"There's a surprise," John says, breezily. It's out of my hands, John. You know the rules, John. I've already crossed the line, John, you're on your own, etc, ad nauseam. He's got a big, tangled ball of bitter resentment built up towards angels and the haughty way they tell him he's up shit creek without a paddle and they're just going to stand there and watch him flail, whether that's fair of him or not, considering. But he lets it go for now, because the bone he wants to pick isn't really Castiel's and he knows it. Castiel isn't the one who started him doing any of this. John closes his eyes, squares his shoulders, and after taking a deep breath to steel himself and clear his mind, he starts up a chant in ancient Sumerian. His pronunciation is jumbled by time and distance, but the words come out accurate enough to function still. "Listen, impure entity, hear the heartsong of a servant of Yahweh, God of the People."
The markings beneath Cas' feet glow faintly, ruddy in the shadows of the church's hanging light fixtures, just the smallest trickle of his Grace - but still too much to be healthy for a mortal nearby. The tingling is back for John, but it feels sharp as knives against his skin now, nothing like the harmless probing beneath the mistletoe. He grunts, gasps, stumbles back a step... but pushes through, nerves dulled by drink and adrenaline, the intoxicating high that comes every time he manages to invent a new solution to some problem. A bit more shakily, nonetheless: "Listen, impure entity, and reveal yourself to His light in His temple."
As for whether or not he knows what he's doing, well. He always has a vague idea, anyway.
His voice builds until he's shouting in the long-dead language, the windows shake and the overhead lights give sharp whines before the glass bulbs start to splinter and explode under some intangible pressure. "Come forth, entity! Answer, and be--"
All at once, hell breaks loose (though, for once in John's line of work, not literally.) All the sigils painted across the walls light up bright like daylight, the stained glass windows rain down out of their frames in great big shards, and the room fills with a undulating mass of screaming, ghostly men and women their limbs twisted together into the shape of a bull. The din they make is deafening, and John falls to his knees with his hands over his ears, howling along with it for a long moment, looking for all the world like he's going to be useless.
But then the foul creature turns to face him, snorting out whisps of a woman's hair, and John pulls himself together enough to scramble back, crawling behind the pew where he'd set his bucket back down on. Reaching over the wooden seat, he dips his whole hand in, makes an the world's most unpleasant face, and then sucks an entire mouthful of it out of his cupped palm. He almost passes out from the taste alone, but the bull charges and he stands and spits all of it into the entity's approximation of a face.
The liquid lights up everywhere it touches the ghosts, every single droplet spreading magically into the same sort of markings that line the walls. When they've finished spreading across the whole undulating body, every sorry soul making up its beastly form is pulled apart screaming and sucked into the sigils, which pulse with light a few times, then dull again until they're nothing more than paint and blood and horse semen.
"Tell us-- hhhk-- tell us the whiskey bottle's still intact," John wheezes, anti-climatically, nearly doubled over with his hands on his knees, trying to spit as much as he can of the horrible mixture out onto the ground. "... I'm going puke."
John Constantine, ladies and gentlemen. Dignity and grace personified.
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The markings beneath Cas' feet glow faintly, ruddy in the shadows of the church's hanging light fixtures, just the smallest trickle of his Grace - but still too much to be healthy for a mortal nearby. The tingling is back for John, but it feels sharp as knives against his skin now, nothing like the harmless probing beneath the mistletoe. He grunts, gasps, stumbles back a step... but pushes through, nerves dulled by drink and adrenaline, the intoxicating high that comes every time he manages to invent a new solution to some problem. A bit more shakily, nonetheless: "Listen, impure entity, and reveal yourself to His light in His temple."
As for whether or not he knows what he's doing, well. He always has a vague idea, anyway.
His voice builds until he's shouting in the long-dead language, the windows shake and the overhead lights give sharp whines before the glass bulbs start to splinter and explode under some intangible pressure. "Come forth, entity! Answer, and be--"
All at once, hell breaks loose (though, for once in John's line of work, not literally.) All the sigils painted across the walls light up bright like daylight, the stained glass windows rain down out of their frames in great big shards, and the room fills with a undulating mass of screaming, ghostly men and women their limbs twisted together into the shape of a bull. The din they make is deafening, and John falls to his knees with his hands over his ears, howling along with it for a long moment, looking for all the world like he's going to be useless.
But then the foul creature turns to face him, snorting out whisps of a woman's hair, and John pulls himself together enough to scramble back, crawling behind the pew where he'd set his bucket back down on. Reaching over the wooden seat, he dips his whole hand in, makes an the world's most unpleasant face, and then sucks an entire mouthful of it out of his cupped palm. He almost passes out from the taste alone, but the bull charges and he stands and spits all of it into the entity's approximation of a face.
The liquid lights up everywhere it touches the ghosts, every single droplet spreading magically into the same sort of markings that line the walls. When they've finished spreading across the whole undulating body, every sorry soul making up its beastly form is pulled apart screaming and sucked into the sigils, which pulse with light a few times, then dull again until they're nothing more than paint and blood and horse semen.
"Tell us-- hhhk-- tell us the whiskey bottle's still intact," John wheezes, anti-climatically, nearly doubled over with his hands on his knees, trying to spit as much as he can of the horrible mixture out onto the ground. "... I'm going puke."
John Constantine, ladies and gentlemen. Dignity and grace personified.