The joys and sorrows of men are not shared.
Truer words, honestly. Right now, all John Constantine wanted was a decent night's sleep. He had no interest in his unexpected houseguest, no curiosity about why the man had shown up, and no particular desire to find out. In his experience, people who came looking for Constantine fell into three categories: debt collection, revenge, or dirty work. The idea that someone might drop by just for a friendly visit was, to put it charitably, adorable.
He'd learned this lesson the hard way. His cronies never brought good news. He was exceptionally clear about that.
"He looks terrible, John." The landlady met him at the bottom of the stairs, her voice carrying the particular mix of pity and accusation that only elderly British women had truly mastered. "Came all this way, begging to see you. Poor thing."
"Jesus. He's still here?"
"Don't take the Lord's name, Constantine, it's rude." She sighed, a sound like a radiator giving up the ghost. "Actually, I think he may have gone. He didn't say goodbye, didn't thank me — and he owes me seventeen and a half pounds. I posted a package to America for him."
Constantine opened his mouth, closed it again, and wordlessly fished seventeen-fifty from his coat pocket. He wasn't a good person — he was remarkably comfortable with that — but he wasn't poor, either. Specifically because he was a moral vacuum, he usually had a few quid spare, provided he hadn't squandered them. The people he owed money to were generally not human, and what he owed them was rarely money. Seventeen and a half pounds was practically a rounding error.
"As if I'm not run off my feet with these bloody red worms," he muttered, already heading for the stairs.
The landlady grumbled at his back, clearly wanting to say more. He didn't slow down. Talking to him right now was like talking to the wallpaper, and she knew it. She retreated to the kitchen and resumed doing something unforgivable to a cabbage.
Clean cars parked outside, Constantine thought as he climbed the steps. For a man dealing with insects, that's interesting.
He turned his key in the lock and finally let himself think about his visitor. Gary Lester. A man of virtually no redeeming qualities, a dedicated drug addict, and — like Constantine himself — a self-taught, morally undiscriminating magician who used whatever was to hand without much concern for where it fell on the spectrum between white and black. A swordsman in every sense that mattered least.
What does he want? Just to send a package?
He pushed the door open and stepped inside.
The living room lights were still on, but the room was empty. The doors and windows were all shut, the heating doing its work — warmth hit him like a wall after the wet chill outside, and for a moment it was almost pleasant. Almost.
The room had been reasonably clean and bright when he'd left. Mrs. M had been faithfully tidying upstairs for months. Today, however, Lester had been here, and Lester and domestic cleanliness had never shared the same postcode.
Constantine let out a breath that was almost relief. At least the man was gone. Less trouble. He dropped his case by the door, hung his damp trench coat on the hook, cracked the window an inch for fresh air, and sank onto the sofa.
"Bastard," he said, to no one in particular.
Scattered furniture. Books left open and abandoned. Waste paper drifted across the floor like tumbleweed. From the kitchen, a smell of such remarkable complexity and ambition that it immediately told a story — a story about milk, mold, and approximately six weeks of architectural neglect. Even the rain coming through the cracked window smelled like diesel. The flat had taken on a whole new personality while he was away, and the personality was aggressively horrible.
This is definitely Lester's work.
He lit a Silk Cut, shifted on the sofa — the cushions had been compressed into shapes that no longer corresponded to any human body — and reached for the copy of The Sun sitting on the side table. He flipped to page three on autopilot. It helped. Slightly.
But he couldn't stop thinking. Why had Lester come all this way? Mrs. M said he'd looked rough. Could be another demon sniffing around, drawn to something Lester had touched or carried or accidentally opened a door to. Gary Lester had a talent for exactly that kind of catastrophe.
His gaze drifted to the table under the newspaper. He went still.
A syringe. Nearly full, just a small amount already depressed — and floating in the clear liquid inside, he could see tiny black limbs, transparent wings. The fragments of a fly.
The hair on Constantine's arms stood up.
Jesus Christ. He stared at it. "The bug. That stupid bastard actually—"
But the needle was still there. Still here. Which meant Lester hadn't left.
He was on his feet before he'd consciously decided to move, crossing to the kitchen — and immediately wished he hadn't. The stench that greeted him was its own kind of assault: dirty cups and plates piled in the sink, milk bottles half-submerged in grey water, a spectacular bloom of multicolored mold covering everything within reach. Lester had been here for half a day. Half a day. How was this possible?
Constantine ground his teeth and surveyed the kitchen floor. A few small shapes moved across the tiles. Nature's cleanup crew, arriving prompt as ever.
He opened the refrigerator on instinct, and immediately regretted it.
There was nothing inside it except life — small, wriggling, relentlessly cheerful life — and quite a lot of it.
He slammed the door shut and threw up in the sink.
When he was done, he didn't wait around to process the experience. He moved to the bathroom, where something was making a noise on the other side of the door. A damp, buzzing, layered noise, the kind that pressed through wood and plaster.
"Right." He gripped the door handle. "Whatever you are — out. Now."
He shoved it open.
Gary Lester was in the bathtub. Thin as a rail, completely hairless, skin the color of old wax. Around him — over him — on him — a curtain of living things moved and resettled. Moths, mosquitoes, cockroaches, flies. Dozens of them. The sound was immense, almost physical, and they covered the walls, the tiles, the ceiling. Every surface in the room was participant.
Lester looked up from inside the swarm. His eyes found Constantine in the doorway.
"John." His voice was barely there. "Is that you? Friend — you have to help me, you have to." He clawed weakly at his own arms, at his shoulders, at the insects crawling across his face. "My addiction — it's come back. I feel awful. I feel so itchy. It's like something's crawling on me."
He scratched harder, and the swarm shifted with him like a living shadow.
"It feels like bugs."
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