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!
/-\
The words echoed in Constantine's skull long after the stranger had melted back into the shadows like smoke dissipating in a breeze. Wrong universe entirely. What the bloody hell was that supposed to mean?
He'd spent the better part of three hours wandering Hell's Kitchen's labyrinthine streets, trying to make sense of a world that looked familiar but felt fundamentally alien. The architecture was right brick tenements, fire escapes, the urban decay that clung to New York like a second skin. But the details were all wrong, as if someone had taken his memories of the city and reassembled them with pieces from a jigsaw puzzle that didn't quite fit.
Constantine ducked into an all-night diner called "Luke's," the kind of greasy spoon that existed in every major city, a beacon for the desperate and the sleepless. The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead with a frequency that made his teeth ache, and the coffee looked like it had been brewing since the Carter administration. But it was warm, and more importantly, it was public. Whatever game that well-dressed bastard was playing, Constantine doubted he'd make another move in front of witnesses.
"You look like hell, buddy," the waitress said as she poured him a cup of what could charitably be called coffee. She was middle-aged, wearing a uniform that had seen better decades, with eyes that had witnessed too much of the city's casual cruelty to be surprised by anything anymore.
"Feel worse than I look," Constantine muttered, wrapping his hands around the chipped ceramic mug. The warmth was real, at least. That was something.
As he lifted the cup to his lips, the world tilted sideways.
Flash.
Newcastle, 1978. The Casanova Club's basement reeked of sulfur and burnt flesh. Astra Logue's screams echoed off the concrete walls as something with too many teeth dragged her into shadows that shouldn't exist. Constantine's younger self was shouting an incantation, his voice cracking with desperation, not knowing he was making everything infinitely worse.
"John!" Gary Lester's voice, high and panicked. "John, what have you done?"
The thing that had taken Astra turned toward them, and Constantine saw his own face reflected in eyes like molten brass
"Shit!" Constantine jerked back to the present, coffee spilling across the Formica table. The waitress was staring at him with concern mixed with the particular wariness New Yorkers reserved for the obviously unstable.
"You okay, hon? You went white as a sheet there."
"Fine," he lied, mopping up the spilled coffee with a napkin. "Just tired."
But he wasn't fine. The flashback had been more vivid than any he'd experienced in years, as if the barriers between past and present were breaking down. And underneath it all, something else was stirring a familiar tingle along his nerve endings that meant the synchronicity highway was trying to reassert itself.
Constantine closed his eyes and concentrated, reaching for that old familiar sensation. For a moment, nothing happened. Then, like a radio tuning into a distant station, he felt it probability beginning to bend around him in subtle ways. But it felt different here, unpredictable, like trying to drive a car with the steering wheel loose.
The bell above the diner's door chimed, and three men walked in. They moved with the casual swagger of neighborhood toughs, but Constantine's newly awakened senses picked up something else underneath their mundane appearance. Something that made his skin crawl.
They slid into the booth behind him, their conversation carrying in the diner's close quarters.
"...tells me the shipment's gonna be delayed again. Third time this month."
"Boss ain't gonna like that. He's got customers waiting, and they don't like to wait."
Constantine's enhanced hearing one of the few supernatural senses that seemed to be working properly picked up something in their voices. An underlying harmonic that sounded almost like... singing. But not quite human singing.
Flash.
London, 1985. A warehouse in Bermondsey where the Thames fog rolled in thick as soup. Constantine stood in a circle of salt and iron filings, facing down a minor demon that had been possessing local teenagers for kicks. The creature wore the face of a seventeen-year-old girl, but its voice was like grinding glass.
"You think you understand the game, little magician? You think your circles and your clever words will save you from what's coming?"
Constantine had smiled then, young and cocky and stupid. "I think you talk too much, mate."
The banishment had been textbook perfect, sending the demon screaming back to whatever hole it had crawled out of
The memory shattered as one of the men at the table behind him laughed, the sound setting Constantine's teeth on edge. He turned slightly, trying to get a better look at them without being obvious about it.
They looked human enough working-class Americans with calloused hands and cheap clothes. But their eyes... their eyes held depths that human eyes shouldn't possess, and when they smiled, Constantine caught glimpses of teeth that were just slightly too pointed.
Low-level demons, then. Possessions, most likely, though these felt different from the European varieties he was used to dealing with. More... organized. And there was something else, something that nagged at the edges of his consciousness like a word on the tip of his tongue.
