The Invitation (14 page)

J
OHN CONSTANTINE
leaned against the wall and glared at the rain. He and Mister E had taken cover in a dark doorway. The Stranger seemed oblivious to the weather and continued his slow pace up and down the sidewalk.

“I heard a joke about you once, E,” Constantine said.

“A joke?”

“I think it was a joke. Bloke I met in a bar in Katmandu said you always carried a pocket full of stakes in case you met a vampire, and a gun loaded with silver bullets, in case you ever met a werewolf.”

Without a word, Mister E pulled a pointed wooden stake from inside his trench coat.

Involuntarily, Constantine took a step back. “Blimey,” he exclaimed. “I take it you hammer first and ask questions afterward.”

“The only good vampire is a dead vampire, Constantine.”

“Hate to argue a point, but aren't they all dead by definition?”

“Fool.” Mister E slipped the stake back into his coat.

“You ought to watch it, you know,” Constantine warned. “One day the bogeymen are going to come out of their closets and start parading down the high street. They'll be marching for equal rights, and your head on a platter as their worst oppressor.”

“Is that meant to be funny?” Mister E snarled.

“If you're lucky.” John held out a pack of cigarettes toward the blind man. “Smoke?”

“Unlike you, I do not defile the temple of my body.”

“Probably sworn off caffeine too,” Constantine muttered. “And sweets.”

“Quiet,” the Stranger said. “They are returning.”

Tim spotted Constantine right away, his blond head unprotected from the rain. The two others seemed to blend more into the shadows.

“Hullo, Tim!” John greeted him. “How was Fairyland?”

“I'm not sure I remember it properly,” Tim admitted. “It's all gone a bit fuzzy, like a dream. I sort of remember it, but I don't think I can talk
about it. Not in any way that would make sense.”

“Are you hungry?” asked the Stranger. “Do you need rest? Or are you ready for your final journey?”

“I don't know. I guess so. I guess I'm ready.” Tim hadn't felt ready for any of his previous adventures, and so now he asked himself why he should feel any more ready for this one. He jerked his head toward Mister E, who was looming silently in the doorway. “I suppose he's going to be my guide.”

“Yes.” Mister E nodded. “I am also ready.”

“Okay, Yo-yo,” Tim said to his owl. “Ready to go to tomorrow?”

“No,” Mister E ordered. “The owl is a bird of darkness and night. It will stay here.”

This guy is seriously uptight
, Tim thought. But he realized that there were probably more rules where they were going, and Mister E would know them better than he did.

“Tim?” Dr. Occult said.

Tim sighed. He would have liked having Yo-yo along for company. “Okay. You stay here, then,” he told the owl. He looked at Dr. Occult. “You'll take care of him, right?”

Dr. Occult nodded.

Everyone seemed a lot more serious this time. It made Tim nervous.
Maybe it's just because this is their last chance to show me stuff
, Tim told
himself,
and if I don't learn it all now, I never will
. He guessed that the pressure was on them too.

“Take my arm,” said Mister E.

“I thought if you were…well, blind,” Tim said, “then you'd want to hold onto
my
arm.”

“Where we're going, it is you who will be walking blind. I know the path. Now close your eyes.”

Tim squeezed his eyes shut.

“Step forward, child,” Mister E instructed.

“Just walk?”

“Yes, and keep your eyes tightly closed as you walk, until I tell you to halt and to open them.”

“Where are we going? Are you going to show me my future?”

“Possibly, boy. Keep walking.”

Tim placed one foot in front of the other, very aware of the looming presence of Mister E beside him. He didn't feel anything. Not the stomach-wrenching whoosh that he'd felt when he was taken to the past with the Stranger. Not the disorienting instantaneous travel he'd experienced with John Constantine, nor the strangeness he felt when walking through the gate with Dr. Occult. He was now just blindly placing one foot in front of the other.

