“I’d consider it,” Constantine said, noting that they were now on the floor that contained the door that led out of the palace. Their guards turned them in the opposite direction, however. “But I am not seeking a mate. As I said, my heart has been broken by the glorious Ysolde, and it will never recover. For the love of the saints, woman, will you stop kicking your feet around?” He stopped with an aggravated and exaggerated tsk.

“What?” The look Bee shot him was confused. “I’m not kicking you.”

He turned to face her, grabbing her by the upper arms, and gently shaking her. “I’ve taken all the abuse from you that I will tolerate!” he said loudly, before adding in a much softer voice, “When I disable the guards, be prepared to turn and run.”

“Oooh! Are you breaking out?” Gary asked excitedly, then immediately looked contrite.

Constantine allowed himself a second to sigh, then snatched the birdcage out of Bee’s hand, and swinging it wide, slammed it upside the head of the first wrath demon.

“Whee!” shouted Gary.

The demon, caught off guard, windmilled into the second one, whom Constantine nailed on the side of the face with a backswing.

Gary, hooting triumphantly as he rolled around the cage, clamped his teeth down on the guard’s ear, and yelled mostly unintelligibly, “You guyth run! I’ll handle theeth two.”

“Don’t leave Gary—they’ll torture him!” Bee shrieked when Constantine slammed the cage a second time into the first guard. The demon howled and clutched his head. Evidently Gary hadn’t let go of his ear when Constantine swung the cage a third time.

It wasn’t easy to try to match his stride with Bee’s as the pair of them ran shackled together down the hallway, the screeches of the downed demons following after them, and in the end Constantine shoved Gary’s cage at Bee, and hoisted her over his hip, the position an awkward one, but allowing him to run with relative ease.

“What the hell do you think you are doing?” Bee yelled, her voice thick and breathless, no doubt due to being bumped around on his shoulder. “Mother of pearl, I can’t breathe! Let me down!”

“Mmfrrmph!” Gary mumbled from behind Constantine, and made a wet, unpleasant noise that sounded suspiciously like someone spitting out the ear of a particularly unlucky demon. “They’re up! They’re coming after us! Run, Connie, run!”

“My name”—Constantine gritted his teeth against the pain of Gary’s cage whacking against his legs with every stride—“is Constantine.”

“I’m seeing spots,” Bee gasped, her voice somewhat strangled. “Everything is going black. I need air!”

“They’re about ten yards and closing,” Gary yelled.

Constantine made a heroic effort, and leaped forward to the door that led outside the palace, almost ripping it off the hinges in his desperation to get out of Abaddon.

The late afternoon sun of Seville blinded him momentarily, but he had enough sense to keep moving forward even though he couldn’t see.

Which is why he stumbled over a trash can, and sent himself, Bee, and Gary crashing forward into a black wrought-iron fence.

Four

“Ow,” came a pathetic moan from the birdcage. “I think I chipped a tooth. Wow, was that exciting! I was all ‘oh noes, we’re gonna die’ and then whammo! Connie sprang into action and was super dragon dude! That was the most exciting thing that’s ever happened to me, and that includes having the behemoth eat my body!”

Constantine, dazed for a moment when he hit his head on the grill, got groggily to his feet, prepared to fight off the demons if they had followed them out to the mortal world. He glared down at the shackles that still bound him to Bee, wondering idly how he was to protect her if he couldn’t order her away.

“Bloody hell,” Bee moaned from where she sprawled on top of a trash can, her legs hanging from the side. She pulled herself up to a sitting position, and promptly rolled off the can and onto Gary’s cage, jerking Constantine’s leg as she fell. “Bloody buggery hell.”

“Oh dear, fashion malfunction,” Gary said, rolling over onto the back of his head to stare up into where Bee’s chest was pressed against the cage. “A couple of buttons are undone, dear, and evidently you’ve… popped out, for lack of a better phrase… of your unmentionables. Which are a lovely shade of mauve, I do have to say. Aren’t they nice, Connie? The lingerie, not the parts that are popped out of it, because really, once you’ve seen one breast, you’ve seen them all.”

Constantine, being a male, and having natural instincts and urges common to those of his gender, couldn’t help looking, but he realized almost instantly that congratulating Bee on her nice breast wouldn’t be appreciated, and instead pretended not to watch when she swore and wrestled herself into what was admittedly a very feminine bra. “I don’t think we’re likely to be set upon by the demons who confined us, but we should move from this spot.”

“Because they can’t enter the mortal world, you mean?” Bee asked, taking his hand when he offered it. He helped her up, and plucked off bits of banana skin and leaves of lettuce from where they clung to her back. “I know some demons can, but don’t you usually have to summon them?”

“Wrath demons are different,” Constantine answered. He frowned down at where Gary had righted himself in his cage, and was looking around with interest. “We should put him back, but I hesitate to open the door again.”

“I don’t want to go back!” Gary protested. “Asmodeus will just stuff me back in his bedroom, and that’s no fun. He hardly ever talks to me, and he doesn’t even like to watch movies together. Can’t I stay with you guys?”

“We are shackled together, have a demon lord and who knows how many demons after us, and have to get from Seville to Paris without being captured again,” Constantine said, putting the birdcage on top of a garbage can. “We have no need of a disembodied head to add to our concerns.”

“You can’t just throw him away,” Bee said, standing still when Constantine tried to walk away.

Gary’s lower lip trembled again.

“Why not?” Constantine asked, averting his eyes.