Disclaimer: I own nothing you recognise; you know the drill.

Feedback: Always appreciated.

AN: Did a bit of research about the original Constantine show and realised that I needed to refine a few of my past ideas about how angels worked, so Chapter 4 has received a few edits; hope you find my changes interesting.

The Angel of Fire

"So," Barry looked over at Constantine as they walked further into the dark cave, "what do you think this cave has to do with anything?"

"I'll get back to you on that."

"Get back to us?" Ray looked at Constantine in surprise. "Why not just-?"

"Because if I'm wrong, I'd rather not have everyone get worried about nothing."

"Such as?" Lexa asked, looking uncertainly at the exorcist.

"You'll see either way," Constantine said, his tone nonchalant even as he smiled reassuring at the policewoman.

Barry didn't exactly like not telling Lexa everything when she was now working with them, but so far she seemed to be assuming that the reason her friend had attacked them was that Mattie had fallen victim to some kind of psychological meltdown after whatever had happened to make her a metahuman, rather than realise that 'Silver Banshee' was actually possessing her. Sara had been able to provide handcuffs to keep the woman contained while they went into the cave, but Barry and Constantine had discreetly stayed behind, Barry creating a stone carving on Constantine's instructions that would apparently keep Banshee trapped until they came back. Barry guessed that Lexa would have some questions about the situation later, but she probably attributed most of those to the fact that she was dealing with metahumans for the first time, rather than realising the full scope of the problem.

He wasn't entirely comfortable with the idea of keeping the supernatural nature of the threat secret from Lexa, but on the other hand, he could appreciate that this wasn't the time to have that kind of talk when they were still walking into danger.

"So…" Lexa looked uncertainly around at the others, her gun held at her side. "How did you all… come together like this?"

"It's a complicated situation," Sara explained. "Heat Wave, Atom and I were selected to help another man deal with a… long-term problem he had to overcome, and we brought Warlock in as a consultant for our current situation after our first leader moved on; Flash is an associate who we work with as appropriate."

"As appropriate?"

"Just in case we're ever dealing with a big enough problem like that superpowered Nazi invasion last year," Barry clarified. "Not a great experience, but… well, it's always good to have back-up available, right?"

"Yeah, that really didn't look good…" Lexa said, shaking her head at the memory. "I mean, I get freedom of speech, but there has to be a limit, and letting Nazis get that coordinated…"

"Yeah," the Flash nodded, a quick glance with Sara confirming that neither of them were going to tell her the full details of that particular event any time soon. "Look, let's just… see what's down here."

"And work out where it came from."

"Came from?" Mick looked at Lexa with a raised eyebrow. "This thing's new?"

"I've come up here for a weekend run practically every week since I graduated, and I've literally never seen-" Lexa began, before a creature that put Barry in mind of a monkey with the head and claws of a lion leapt out towards the group. Sara struck the demon with one of her batons before it could get in too close, followed by Lexa pulling out her gun and firing a quick shot at the centre of the demon's mass as it lay on the ground.

"Nice shot," Mick nodded at the cop even as she stared at the creature in shock.

"Wh… what the Hell is that?" the young woman looked between the thing she had just fought and her new associates.

"That could be a very long story," Sara observed, looking over at Lexa with a slight smile. "Do you want the short version?"

"How short?"

"It's a demon."

"I… don't think I wanted to know that," Lexa swallowed, before looking back at Sara. "You're serious?"

"It's a demon," Constantine nodded. "We've probably got a few more of that lot down here, actually."

"And… Mattie?"

"We're thinking some kind of spirit," Mick shrugged.

"She's possessed?"

"Like Flash said, we'll work out what to do with her once we've found whatever's down here," Constantine cut in. "I get that you're worried about your friend, but isn't your sister the priority right now?"

Lexa simply glared at the exorcist for a moment before she sighed and nodded at him.

"Let's go," Sara said, looking over at Barry. "And stay close; I don't want something to end up… possessing you or anything like that because you got too far ahead."

Barry nodded in acknowledgement of Sara's request, deciding not to object to her taking charge like that; he might have been in this business for over four years, but he'd experienced enough to recognise that he still didn't know that much about real magic, where Sara had at least been dealing with magic for a year or so.

"To check, if we run into more stuff like that-?"