Blind. Tim wondered if this was the way Mister E felt all the time. He had no way of knowing what
was in front of him, behind him, around him. He was vulnerable. Tim shivered. He didn't like the feeling.

“We are fifteen years into your future,” Mister E said. “Or one of them. You may open your eyes.”

Just like that?
Tim's eyes flicked open. “What do you mean, ‘or one of them'?” he asked Mister E.

“There are very few stable futures, boy.”

Tim looked around—and instantly wanted to shut his eyes again. They were at the scene of some sort of crime—or massacre. There were bodies, and blood, and screams all around them. Funny, he hadn't heard anything until he'd opened his eyes. Maybe if he shut them again, the wails and moans and shouts would stop. No. Tim shuddered, closing his eyes and then reopening them.
That doesn't help. Not at all.

“The future is a series of infinitely branching possibilities,” Mister E said, as if completely unconcerned by the destruction and mayhem around him. He dragged Tim forward, deeper into the scene. “When we walk it, we walk down the most probable paths, those with the greatest likelihood of occurring.”

“So…so it's likely I'll wind up in this terrible place?” Tim asked, his eyes scanning the scene. A
deserted warehouse, dark streets, garbage, bodies. More bodies. More blood.

“But we aren't really traveling to the future, are we?” Tim asked. “This is like when I went to the past, right? We're just observing. Nothing can happen to us here. They can't see us.”

“No,” Mister E said. “We are truly in the future. One of them.”

They had come around a corner. Tim ducked as a lightning bolt shot toward his head. He threw himself to the ground. Staying low, he peered up from his position on the ground. A pair of creatures in the sky were battling each other with lightning. One looked like the strange half wolf, half man he had seen at the nightclub with Zatanna. The other was some sort of monster with claws and a thrashing tail.

Then a group of large new creatures came into view, tackling the first two. They were thick, with bald heads, and wore what looked like uniforms. Terrible piercing wails rose up all around Tim.

“What's going on?” he cried.

“We are at the final magical conflict of this age. You watch the last battle, child. Fifteen years into your future they will fight.”

Then Tim's heart squeezed in his chest. He recognized the woman by the streetlight. “That's
Zatanna!” he shouted. She slumped against the light, dropping onto her knees. The light illuminated her wounds. She was bleeding. “She's hurt!” He scrambled to his feet. “We have to do something!”

“Why should we do anything?” Mister E asked, grabbing Tim's arm and stopping him. “This world is a possibility. Don't you understand? It hasn't happened yet. It may never happen. Or not like this.”

Mister E still had Tim's arm; he dragged him farther along. Around the corner, Tim saw another horrible sight. John Constantine, also bleeding, slouched on the ground in a doorway.

“John!” Tim called. He yanked his arm out of Mister E's grip and charged over to his friend. He didn't care if he was breaking the rules. He had to help Constantine. John looked even worse up close. Tim knelt beside him.

“More ghosts?” John mumbled.

“Sort of,” Tim answered. He glanced behind him and saw that Mister E stood a few feet away. “We're from the past. Can you see us?”

“I don't know. I think I may be delirious.” John's eyes began to focus on Tim's face. He shook his head as if he was trying to clear it, then stared again. “Tim,” he murmured. Then louder, “Timothy Hunter?”

“Yes!” Tim felt relieved that John recognized him.

“You little bastard,” John spat. “I should have strangled you myself fifteen years ago. Or let them kill you. It would have saved us all a lot of grief. E had the right idea. I thought you were such a nice kid.”

Tim sank back on his heels, stunned. He felt as if John had smacked him across the face. “Wh-What are you talking about, John? We're friends.”

“What am I talking about? Do you see him? Up there? The leader of the opposition?”

John pointed a shaky finger toward the roof of a crumbling building. A tall, ominous man towered on the edge, sending out lethal lightning rays from the palms of his hands. He was surrounded by what looked like demons. Whatever they were, Tim knew they weren't human, and they reeked of evil. He could smell it from where he was.

