Pryde and Wisdom's House - School House Road

        The front door opens into a large pale-green living room, in which
there is quite possibly more furniture than there was in Pryde and
Wisdom's entire last apartment. On the left-hand wall from the door, a
couch covered with a plain white sheet is grouped with an armchair and a
low table and a bookcase, all by a stone fireplace. Off to the right, more
bookcases flank a computer table that looks slightly forlorn with just
Kitty's laptop and a printer set up on it. The bookcases are mostly empty,
though a scattering of paperbacks and an entire shelf of battered
textbooks occupy one, and a few videotapes and a brass sextant keep
another from looking entirely abandoned. The pirate flag from their last
place is missing from the walls. Neither has the usual state of mild chaos
quite reasserted itself - the stack of newspapers on the low table is
orderly, and the ashtray at the far end of it is kept, if not empty, not
overflowing either.
        Directly opposite the door, a staircase spirals up to the second
floor; by it are a small hallway and the doorway into the brightly-lit
kitchen.

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                               Today's Weather:

In the bitter cold daylight, a slight snow falls, blanking out the ground
in a cottony layer of white. The sunbeams catch the snowbanks and reflect
harshly back from their white surfaces. Salt trucks drive lazily up and
down the streets, attempting to save the roads from entrappment.

******************************************************************************


The walk to the Pryde and Wisdom house has /finally/ been shoveled. And
there's only a faint scattering of snow on the car. Somebody was out
recently. All the blinds and curtains, however, are drawn - not that this
is unusual - and there's relative quiet within.

Relative. As Constantine approaches the door, laughter can be heard from
inside.

Why are New England winters so cold? It's really not fair. They should be
more like *real* England winters, which is to say, not cold enough to
require more than one coat for year-round use. Constantine would like
that. In gloves and a heavily-lined trenchcoat, he knocks on the door,
reaching into his pocket to pull out a piece of paper as he does so.

The door's barely cracked open a few moments later - then closed again.
Then, a few moments later, the chain's somewhat reluctantly taken off and
the door's opened again. Kitty, in jeans and a pale yellow turtleneck,
eyes Constantine somewhat balefully. "Oh. It's you."

"Like a bad penny," Constantine agrees altogether too cheerfully. Stepping
inside, he holds up the rather familiar note. "I'd love to oblige, but I
don't think some of the things you asked me to do are physically
possible."

Kitty offers, "In this city, I'm sure we could find somebody to fix that."
She doesn't actually shove him back outside again, though, nor close the
door in his face. "You pick the most /brilliant/ timing, d'you know that?"
she adds as the door's locked and chained again behind him - rather more
quickly than usual. "There weren't any crows following you, were there?"

Constantine lifts his brows as he notices the quick locking. Oh, no. More
things to be justifiably paranoid about. He stuffs the note back in his
pocket and pulls out a lighter and cigarettes. Lighting one, he says, "Not
that I noticed." And he usually notices people or creatures following him,
or he'd be long dead by now. "Why, are we starring in a remake of 'The
Birds' now?"

Kitty waves a hand, turning and leaning back against the door. "Well, one
of them killed itself breaking through Erik's window the other day, as a
distraction so that three black-winged angels of hatred and malice, tee
em, could get in another way. Did I mention the brilliant timing?"

Constantine pauses to just stare at Kitty, cigarette dangling from the
corner of his mouth. "Fucking hell."

Kitty eyes him right back. "You're telling /me/?"

Constantine starts to talk, remembers to retrieve the cigarette first, and
then goes on, "Yeah, well. Right, what do you know about this so far?"
Curse Kitty for knowing more than he does!

"They're looking for the heart of an angel. Which probably /used/ to be in
St. Asta's, but somehow I've got the feeling it's not there anymore. No
idea what they want it for, what happens if they get it, what happens if
they /don't/ get it, or what purpose it's /supposed/ to serve. Or, for
that matter, what it actually is." Kitty lets her head lean back against
the door: thump. "If we celebrated Christmas, I think I should've asked
for a gun for it."

"Shit. It's not in St. Asta's anymore?" Constantine says, eyes widening.
"I'm sure I could find it, but that'd probably draw their attention to
it." He takes a long drag off his cigarette and exhales wearily, although
for once he manages not to blow the smoke in Kitty's direction. That's
probably just coincidence, though.

"Oh, no, believe me, they know where it is." Kitty grimaces. "At least,
presuming this whole thing isn't an elaborate trick to keep us occupied. I
asked Kess to double-check St. Asta's, anyway, see if anything had
happened to any of the statues."

