The air was cooling rapidly. Sunset. Time, it seemed, was made of that stuff they put in lava lamps. Or maybe he'd been out cold for a few millennia or so. Everything hurt too much for him to be dead yet, he was sure of that much.
From somewhere close by but inexplicably far away, church bells rang. It was six o' clock. Oraçión. Prayer time. Everybody in this little rathole town stopped mid-sentence and an appropriately pious silence fell. Maybe a little more pious today; so many people were dead after all, thanks to the little coup he'd orchestrated. They'd pray the Angelus; a Hail Mary or three, and some other esoteric Catholic shit he didn't want to bother worrying about, considering the fact that he was now conscious enough to tell how cold it was becoming.
Maybe it was getting dark now, too. Far be it for him to know. Hi, no fucking eyes, in case you haven't noticed.
At least the flies were gone.
"Oh!"
He tensed, surprised that he hadn't been able to pick up this person's approach. "How pretty!"
She clapped her hands.
The voice had a deranged, lilting, childlike quality to it. She spoke in English, in a twisted sort of cockney that would've sounded less disturbing in eighteen ninety-five. In London. But this was Mexico, and he was already freaked out as it was, thanks to his current state of eyelessness.
He wanted to take his gun, aim, and shoot. No questions. But his arms didn't seem to want to move, and he didn't have his guns. The fatigue was marrow-deep, freezing him in a bloody, rag-doll tableau.
"I've found you, my prince!" She was close now, he could tell from her voice. Oddly enough, he felt no heat radiating from her body; only stillness and thirteen different breeds of wrong. "My dark prince. So much like my white knight, my Spike, glowing bright with burning baby fishes."
Who the fuck was this person?
"The stars told me you'd be here, pretty prince. They told me you'd be in the darkness. And they said there would be pain. Such lovely pain I taste. So many different, nummy flavors. And so pretty, too. They told me you'd be pretty, my dark prince."
She touched his face. He flinched. Her hands were cadaver-cold.
"You burn, yes?"
He shook his head. The world reeled. Christ no, he was fucking freezing. When did it get so frickin' cold?
"Yes you do, my prince. My lovely prince. You burn for vengeance and death. Lovely, lovely death. Like fireflies. Like fire. Terrible fire. Burning you."
He opened his mouth to speak, felt dried blood flake off his cheeks and sparks of liquid agony explode in his line of vision. Oh, wait. No vision. No eyes. Ha ha! "Fuck you."
She giggled and stood up. He heard the rustle of silk petticoats and soft hair. She clapped her hands again, and she danced in a circle, footsteps resonating loudly in his ears. She was stirring up the blood-soaked dust.
"Yes, my beautiful dark prince, my prince of darkness! My contradiction and my twin! We shall dance together in the moonlight and you will be mine and I yours! We will fuck! We will feed! We will sing to the rainbows and the night!" She stopped abruptly and dropped to the ground in front of him with a thud and a whoosh of cool air. Her hands were on his face now. In his hair. Tender caresses that sent flashes of pure torture through his head, creating nuclei of molten agonymiserypain in the hollow, bleeding holes in his face. He saw bursts of colored light created by raw nerve endings firing futilely into emptiness. They jolted him. Made him gasp.
Her hands were soft and cool. Playful, so it seemed. She was probably cocking her head right now, staring at him with wide and vacant eyes, lost in the fascination of touch and the sight of his suffering.
And he prayed. Esoteric, Catholic Oraçión shit. He heard his own voice in his head, chanting the Angelus in Latin, then Spanish, then English. Three Hail Marys. Holy Mary, mother of God… He was not a religious man. God could have been a talking donkey with three dicks, for all he cared. But the prayers were looping in his mind, like a broken cassette tape. Fitting, really, what with those fucking bells clanging the obligation of religion and prayer in the distance, and the sacredprofane silence hanging heavy in the motionless air.
Yeah, it was creepy. Some kind of fucked-up defense mechanism his subconscious dreamed up, most probably. Where the hell did he learn those prayers, anyway?
…pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death-
She grabbed him, suddenly ferocious, fingernails digging into his scalp. He was too weak and in too much goddamn pain to resist. He let out a weak, startled cry as he felt pointed teeth sink into the juncture where shoulder and neck met. Then there was a pulling, a furious, luscious pulling. If it hadn't been for the fact that he had very little blood to spare as of the moment and was running out of it with disturbing swiftness, he would've had a raging hard-on right now.
He was getting sucked off, but not in the way he had expected, and certainly not by the 2003 Playmate of the Year. Unless Playboy had a section for the undead…
And everything was fading. The world was huge, inevitably black and black and blacker still, consciousness swimming and then sinking and then gone.
Almost.
She pulled away.
"Drink." She said, pressing cold, still wrist against cold, quivering lips and tongue.
And it was fucking delicious. Nectar and light and Jesus on a pink pogo stick he could fucking see! Oh you beautiful bitch. You bitch you cunt you whore you magnificent queen don't let it stop! Everything was color and radiance, sunshine burning burning burning…! He drank deeply, grasping with groping fingers the soft, cool fount of his salvation.
His eternal damnation.
Amen.