“The guy in the blue suit?” Tim asked. He couldn't understand how any of this explained why John seemed to hate him now. “Did he do this to you?”

“That's you, Tim,” John said. “What you've become.”

“No!” Tim gasped. He clutched the lapels of
John's trench coat, his fingers opening and closing frantically. “It's not true. It won't happen like that!”

“Sorry, kid. It already happened. Oh yeah…and your pal Molly. You treat her right rotten. Disgraceful. I should have stopped that too.”

“No,” Tim moaned. He bent over John, his forehead touching the man's chest. He forced himself not to cry, not to throw up. “It can't be. It won't be.”

“Hey, kid,” John said.

Tim stood back up. John looked even paler now.

“Could you…could you light my cigarette, kid? The lighter is over there on the ground. I can't seem to move to reach it.”

Tim hated seeing proud, free John Constantine like this. He crawled to the lighter, picked it up, and scurried back. He lit John's cigarette without even scolding him for smoking.

“Thanks, kid,” John said. And then the light went out of his blue eyes.

Tim stumbled backward, horrified. He banged into Mister E and whirled around. “Is it true?” Tim demanded. “Is that me?”

“Yes.”

Tim backed away from Mister E and charged down the alleyway, away from John, away from Zatanna, away from what John had
told him about Molly. But it was a dead end. He faced a brick wall covered with graffiti, and knew the only way out of this nightmare was with Mister E. He'd never get home on his own. And that would mean he'd never be able to prevent this horrible future from happening.

Mister E approached Tim slowly, calmly, as if they had all the time in the world. “But this is not the only future. There are others in which you are Mage Supreme. Keeper of the Light. And there are an infinite number of options. In some of them, you are entirely uninvolved in this battle. And indeed there are futures in which this battle doesn't even occur.”

Tim stared at Mister E. “I don't understand. So is this one more likely than the others?”

A nasty smile crossed Mister E's face. “No.”

“Then why bring me here?” Tim demanded. “Are you just trying to upset me?”

“I felt you should see it. That is all.”

Tim bit his lip, fighting the fury welling up inside him. “I don't like you, Mister E, or whatever your name is.”

“You are not required to like me. I have shown you the triumph of evil as a precaution. Good is to be protected, evil eradicated. At all costs. That is my duty and my mission.”

“I'm just a kid!” Tim shouted. “I shouldn't
have to see this stuff. Take me away from here!”

“Very well.”

The world went black, as if lights blinked out. Mister E's voice floated toward Tim in the darkness. “Whatever occurred in that conflict—in any timeline in which it actually occurred—it will be the last brief flowering of magic of our era,” Mister E said. “And your role may determine much.”

Tim had never hated anyone as much as he hated the blind man beside him.

“I can feel the anger inside you,” Mister E said. “I am quite used to it.”

“Well, maybe if you cared more about people and their feelings, they wouldn't hate you,” Tim spat.

“Let me tell you about people, Timothy,” Mister E said. “My father taught me all I needed to know about people. That is why I'm blind.”

“What?” Tim asked. He didn't see the connection.

“My father was wise. He knew that eyes could be misled—by charm, by shallow appearances, by glamour. I do not need my eyes. I see good and I see evil. Nothing else.”

“But how did your father teach you that? And what does that have to do with your being blind?”

“He was a great man. He didn't want me to be blinded by shining surfaces. So he removed my eyes for me.”

Tim stared, stunned. “That's sick!” he blurted.

“It has shaped my life,” Mister E said. “And I am here to help shape yours.”

“T
HEY'VE BEEN GONE
a while,” John Constantine needlessly pointed out. He dropped the cigarette to the ground and lit a new one as he ground out the old. Back to chain-smoking. That's what this lot did to him. “What exactly is E meant to be showing the kid, anyway?”

“The rise and fall of magic in the years to come,” the Stranger explained. “But no more than a thousand years into the future. Beyond that, it becomes difficult to return.”