"Just hit it and it should stay down," Constantine confirmed as he indicated the small form on the ground. "If that thing's an example of what's down here, it's basically more of a foot soldier than anything dangerous; they should normally just be a problem because they're attacking people in larger numbers."

"So… does that mean we should expect more of those things?" Lexa asked uncertainly.

"If they were they'd have started attacking us already; if I'm right, I'm thinkin' they're just a few stragglers hanging 'round here after being drawn in by the cave."

"The cave?" Mick looked pointedly at Constantine. "What's the cave have to do with anything?"

"Tell you once I'm sure," Constantine affirmed as they continued walking, pausing only to telekinetically throw another small demon into a wall as it leapt towards them. "This is definitely not lookin' good…"

"At least they're… just annoying, right?" Sara said, keeping up a guarded expression as she struck out at another approaching demon with her batons, knocking the creature down with almost disturbing ease. Mick turned his flame-gun on it without anyone even needing to ask him to deal with the creature, followed by Ray firing a couple of energy blasts to knock down the next wave.

As the group advanced further, Barry noted a strange illumination in the cave around them, which made it strangely easy to see the path ahead without offering a clear source for the light. As they advanced further, a few more demon-figures attacked them, ranging in type from a kind of shapeless clay-like figure to a few things that made Barry think of scarecrows, but the group were able to force them all back easily enough, ranging from Barry knocking them aside with a couple of fast punches to Constantine throwing another into the wall with a quick wave of telekinesis. At one point Lexa even managed to shoot a demon that resembled a giant centipede with a human skull for a head when it appeared on the ground, although she still looked at it in a manner that made Barry wonder if she was fighting down the urge to scream at just how weird her life had become so quickly.

Remember, she's not Alex; she's the 'local' Alex who hasn't faced anything like this before…

Just as Barry was about to take another step, Sara held out both arms to bring an abrupt halt to their progress. Looking ahead of the group, Barry realised that their path had come to what looked like the edge of an underground ditch, and a glance around revealed that the area they'd been walking through had suddenly opened up. There was now a deep canyon in front of them that had a stream of what Barry could only think of as purple water at the bottom of it, the water running in both directions as though the cave they had initially entered had just led them up to this point. Barry also noted a series of strange carvings on the walls that put him in mind of occult symbols he'd seen in TV shows and a few ritualistic-based crime scenes before Central City became the metahuman centre of the world, but he soon decided to focus on the more obvious strange detail of the purple water.

"What is that?" Ray asked, joining Barry as the two of them leaned over to look more carefully at the flowing water below them, the lights on Ray's helmet illuminating the strange stream all the more clearly.

"Just what I thought," Constantine said grimly, briefly stroking one of the carvings on the walls before he moved over to take a better look at the canyon. "This river is a chaos flow."

"A what?" Barry asked, standing up to look curiously at the warlock.

"Basically, it's a tributary of the River Styx."

"Styx?" Sara looked at Constantine. "Wasn't that part of the Greek underworld?"

"Exactly," Constantine nodded. "These things tend to emerge when some kind of chaotic force tries to influence a place, like some kind of major supernatural force bein' summoned or anything like that."

"Such as… what drew us here in the first place?" Sara asked.

"And the reason we haven't seen one of these before?" Ray put in. "I mean, with everything we've been dealing with, there's got to have been a few cases that… well, could have caused this kind of thing?"

"Last few fugitives just broke out wherever and decided to enjoy themselves; this thing was explicitly summoned, it's far more powerful, and whatever let it out probably didn't do a very neat job doing the original ritual anyway."

"So now what?" Mick asked. "We dam this thing?"

"Not an option," Constantine shook his head. "Even if we can find what started this particular flow in the first place, only thing to do after it's been created is just let it run its course, and that could take some time."

"Excuse me?" Lexa looked sharply at the exorcist. "Are you seriously telling me I'm going to have my town be a tributary of the River Styx for the foreseeable future and there's nothing I can do about it?"

"You can learn a bit more about what you're likely to be dealing with while it's here, but that's pretty much it," Constantine nodded.

"And… look, are you seriously telling me that Linda's down here?" Lexa pulled out her phone as she looked tearfully along either side of the canyon before turning back to Constantine. "If this is… I mean, the River Styx was meant to lead to the underworld; could that mean-?"

"Couldn't happen," Constantine shook his head. "Chaos flows attract the supernatural, but they don't let the dead out of the underworld, even if they want to come out; if Linda was dead, she couldn't have sent that message."

