggested depths better left unexplored. "I know, for instance, that you're not quite where or when you think you are."
The three thugs were backing away now, their earlier bravado evaporating like morning mist. Even they could sense that whatever was happening here had moved beyond their understanding or pay grade.
"Run along, boys," the stranger said without taking his eyes off Constantine. "This doesn't concern you anymore."
They ran.
Constantine stood alone in the alley with the mysterious figure, broken glass still clutched in his hand, cigarette smoke curling around his face like incense. Every instinct he'd developed over twenty years of supernatural investigation was screaming at him to run, but his legs felt like lead.
"Who are you?" he managed.
The stranger's laugh was like velvet wrapped around a razor blade. "The better question, my dear Hellblazer, is not who I am, but what you are." He stepped fully into the light now, and Constantine caught a glimpse of features that were aristocratic, handsome, and somehow fundamentally wrong. "You see, the Laughing Magician has finally arrived..."
The stranger paused, tilting his head as if listening to some sound only he could hear. When he smiled again, Constantine felt something cold settle in the pit of his stomach.
"...but I'm afraid you're in the wrong universe entirely."
/-\
If you wish to read more and I hope that you can support me because I really get exhausted of this work than check out my Patreon at
" https://www.patreon.com/Its_Zack/ "
You can Get Access to 3 More Chapters OR 7 More Chapters if you want!