Angelkiller: A John Constantine Fan Fic - Part One

The bustle of the street had kept him from getting back to sleep. Man, was he exhausted, but after the night he had, no wonder. The Lorento Brothers had promised him an authentic bone fragment, a toe actually, from Saint Francis of Assisi. When he got there to purchase it he could tell it was a fake. Toe bones don’t smell like fried chicken and they’d forgotten to throw the bucket away. It was still under the table when he arrived. A conversation ensued that left John with some sore ribs but that put both Lorento’s in the ER.

Max always had coffee at the lunch wagon and if his tired eyes weren’t fooling him, it was only 1pm. He should still be down there. John pawed at the nightstand, looking for a Coffin Nail. Oh yeah, he’d quit. Damn it. Nicorette is was.

Groaning, he lifted himself off the bed. He shuffled across the room and unlocked the door. When he opened it, a thin, bald man fell through. He had gone to knock at the same moment John had opened it. He stumbled into John and the two went sprawling to the floor.

“Perkins!” John exclaimed pushing the aged priest off of him.

“I do wish you’d call me Father,” he replied getting up and dusting himself off, not offering John a hand.

“None of this ‘whose your daddy’ crap, what the Hell do you want?” John asked in a gruff tone.

Not amused by his choice of candor or language, Perkins stated plainly “I’ve got a job for you.”

“I already work for you, or at least your real boss,” John retorted straightening his clothes.

“This one isn’t…commissioned,” Perkins responded with a tone of mystery. That perked John’s interest faster that coffee could. Perkins, or the most respectable Father Perkins of the Brooklyn Archdiocese, hardly ever left his office, let alone do anything without the approval and being willed to by Rome.

“Okay, I’ll play,” John only thought to himself. Something must be amiss, he wasn't in his normal getup either. “What’s this mystery job that has to be off the books?”

Perkins said coldly, “Cherry’s dead and it wasn’t by one of them,” he said pointing downward. John was paying full attention now. That was impossible. “Cherry” the nickname chosen by the cherubim John had only met recently was on a “time-out” we’ll call it from Heaven. She should have been still under the protection of The Graces. If one of “them” didn’t do it, who else could kill an immortal?