"Fuck you," I spat.
"Hey!" He flashed the knife at me, pointing it right at my chest. "I'm doing you a fucking favor, ain't I?"
"A favor? I'm still not sold on the entire idea. I'm only doing this because..."
His expression darkened. When he first confessed what the Minister had done to him, murdering him, only to bring him right back to life, cursing him to immortality and the forever lingering need to murder others, I didn't believe him. How could you believe that? He'd been ‘reanimated’, his words not mine, ten years ago, and yet he continued to grow, to age. It was a bullshit story to spook me. But then, when I laughed in his face, he reached into a kitchen drawer and whipped out a steak knife. Without missing a beat, he stabbed his hand all the way through and removed the knife so quickly I didn't have time to react past screaming.
Grinning wickedly, Constantine raised his hand to the light as the wound poured blood for only a moment before it slowly began to seal until the wound was gone. He flipped his hand around to show that there wasn't even a scar.
"See."
"If you're immortal, then how did you still age?"
“237. That’s how many candles are used in the ritual. You know why that is, Kansas?”
I shook my head.
He held up two fingers. “Two lives, three times seven. Twenty-one.”
“What?”
He laughed dryly and shrugged. “I don’t know, man. It was written down in my dad’s lunatic ramblings he called his bible. Either way, it was true. I aged and was able to be hurt until my 21stbirthday. Ever since then, nothing.” He stabbed the knife into his thigh and removed it, only for us to watch it heal.
He tossed the knife in the sink. "I'm still trying to figure out that part. Not entirely sure why. I'm grateful, though. Who the fuck would want to stay eleven for eternity?" He snickered.
"Are you sure you can't die?" I stared at his hand.
"I'm not really testing it, but everything else my dad wrote has been true. I mean, other than the pedo porn shit. We’re not going there.”
"If you were reanimated and the Minister was reanimated, how did he die?"
“My dad was not reanimated. He didn’t have the scars.” He motioned to his chest. “In his journals, he wrote that he didn’t want to do it, risk actually fucking dying, and leaving the Family with no leader. He was a fucking coward is what he was. That’s why he was constantly having to sacrifice members of the family. For little spurts of healing, rather than true immortality, like he gave to me.”
So he had no problem killing his own son, but wouldn’t risk it himself? That sounded about right.
"So once this is all over, I should be good to go? I won't be able to die?" I asked.
"When you're twenty-one, if the books are correct. We'll both be immortal."
“And what’s the catch?” I asked, tugging on my septum piercing. There was always a catch.
“Okay, so one thing. One small thing…” He put one finger up. “You’ll have this little… urge.”
“Urge?” I scoffed. “To what?”
“Kill.”
“What?”
“It’s nothing, really." He quickly moved on to explain things in more detail.
Constantine ran me through all the texts and books he'd collected over the last decade, refreshing me on the things I'd learned while still in the Church and teaching me new things he’d learned after.
"I could feel the changes happening in my body when my birthday hit. Things just felt different. My stamina was higher, I was stronger, and that desire I'd felt when they did the ritual returned, and I couldn't get it out of my head. I had to do something about it, and when I did, it all stopped. I mean, for the most part." He shrugged.
"What do you mean?"
"That urge we talked about in the kitchen? Every few weeks, the idea pops back into my head and starts to drive me mad until I take care of it."