“I would not question your judgment, sir, but why did you choose E?” Dr. Occult asked from his spot in the doorway. “I have heard disturbing things about him.”

“One must use the vessels available,” the Stranger replied. “Remember, he fought valiantly by us in Calcutta, and we'd still be battling the Cold Flame if he had not. And he is able—as we
are not—to show the child the times yet to come.”

“I still don't like it,” Constantine grumbled.

The Stranger sighed. “Can you travel into the future?” he challenged.

“Only like everyone else, boss,” Constantine admitted. “You know. One minute at a time.”

 

“Where are we now?” Tim asked. “Or should I ask
when
?”

They stood on some sort of observation platform, looking out over an amazing city. It was like something out of a science fiction movie. Tall buildings gleamed, and crafts darted between them, as if people drove small spaceships instead of cars.

“There is no magic in this future,” Mister E explained. “This is a world of science. Of technology. People do not choose magic, and therefore it doesn't exist.”

This reminded Tim of Dr. Terry Thirteen. Constantine had said magic didn't exist for the professional debunker because he didn't believe in it.

“Where magic is concerned,” Mister E continued, “there is always an initial decision, an initial willingness to let it into your life. If that is not there, then neither is magic.”

“Oh.”

“This civilization turned it down.”

They moved quickly, and the scenes shifted in
front of Tim as if he were watching a fast-moving slide show, fast-forwarding through time: an orange-hued world that seemed to be on fire; next, a sky of spaceships populated by androids; tidal waves destroying a city—just like in Atlantis; new cities rising up. Tim felt dizzy, as he had when he flashed through the past with the Stranger.
But I must be getting used to this
, he thought.
I'm not going to throw up this time.

They slowed down, and Tim realized that they were on a beach, beside a dark ocean. “Where are we now?” he asked.

“About forty centuries away from our own time. I have never traveled this far into the future before,” Mister E said.

“It's so dark,” Tim commented, then gave Mister E a quick embarrassed glance. “Oh, sorry, I forgot.”

“No need to apologize. I wear my blindness proudly. I see more than you.”

“You can't tell that it's dark, though.”

“Look up,” Mister E ordered. “Do you see that up there? That's the sun.”

“That thing?” Tim stared at the dark orange circle in the sky. “How can the sun be out and it still be this dark?”

“Perhaps it has no heart to shine.”

Tim looked up and down the beach. “I guess
there aren't any people anymore.”

“You'd be wrong. There. Do you see them?” Mister E pointed to some figures climbing out of the water.

How does he do that?
Tim wondered
. Are his other senses supermagnified to make up for being blind?
He glanced in the direction that Mister E pointed.

“But they aren't human, are they?” Tim squinted at the green, skeletal, distorted figures.

“They are all that's left. Perhaps fifty thousand people scrabbling a living on soil from which every nutrient has been leeched long since, from seas that barely support marine life. They live here in the dark.”

“Why are they green?”

“Are they? I have no idea. Photosynthesis perhaps? Anyway, by now, concepts like science and magic have lost all meaning. There is only desperate survival.”

“So this is how it ends,” Tim said. “Some green skeletons digging for worms under a dying sun?”

“Possibly.”

“Don't you know?”

“I have never traveled this far forward. I have only heard rumors.”

“Oh. Well, there doesn't seem to be much to see here.” He looked up at Mister E. “Shall we go
back to our time, then?”

“No. We go on.”

 

This time it was Dr. Occult who broke the tense silence back in London. “Shouldn't they be back by now?”

There was a thick pause. “Yes,” the Stranger finally admitted.

“Is there a problem?” Constantine demanded.

“I am afraid so,” the Stranger said. “They are lost to me. Wherever they have gone, it is so far into the future that I can no longer feel them. How about you, Dr. Occult?”

Dr. Occult shook his head. “They are completely gone.”

