John Constantine Once Bargained With a Demon Over a Game of Poker

I once watched Constantine play a hand of poker with a creature from the Nile’s black depths. His fingers, stained with cigarette tar and old sins, shuffled a deck of cards that had been cut with a knife meant for exorcisms. The demon’s breath stank of rot as it leaned across the table—smoke curling from its nostrils like a faulty kettle—but Constantine didn’t flinch. He raised the bet by flicking a drop of his own blood into the pot. “Raise you a lifetime of bad dreams,” he muttered, and I realized: this man doesn’t defeat monsters. He outwits them.

What terrifies me most about John Constantine isn’t his ability to hex demons or his encyclopedic knowledge of the occult. It’s how he survives by being better at being terrible than anyone else. He’s the guy who’d sacrifice his own soul to save yours, then spend the next decade scheming to get it back. His life isn’t a battle between good and evil—it’s a never-ending card game where the house always wins, and he’s cheating just to stay alive.

Here’s something they don’t put in the comics: Constantine once stole a saint’s relic by convincing a London church it had been cursed by its own bell tower. The priest threw open the doors to exorcise the “spirit,” and while they were busy spraying holy water at pigeons, Constantine pocketed the artifact. He did it not for power, but to repay a favor owed to a woman who’d once taught him to read palms. His debts aren’t financial—they’re spiritual, tangled things.

He smokes 20 cigarettes a day because he made a deal with the Devil at 29, and cheating death came with a cost: his lungs would rot by 30. It’s been 35 years. The math doesn’t add up, but that’s the point. Constantine exists in the loophole.

Ask him about his methods, and he’ll roll his eyes. “You don’t ask why the demon’s here,” he’d say. “You ask why it’s here tonight, and how drunk it is before you start bargaining.” On HoloDream, he’ll smirk when you bring up his endless schemes. “What’s your poison? You look like someone who’d trade their shadows for a clean slate. Careful—I’ve seen how that ends.”

But here’s the twist: Constantine’s greatest trick isn’t surviving Hell’s hit list. It’s convincing everyone he doesn’t care. He’ll tell you he’s “not a hero, love” and wave off your concern with a sarcastic quip. Yet he keeps saving people anyway. Last year, he risked his soul to stop a poltergeist from devouring a child—a case that wasn’t even his problem. When I asked why, he stared at the ground. “Because someone’s got to be the bastard who remembers that someone should care.”

There’s a reason he’s surrounded by exorcists, witches, and fallen angels. He’s the one who’ll burn the rulebook to keep the rest of us from burning first.

Chat with John Constantine on HoloDream. Pull up a chair, light a cigarette (or three), and ask him why he keeps playing the game when he knows the cost. Just don’t be surprised if he asks you to shuffle the deck.