City of Demons #4 L. January 2010) is the fourth issue of a five-part miniseries. Constantine and Marie close in on Yorke and Young, while the last of the uncaptured patients converge on a London bus.
Plot summary[]
Yorke and Young shut Jeremiah in with John and Marie, expecting him to kill them. Instead, John realises that because is is the source of the infection he is able to order the infected around. Marie asks how they can cure him and John says that they can't - he's dead, and the only thing keeping him standing up is the demon blood. John yanks the blades out, letting Jeremiah's blood sizzle on the hallowed ground of St Bartholemew's hospital. Jeremiah slumps to the floor and finally, properly dies.
Underneath London, Yorke and Young are inspecting their 'army' of just 20 crazies. It isn't quite the force they'd hoped for, although Young points out that it'll be enough to cause chaos once they unleash them on Parliament - and that not all of their subjects have been accounted for yet.
Two such subjects are Kye - a disabled young man - and his young mother, both of whom have had operations in the last two months. After a great deal of nagging, Kye convinces his mum to let him buy a videogame as a reward for going to the hospital. She angrily wishes Kye's father hadn't run on out them. They head outside and catch a bus.
In another part of London, an illegal immigrant and former gangster from Sierra Leone is waxing the floor of a hotel. Three months ago he killed Sgt Dami' Achuebe and stole his identity to escape a bounty on his head. Now he's working for less than minimum wage under a self-important little prick that he would've killed without a thought back in his own country. After being admonished for cleaning the floors in sight of guests, he's sent home. He heads out and catches the same bus as Kye and his mum.
John gets a bad premonition
And further down that same bus route, a Muslim bank manager is quietly complaining to herself about the casual prejudice and lazy assumptions she has to put up with day after day. She gets on the bus alongside Kye, his mother and Dami' - and John Constantine and Marie. John says that he had a funny feeling about the bus, that there are three or four infected people on there, and as he does so he collapses with another demon-blood headache.
Chaos on the bus
As he does so a man stands at the back of the bus, unveiling a shotgun. He babbles madly about how they won't stop talking - POV shots suggest that he thinks they're all judging him - and Marie gets up to try to calm him down. As she does so, though, the infected passengers all rush him at once. He fires four times, killing them all. But rather than kill John and Marie he turns the gun on himself. Marie takes a crucifix from around her neck and dips it in his blood, but when the blood fails to hiss and bubble she realises that he was just an ordinary human.
Trouble for Constantine
Back at Tottenham Court Road tube station, Marie distracts passers-by by begging for change while John breaks into the ventilation shaft, correctly guessing that the girl he'd seen in issue two must have dragged the body down there. The pair climb deeper and deeper into the tunnels, but are surprised by the girl, who knocks them both unconscious...
Continued in City of Demons issue five.
Goofs[]
- The dialogue and blocking in the opening scene contradicts what was shown at the end of the last issue.
- John says that the demon blood can't survive in the hallowed St Bart's hospital, but that's the same hospital that the doctors were performing their experiments in. Why didn't it affect the blood the first time around?
Notes[]
- The sub-title of this issue is taken from the song of the same name by The Ruts.