"So why haven't they got it yet?" The frustration is plain in
Constantine's voice. He hates not being able to figure things out. "Have
they said anything that might be significant?" And why haven't they come
after me yet?

"Well," Kitty says dryly, "the last time they went after it, Erik chased
them off. They did a lot of threatening and cryptic comments, the usual
trying to scare the shit out of people." She lets her breath out through
her teeth. "I don't know if they've done anything the last day or two."

Constantine sighs. "S'pose I should find it, then." He has a feeling that
when he attracts the attention of the black-winged creatures, they'll go
after him emotionally as well as physically. But he's also curious.
They've gone after *Erik*, dammit--he'd better get in on the action.
"Bring it back to St. Asta's, if I can, or try to find somewhere it'd be
more protected."

Kitty says blandly, "I don't think you need to worry about finding it."
Protecting it she doesn't comment on one way or the other.

Constantine quirks his brows. "Yeah? You know where it is? I thought you
didn't even know *what* it is." Does he have no information advantage over
her? No fair!

"I don't," Kitty agrees. "That's what's worrying me." She hesitates -
then, watching him, taps the center of her chest without another word.

Constantine's expression changes little, but something unidentifiable
flickers behind his eyes. "How?" he says, very softly.

"Was down near St. Asta's on the night of the twenty-first," Kitty
answers, not much louder. "Dropping off presents for Melanie and her kids
at the hospital. The ... things showed up. And an angel walked out of the
cathedral to meet them." She takes a breath, lets it out. "I tried to help
her. She ... did something to me, before they killed her. The guy who
brought you out of the coma - he said there was part of her left there."

Constantine stares at Kitty, trying to comprehend all this, fit it
together so that the puzzle makes sense. "The heart," he says softly, with
a note of reluctance to his voice, "is the result of a careless spell I
cast once, when I was thinking about Seravina, and couldn't afford to get
drunk. It was made of glass, and had...something rather less material...in
it. I don't know why it's so important."

Kitty just regards Constantine calmly for a few moments. Quietly. Not
actually moving much, or indeed at all. "You know," she says
conversationally, "when Claire told me I was going to get shot, I could
deal with that. When she showed me what might happen to Pete? Could deal
with that, too. When the angel-things showed up at Erik's looking for me?
No problem. But /this/? Is it too late for me to say 'I quit'?" She shakes
her head - one more exhalation through her teeth. "Never mind. Stupid
question. Constantine, /what the fuck did you put in it/?"

"Well, you're not going to bear my demon child, so don't worry about
*that*," Constantine assures Kitty dryly. "I suppose what's in it
is...what I felt for Seravina at the time. The glass came from some
glasses and bottles I'd broken. Other than that...nothing else. It was
shaped like a heart, and it had a pentacle drawn onto it. Other than
that...no," he pauses suddenly, "there's one thing I do know."

"I'd better not be," Kitty mutters. "Lunelle is better birth control than
/that/." Mildly snarky comments on autopilot, while she tries desperately
to apply logic to something that defies it by nature. The heart of an
angel. Roses red as heart's blood. She glances up at Constantine again.
"The healer said it was meant for something," she says - alert, intent.
And offering him something pretty close to the last significant
information she has, in the faint hope he might actually /tell/ her what
he knows.

Constantine doesn't know much, and he's told Kitty most of it. But he does
recall one last thing he can tell. "Around the beginning of August, a
while after I did the spell, I woke up to find that someone had broken
into my house. It was a young woman, a girl--some kind of meta, I thought
at the time, because she had odd chameleon skin. She seemed startled to
find me there. She went on about how things were wrong, some kind of
mistake had been made--by whoever or whatever sent her. She asked me the
date, and I told her it was the first of August, and she collapsed--I
suppose that's when she started dying. She said it was too late, even if I
had the heart--the seraph's heart, she called it, the heart of shards." He
closes his eyes for a moment as he delves into memory, looking very pale.
"I asked her why she wanted it, and she said, 'It would've saved her.
Would've saved them all.'" He opens his eyes and swallows hard. "Then she
said, 'They're all gone. The angels. All her angels.' And--" His voice
trembles very slightly. "She asked me how she'd get to heaven now. Said
she'd never been lost before. Then she died."

