Hellblazer 1 - War Lord Read Free Page B

forgetting more and more. “Fucking hell!” he muttered. And then he called, “Futheringham!”
    “Thought you’d come mound,” said the colonel, ascending through the roof beside him. “Can’t help yourself but be intrigued—as indicated in your file. Had a full report on you.”
    “I haven’t agreed to anything yet. Who did this ‘full report’ on me?”
    “Young lady called Mercury. Daughter of someone you were sweet on, it seems . . . but that’s another story. Now see here, I’ve got directions, psychic map all worked out. You want back to your body, I’ll lead you there . . . but you’ve got to give me the okay to put a directive in your mind. A suggestion, lead you to our people, in the Middle East. Brief you on the job. Mercury’s there—needs your help, she does. There’s someone planning to kill her. Slowly, I should imagine.”
    Constantine hesitated—he didn’t know why he should trust this ghost. He might not be what he seemed. Might be lying about Mercury. Something else, too, was tugging.
    He looked over the city and saw souls rising up, here and there, from hospitals and car accidents and lonely apartments, the newly dead like thistledown caught in a wind; he felt that wind himself.
    He watched as they were swept off to join the River of Nepenthe—the River of Forgetfulness. He could just make out that etheric river’s gleaming course, wending through the fifth dimension to the infinite Sea of Consciousness—where individual souls melded back into the oversoul.
    Now there was peace. A sea of peace . . . in forgetfulness.
    He felt himself drawn upward, toward the current of the dead; toward that shining Sea of Mind. Toward the dissolution of all burdens, all fears . . . Heaven? Maybe. Hell? Not likely, this time. Reincarnation? Quite possibly.
    They’d soon sort him out, he decided—and he headed toward that tempting, sweetly singing river . . .
    “Hold on there, can’t let you go AWOL again, recruit!” Futheringham said, taking Constantine by his ectoplasmic wrist. “You’ve lost touch with your survived instinct—it’s mostly because you’re disconnected from your body! Been tempted to go that way myself, know it’s tempting, but I’ve got a job to do, haven’t I. So have you. Your young friend Mercury needs your help!”
    Mercury. She’d be an adult now. Even as a child she’d been the most powerful psychic he’d ever met. As the seconds passed, he was increasingly losing touch with his memory, his identity—but he remembered Mercury. Marj’s daughter. She’d looked right into his soul. She’d been almost a daughter to him—then Marj had fallen for another guy, someone with a saner life. She’d taken Mercury off with her.
    Hard to forget Mercury. Sense of loyalty, history there. She’d gotten her nice clean soul dirty, mucking about in the sewage of his psyche. He owed her. Another kind of tugging.
    Just in case Futheringham was telling the truth about her, he would have to look into this. He would have to trust this ghost.
    Reluctantly, Constantine let the ghost of an old soldier draw him away from the River of Nepenthe.
    Let himself be drawn into the sky—but toward the East. Toward Iran.

2
    SOME CAN SEE THEM
    Baghdad, Iraq
    “W e’ve got to hurry,” said Uncle Sabbah, “because soon it will no longer be safe.”
    “Are you sure it is safe now?” Zainab’s grandmother asked. Both of them spoke in Arabic. They all stood awkwardly together in the shade of the high walls around the courtyard.
    Zainab and her younger brother, Ali, exchanged looks mingling excitement and anxiety. Ali, three years younger than Zainab, was turning eight today. They wanted Sabbah to talk their Jaddah, their grandmother, into letting them go with him for the birthday trip; but then again, she had a worrying way of being right.
    Barely summer in Baghdad, already it was hot. Shading her eyes against the afternoon sun, Zainab looked at the children, at the car in the small,