“This is ridiculous!” Constantine exploded. “What are you saying? That they've headed off into the far future and there's nothing you can do to get them back?”

“Yes.”

“I can't believe it! You trusted Tim to that loon? There are beds of kelp smarter than you, mate.”

“I have made a mistake. I realize that. I apologize.”

That only made Constantine even angrier. “That's not going to bring Tim back. He's just a kid. He trusted us to keep him safe. I don't—”

“Believe it,” Dr. Occult finished for him. “We know. We also know that to err is human.”

Constantine gave the Stranger a sideways glance. “If he's human, then I'm a toaster,” he muttered.

“We must concentrate our efforts on getting them back,” the Stranger said. “This bickering is futile.”

“Can't you reach them?” Constantine asked. “Aren't there any gods or demons or anything you could send to get them back?”

“No,” the Stranger replied. “But you have hit on something. Dr. Occult, the bird is Timothy's.”

“Yes!” Dr. Occult took Yo-yo from John. Gazing deeply into the bird's yellow eyes, he addressed it in a commanding voice. “Listen to me, nightbird. Timothy, your master, where he is, wherever he might be, find him. Protect him. Help him.” He tipped his head toward the Stranger. “My friend, lend me strength.”

The Stranger nodded.

“Constantine, lend me will. Together you will both lend me faith.”

They all concentrated on the bird for another moment.

“Now go!” Dr. Occult instructed.

Yo-yo flew off and vanished into the dark sky, the three men united in their hopes for the bird
and its mission.

“I notice you didn't tell the bird to bring him back,” Constantine commented.

Dr. Occult kept his eyes on the sky. “If he has gone that far into the future, it is unlikely that there is any force that can bring him back to us.”

“So now what?” Constantine asked in a quiet voice.

The Stranger placed a hand on each of his companions' shoulders. “We wait.”

Constantine sighed. “I wish you'd stop saying that.”

 

Tim and Mister E floated in black, empty space. Tim was getting bored. Not much to see in the future, it seemed. And they didn't seem to be going anywhere. Just aimless floating.

“Where are we going now?” Tim asked. He was afraid he was starting to whine—like little kids on a road trip who kept asking “Are we there yet?” But he was growing impatient. Maybe if they had some destination in mind, he'd pay more attention. There'd be something to pay attention
to
, at least.

“To the end of time. To the very end.”

“What happens then?”

“We will find out, won't we?”

Tim sighed. More riddles. He was fed up. He
was more than ready for this portion of the program to be over. If only he could change the channel or something.

“What do you see, child?” Mister E asked.

Tim peered around. Now that Mister E mentioned it, something
was
different—changing. His surroundings weren't just a flat black nothing anymore. “I don't know, it's so strange.”

He tried to make sense of what he was seeing. Streaks of white light hurtled toward him but vanished as they came closer. “Everything in space is coming our way. All the stars are falling and the lights are going out. And it's a weird sort of color.”

“What color?” Mister E asked eagerly. “Tell me.”

“It's sort of a bluey purple. Whatever the color is at the end of the rainbow. Violet. All the stars, and galaxies.”

“Blue shift!” Mister E declared.

“Pardon?”

“In our time,” Mister E explained, “we have a red shift, as the stars and galaxies head away from us. Our universe is expanding. Now the universe is ending, and you're seeing the blue shift, as everything returns to the center.”

“
Violet
shift, you mean,” Tim corrected.

“What's happening now?” Mister E asked.

“Nothing,” Tim replied. “There's nothing happening at all.”

“This is how it ends, then,” Mister E mused. “In darkness. In nothing. Interesting.”

“Dead boring, if you ask me,” Tim grumbled.

“This is the end, Tim. I can go no farther.”

“Fine by me,” Tim said, eager to go home. “Once you've been to the end of the universe, what else is there to do?” He scanned the darkness, the blankness. “I'd write my name on something, but there's nothing to write on. And no souvenirs to take home either.” He faced Mister E again, who was floating nearby. “All right, then, let's go back.”