Constantine stood up, dropping a five-dollar bill on the table probably too much for the coffee, but his British pounds were useless here and he'd found the fiver crumpled in his coat pocket. As he walked toward the door, he let his shoulder brush against one of the possessed men.
The contact was like touching a live wire. Images flooded his mind not memories this time, but glimpses of something vast and alien. A realm of sulfur and brass where creatures with the faces of classical gods tortured souls for entertainment. But it was wrong, all wrong. The geography was different, the power structures shifted in ways that made no sense according to everything he knew about the infernal hierarchy.
"Excuse me," the demon wearing the face of a longshoreman said politely. But its smile revealed rows of needle-sharp teeth.
Constantine nodded and kept walking, but he could feel their attention following him like a physical weight. Once he was outside, he ducked into the first alley he could find and pressed his back against the brick wall, heart hammering in his chest.
These weren't the demons he knew. The ones he'd grown up fighting, tricking, and occasionally bargaining with were creatures of specific rules and ancient protocols. These things felt... newer. As if they came from a completely different mythological framework.
Wrong universe entirely.
The stranger's words suddenly made a horrible kind of sense.
Constantine pulled out his cigarettes with shaking hands. He needed to think, needed to understand what was happening to him. But as he flicked his Zippo open, muscle memory taking over, something went catastrophically wrong.
The flame that should have been ordinary fire sparked with colors that didn't exist in nature. The protective ward etched into the lighter's case flared to life with an intensity that made his eyes water. And suddenly, the alley was filled with the stench of brimstone and charred flesh.
"No, no, no," Constantine whispered, but it was too late. The synchronicity highway was pulling him along whether he wanted it to or not, probability bending in ways that defied the local cosmic order.
The summoning circle that appeared at his feet wasn't drawn in chalk or salt it was burning itself into the concrete with lines of eldritch fire. Symbols he recognized from a dozen grimy textbooks arranged themselves in patterns that spoke of binding and calling across impossible distances.
But this wasn't right. He wasn't casting anything, wasn't calling out to any specific entity. The circle was forming itself, drawing power from sources he couldn't identify or control.
Flash.
The House of Mystery, sometime in the late nineties. Constantine sitting across from Zatanna at a table covered in ancient books and empty wine bottles. She was laughing at something he'd said, her stage magician's costume replaced by jeans and a sweater that made her look almost normal.
"You know, John, for someone who claims to hate magic, you're remarkably good at it."
"I don't hate magic, love. I hate what it costs." He'd gestured with his cigarette, painting smoke sigils in the air. "Every spell, every summoning, every clever trick it all comes with a price. The universe demands balance."
"What if you found yourself somewhere the rules were different?" she'd asked, and at the time he'd thought it was a hypothetical question
The memory exploded into fragments as something began pushing through the barrier between dimensions. But it wasn't coming from any hell Constantine recognized. This was older, more familiar, carrying with it the scent of London rain and the sound of church bells across the Thames.
A clawed hand burst through the center of the circle, followed by an arm covered in scales that gleamed like black oil. But Constantine knew those scales, knew the particular shade of corruption that clung to them like perfume.
"Oh, bloody hell," he breathed.
The creature that hauled itself through the impossible portal was Nergal the very same demon who'd tainted Constantine's blood decades ago, who'd dragged Astra Logue into hell during the Newcastle incident, who belonged to a completely different cosmological reality.
Nergal stood in the alley, eight feet of muscle and malice and ancient hatred, and tilted his head as he studied Constantine with eyes like molten gold.
"Well, well," the demon said, his voice like grinding millstones. "Johnny Constantine. I was wondering when you'd finally call."
"I didn't call you," Constantine said, though even as the words left his mouth, he knew how pathetic they sounded.
Nergal's laugh was like breaking glass. "Oh, but you did, little magician. And more importantly..." The demon's smile widened, revealing teeth like broken tombstones. "You've pulled me into a reality where I don't belong. Do you have any idea what kind of chaos that's going to cause?"
Before Constantine could answer, Nergal tilted his head as if listening to something only he could hear. When he looked back at Constantine, his expression had shifted from predatory amusement to something approaching genuine concern.
"John," the demon said quietly, "what have you done? This place... it has its own devils. And they're not at all pleased to meet me."
/-\
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!