"... Claire said that," Kitty says slowly. "Middle of August. 'All her
angels.' And she talked about the dream. And Sera was painting us as
angels. Claire said it to Pete, too. Same phrasing." She pulls away from
the door, finally, starting to pace. "If we're linking this up right -
/her/ angels are /us/, John. And we're not dead yet." She rakes hands
through her hair. "The drawing. Claire drew the black-winged ones taking
the heart away. But she told Erik she'd gotten it wrong; they left
something else in its place. The question is, /what/. What's it supposed
to do, what's it /for/, where does it need to /go/. The angel who did that
to me - told me to keep it safe. But safe for /what/. Heart of an angel,
heart of shards, roses red as heart's blood - it almost makes a crazy kind
of sense. Keeps coming back to blood. Claire told Pete, right after she
talked about the angels - 'the red stains him, he won't let go. Stone
remembers.' And something about death, and temptation." She's just talking
now, just short of free association. Trying to invoke the half-mad logic
Claire uses, and for that, she can't stay still. "It's not too late. It's
not /over/."

"For her it was," Constantine says softly, thinking of the strange dead
girl looking for the heart. "Maybe she was from the future, after it had
all gone wrong. That doesn't tell us how we can prevent that future,
though." Constantine stares into the distance. "There was a triskellion on
the back of her hand, and a pentacle on the front. And at the same time,
Seravina had a dream about me, she told me: shadows wanting to cut my
heart out." He tosses his cigarette end into the nearest ashtray and
smacks the heel of one hand against his forehead in frustration. "The
second any of us get this to make sense will be the second we go mad."

Ashtray's on the table, as usual. "Your medallion," Kitty comments
absently. "And Sera's dream makes sense - you made the heart, and the
black-winged things want it, they're shadows..." She pauses in her pacing
and eyes Constantine over her shoulder. "And I have /not/ gone mad. Yet."

"I know," Constantine murmurs, pressing a hand to his chest, to feel the
warmed metal there beneath his clothes. "Yeah, it does, and no, you
haven't, but then you haven't figured this all out yet," he says
irritably. "And what about the tower, or the thing that killed Faith and
possessed the Host? How do they tie in?"

Kitty goes back to pacing: there's little enough furniture in the room
that she can manage it quite nicely. "I think the shadows, the
black-winged things, work for whatever it is that possessed the Host.
They've got - similar tactics. They ... /feel/ the way that thing does, if
that makes any sense. And they're definitely aware of Claire, they mocked
Erik over something she said to him. They /hate/, but they're patient
about it. They can afford to wait, because they're sure they're going to
win. The tower... They're looking for it. They want to bring it down. The
tower in a field of roses. When they came to the cathedral, there were
dead roses growing over it, and Claire's blood turned into rose petals.
Heart's blood. If they bring the tower down... everything goes. Imagine
the portals if they /only/ opened into hell, and nothing was stopping them
from opening." From the way her voice sounds, she's piecing things
together as she's saying them; abstract, absent, quiet. "They ... hate.
They don't do anything /but/ hate. Maybe that's why they can't just /take/
the heart. Maybe you made something ... they can't touch. Unless someone
gives it to them. Or maybe not. I don't know. Guessing."

Constantine doesn't bother trying to watch Kitty pace; it might make him
dizzy. Instead he just frowns at the wall opposite him. "Maybe," he
murmurs. "Fuck. More world-saving--*worlds*-saving. Sometimes it'd be nice
if life were fair."

Pity he didn't come over yesterday, when she was hung over. He could've
mocked. "Actually," Kitty muses, "I'm taking great comfort in life /not/
being fair right now. Imagine if this were happening because we'd /earned/
it."

Constantine pauses. "That might make sense for *me*, but I can't imagine
you earned it. Or Sera or Claire, for that matter. Besides, if God wanted
to wipe the world out for humanity's wickedness again, He has plenty of
other ways to do it. He only promised not to use a great flood again.
Didn't say anything about, oh, demonic invasions or such." John's so
optimistic.

Kitty gives Constantine a look, but admits, "I'll grant you the Sera and
Claire point." She finally stops, leaning against the back of a chair.
"All I can say is, if this fucks up the wedding, I go on the warpath."
Apparently she has her priorities worked out. Sort of.

Constantine pauses, looking blank. "The wedding? How soon is that?" He's
so hittable, isn't he?

Indeed, Kitty's fingers twitch, just a little. "Ten days."

Constantine blinks. Then he blinks again. "That soon?" He considers. "I
have to get you two a present, don't I? Is someone already getting you a
toaster?"

Kitty doesn't say a word. She just leans down over the back of the chair,
tugs the seat cushion free, and flings the entire damn cushion at him.

Constantine takes a step back as the cushion smacks into him. Leaning
down, he picks it up and holds it back out. "Feel any better now?" he asks
innocently.