“Very well. Come here. Let me hold your arm.”

Tim moved toward Mister E, who was in an odd position now, one of his arms twisted behind his back.
Is he hiding something?
Tim wondered.
What could he possibly have picked up out here?
“What's that behind your back? What have you got?”

“I said, come here!”

Mister E lunged at him, grabbing the neck of his T-shirt. The sudden movement startled Tim, giving him no time to react.

“What's going on?” Tim demanded, struggling to get away. The strange gravity made it difficult to use his weight against Mister E and break free. “What's with you?”

“I don't want to hurt you, Tim,” Mister E crooned. “I only want to protect you from the world, because it could corrupt you.” He lifted Tim by his shirt into the air. Tim's eyes widened as he watched Mister E raise his other hand. He held a pointed wooden stake above his head. “Believe me, this is for your own good!”

Tim bit Mister E's hand, hard. It was enough to make the blind man release him with a yell. Tim fell backward, out of Mister E's reach.

It was as if Mister E didn't feel the wound, despite the blood gushing from his hand. “You cannot hurt me!” he cried. “Mine is the glory of rightness! Mine is courage unsullied!”

Tim was so disgusted he stopped being scared for a moment. “So you bring me here where there's absolutely no chance of anyone rescuing me? Yeah, that's courage all right!”

“Say good-bye, child.”

Mister E somehow knew how to move more quickly than Tim did in this strange end-of-the-world atmosphere. The blind man seemed to be in front of him in an instant, one hand on his shoulder, the other rearing up, up, up. And then the stake plunged down.

Into Yo-yo.

The owl let out a shriek, and only then did Tim realize what had happened. Yo-yo had
appeared out of nowhere and flew in front of him, to protect him. Yo-yo had taken the stake for him.

Blood and feathers flew everywhere and Yo-yo vanished, just…disappeared. Tim grabbed the bloody stake which was floating in the space in front of him. He hurled the wooden weapon at Mister E, knocking off the man's dark glasses.

Tim felt sick—from the blood, and Yo-yo's sacrifice. And now empty orbs in place of eyes stared out at him from Mister E's twisted face. Tim doubled over, breathing hard.

“You don't understand how powerful you might be,” Mister E said. “I can see you, boy. You shine like a beacon in the darkness. I don't need eyes to find you. And I don't need a weapon. I can use my hands.”

Tim felt powerful hands around his throat. He gasped for breath. He clutched at Mister E's fingers, trying desperately to pry them off his neck. He didn't think he could last much longer. The man was so strong—

“Stop that!” a voice ordered out of the darkness.

Mister E tumbled away, as if something had torn him from Tim.

Tim saw a strange man, wearing a dark cloak and hood, floating toward them.
Now what?
He
rubbed his throat, swallowing a few times, and took in deep gulps of air.

“This is neither meet nor proper, behaving thus at the end of things.”

The hooded man was now beside them. A lectern holding a thick book appeared. Had that been there all along? Tim wondered.

“You are Timothy Hunter,” the man said. “And you are…?”

“I call myself Mister E.”

“Remarkable. Neither of you is in my book. One moment.”

He consulted the large book on the lectern. “Ah yes. There is a footnote to this effect. I had almost forgotten. You are far from your own time, mortals.”

A pretty, dark-haired woman appeared behind the man. “Hello, big brother.” She wore all black, and lots of bangles and necklaces. Tim thought she looked like the kind of girl who'd have a tattoo and a belly-button ring. Like the Goth girl he knew at the council flats in London. She looked a little younger than Zatanna. What was she doing here? “Hello, you two.”

Tim's head swam. Why were they floating around in space chatting as if asking directions to Heathrow, when just minutes ago Mister E had tried to kill him? And on top of it, the whole
universe was ending! Tim gave up trying to figure out anything.