"Uh… I get that this isn't my field, but if she was-?" Barry began.

"Takes longer than this to become a ghost, so that's not an option either," Constantine confirmed.

"You're not just-?" Lexa began.

"Trust me, John is very blunt about this kind of thing; if he thought your sister was dead, he'd be telling you right away," Ray put in, briefly smiling at the policewoman before his grin faltered. "I… appreciate that's probably not something to smile about, but you get my point, right?"

"Right…" Lexa said, looking uncertainly along either side of the canyon before turning back to Sara and Barry. "So… where now?"

"That way," Constantine said, pointing in the direction that Barry only just now realised was leading downwards. "Whatever caused this flow will be as far underground as possible; it may have started somewhere else, but the source was brought here to keep the effects concentrated."

"The source?" Lexa looked sharply at Constantine. "I'm looking for Linda-!"

"And if we're right, Linda… will be where the source is," Sara said, looking reassuringly at Lexa. "If we're going to find her, we follow the trail."

Nodding tentatively at Sara, Lexa joined the group as they walked carefully down the underground path. Barry noticed that the illumination that had filled the cave earlier had dimmed as they advanced further in, but he soon realised that there was another, more distinct source of light coming from up ahead.

As they advanced further down the passage, Barry's eyes soon settled on the distant sight of something at the end of the path, in a blaze of orange that Barry swiftly recognised as fire. For a moment he wondered if Constantine had downplayed what they were dealing with and this tributary would actually lead them into Hell, but forced that idea down when he realised that the fire was a circle on the ground rather than any kind of door; he might not know much, but he felt that Hell should have a more standard entrance.

"What the Hell?" Mick looked at the circle in surprise as they began to pick up the pace towards the flaming circle. As the Legends and the others drew closer, Barry noticed that there was something in the middle of the circle, but it soon became clear that whatever was in the circle was trapped, judging by the way it was bent over on its knees. The exact features were hard to make out amid the flames that seemed to be coming from the figure's back and linking with the flaming circle around her, and as they gathered around the circle, Barry realised that the woman wasn't a stranger. The flames made it hard to see the figure clearly, and the hair seemed to be blonde rather than the brunette he'd seen in earlier photos, but from what he could make out of the woman's face…

"Linda!" Lexa called out, staring in shock at the figure in the middle of the circle. She ran towards the flaming circle at first, but the fires soon forced her back, the cop staring at her heated hands with a frustrated glare. Barry tried to run through the flames, but was forced to back off when he realised the full scope of the heat of the blaze in front of them; if he was feeling that kind of heat through the suit, he didn't want to imagine how the rest of the group must feel.

And that's before I think about what Linda must be feeling like inside there…

"What is that?" Sara looked over at Constantine as they gathered around the flaming circle.

"And what is Linda doing-?" Lexa began, before her trapped sister suddenly reeled back with an agonised scream as the flames from the figure's back split from the circle to become a fixed shape, specifically in the form of…

"Are those… wings?" Ray looked between the flaming woman and Constantine in surprise. "So… she wasn't a sacrifice?"

"Sacrificed?" Lexa looked sharply at Ray, even as Constantine shook his head in an exasperated manner at the former CEO.

"No… this is like you told us back in the Waverider, isn't it?" Barry looked at Constantine with an anxious half-smile. "Linda's become the host for the angel…"

"Angels?" Lexa looked at Barry incredulously. "We ran into demons getting down here and now angels are possessing my sister?"

"Oh, there's no point worrying about the fine details of that, luvs," another voice said. "However Linda Danvers got here, she's staying in that circle until it's all over."

"Buzz?" Lexa turned to glare in outrage at the figure that had just emerged from the back of the cave. Turning around, Barry was grateful to see that the Legends were all just as confused to see a young man standing in the cave, wearing a black suit jacket and trousers over a loosely-buttoned white shirt, but it only took him a moment to realise that this was the man they'd previously seen with Linda in those photographs in her apartment.

"You know this guy?" Mick glanced over at the cop.

"H-he was… he was dating Linda for a while, but she…" Lexa began, before confusion shifted to outrage as she glared at Buzz. "What are you doing to her?"

"Not much beyond what the world had done to her before I ever got there," Buzz grinned. "But when impressionable youths see their priest murdering his wife, it tends to cause an interesting religious experience."