The glare that's aimed at him might get the glarer arrested for assault in
some states - right up till it cracks, just a little, and Kitty lowers her
face into her hand to hide the grin. "Yes. Dammit. Beer?"

"That'd be favorite," Constantine agrees as he sets the cushion down.
"That's why we're going to beat the hate-thing in the end, you know. It
hasn't got the power of alcohol, and we have."

"If the world winds up being saved by Guinness," Kitty comments as she
heads for the kitchen, "I'm never going to be sober again the rest of my
life."

"I'll drink to that," Constantine calls after her.

"... and to just about anything else, I bet," is called back to him before
Kitty returns. No, really. They keep this stuff around for /Liam/.

"Well, yes," Constantine admits. "You won't tell that angel bloke that I'm
dipping into his supply of Guinness, will you?"

Drink is handed over gravely. "Of course not. Then I'd have to admit I was
giving it to you."

"Ah, and you'd be in as much trouble as me." Constantine lifts the glass,
grinning. "Cheers."

"Hurray for enlightened self-interest." Kitty shakes her head sadly,
leaning against the back of the chair again. "Oh, reminded. Seishi's out
of town for a few days, some kind of weird emergency. So if you need a
ninja... panic a lot."

Constantine raises his brows as he takes a drink. "I won't ask, except to
wonder who's going to make sure Holmes eats while she's gone. I'm sure I
could find a ninja in this city even without Seishi; the problem would be
whether I could find one who wouldn't kill me."

"Not if you're looking for a /smart/ ninja," Kitty returns promptly. Ahem.
"I already promised Seishi to remind Holmes about things like food and
sleep. Since he can't, you know, lock me out of the apartment or
anything."

"Good plan," Constantine observes. "Has Holmes figured out anything about
this whole mess, or has he dismissed it as too full of mystical shite to
warrant his godly attention?"

"I don't," Kitty admits, "even know if anybody's talked to him. We're
probably all too afraid of being mocked. Extensively. Possibly
accurately."

Constantine considers this. "Well, *I'm* certainly not about to talk to
him about it." Holmes is scary.

"Exactly." Not to mention that he tends to be /busy/. Kitty cracks a brief
grin. "Question is, where do we go from here? We've got the reaction and
defenses down, sure. But we need to start /doing/ something, or they'll
just be able to chip away at our supports a little at a time. They've got
all the time they need."

Busy doing what, Constantine doesn't know, and he doesn't want to know.
"Yeah." John's obviously starting to formulate at least a little of a
plan. Just as obviously, he doesn't want to let Kitty know, because she'd
probably yell at him for it.

Kitty eyes him nonetheless. "You've got something in mind," she accuses.
"What're you thinking." Not that she's actually expecting an answer. This
is, after all, Constantine.

Constantine gives Kitty his usual irritatingly charming smile. "I doubt
you want to know what I'm thinking. It's a scary place, the inside of my
head."

"Yeah, I remember." Kitty folds her arms, eyeing him. "Two ground rules.
One, you leave the poor Host the heck out of it. Two, if it involves using
me or Pete as bait, you warn us /in advance/."

Constantine is silent for a moment, considering those terms. He hadn't
even thought of using the Host, although it's an interesting idea--no, now
he's forbidden from it. "All right," he says.

Like being forbidden from something ever stopped him. "I'm not kidding,
John," Kitty warns. "You pull either of those stunts, and the surgeons
will have to do a tracheotomy to retrieve your balls before they can even
/start/ thinking about reattaching them, you understand?"

Constantine's eyes widen noticeably. "Right. No Host, and no using either
of you as bait without telling telling you. Got it."

"Good." Kitty lets out a breath, and unfolds her arms. "Apart from that -
if you've got /any/ ideas, that puts you even farther up on the rest of us
than usual."

Constantine smirks slightly. "I hope it's an idea. It may just be a
delusion." He finishes the beer and sets down the glass on the nearest
convenient table. "I'd better go now, then."

For some reason, tables for putting drinks on tend to be convenient in
here. Just like ash trays. Somebody might think a smoker or a drinker
lived here, somehow. "Good luck," Kitty wishes as she heads for the door.
"Try not to doom more than half of us, huh?"

"Only a third," Constantine says, entirely too cheerfully as he lights
another cigarette and heads for the door as well.

Kitty mutters, "Well, that's better than /my/ average, anyway," and
unlocks the door for him.

Constantine decides not to comment on that, and as he opens the door and
steps back out into the cold, he just says, "Thanks for the beer," and
walks away.