"Dear John, the hour has come. I've come to collect your soul... hmm?"
The middle-aged man's delighted expression suddenly froze. "You're not Constantine?"
"Constantine's dead." Li Jie tilted his head toward the corner. "You're... Holy shit!"
He saw the male mage sitting up with Zatanna's help. He looked bedraggled, but there wasn't a scratch on him.
Tanking a shotgun slug at point-blank range? That was pretty fucking impressive.
"Such is the power of magic."
The middle-aged man watched Constantine shake several talismans, already reduced to ash, off his body, then turned to study Li Jie. "Why is the scroll in... I see."
Here was another poor bastard Constantine had tricked, but what did that have to do with him? Delicious as Constantine's soul was, plenty of others had their eyes on it. He might as well collect a little interest.
"Since you're the one who summoned me, would you like to make a deal?"
As those words left his mouth, Bruce Wayne yanked the pole out of a floor lamp beside him and charged. Zatanna raised her hand too. But the middle-aged man didn't even glance at them. He merely waved a hand, and an invisible force hurled Bruce and Zatanna backward, slamming them into the wall so hard they couldn't move for a while.
"A deal?"
Li Jie eyed the fellow. Clearly, he wasn't human, but at least he wasn't treating him all that inhumanely. "What kind of deal?"
"I can grant you one wish, then take your soul," the middle-aged man said amiably, pointing back at Constantine. "You seem to be on... very bad terms with him, yet there's nothing you can do about him. How about I teach him a lesson for you?"
"No need to teach him a lesson for me. I'd rather do it myself."