"God damn," Her face faced down to the stained toilet interior. The porcelain bowl dripped with brown, her hair clung to her face from the wetness; either vomit or toilet water or sweat. She retracted her face off the bowl, like a dog. And like a dog, she curled up in the corner of the bathroom. Her knees touched her chin, her body rested against the bathtub.

"This feels wrong," she said. Repeated. Water fizzled to her rear, it smelled of that fruity medicine and tasted sour and metallic. "This isn't a hangover,"

"What?" Apollo said from behind the door.

“This doesn’t feel like a hangover. It’s worse. Like…like I’m fire.”

“Are you still drunk?”

"No. No. No!" She winced and held her right arm with her left. It was limp.

"What's wrong?" Apollo asked.

"My arm." The sweat pooled on her brow. “It feels like it was cut open with a razor blade.”

She drove her fingers down her arm. A mistake she suffered. A mistake that made her shout and push herself back onto the wall and tub. She hit her head. The walls shook, banged. An indent was left at the point of impact. The paint chips were stuck in her blond hair.

"What the fuck is going on?" Apollo opened the doors.

She saw him, or tried to, behind blurry eyes stinging from sweat. She didn't know when she decided to lay on the floor, but she was there. And she didn’t know when she decided to writhe, but there she was, going in circles.

"Get a hold of yourself," His touch was cold. But to Aenea and the open pores all around her body, it felt like liquid nitrogen touched her shoulder.

"Get away!" She lashed out. She laid on her arm, the pressure of her weight seemingly stopping the throbbing heat. By now it didn't matter. Not the sweat or the tears or the vomit or the shame and disgust she littered the floor with a few drunken moments ago. Now, all that mattered was her and her pain.

"Aw shit," Apollo rubbed his forehead.

"What?" She screamed. Her mouth was open, tongue out. Drooling.

"You got it, didn’t you? The curse finally came your way."

“Curse?”

“It’s like getting the flu. An exclusive flu.” He paced. “Nice going, you won the lottery.”

"What fucking lottery?" She did not understand. Could not even hope to, not in this pain. But she felt it, at least the wrongness of the words.

"Do you know how a witch is made?" Apollo said. Her eyes didn’t even look up at him. She was too busy grabbing her arm.

"Witches are made from bargains. Bargains made with demons. What you’re experiencing now is that contract, or bargain, or pact, whatever you want to call it. And it’s finally come to get you. This is your fathers' gift,” He tried to touch her arm. She slapped his hand away.

“How do I make it stop?”

“I can’t do that. Only one thing can do that,”

“Who?”

“Well the monster that your family owes, of course,” He said. “Now you’re really going to start believing in demons and magic. Trust me,”

“What does that mean?” She screamed.

“You’ll find out. Don’t worry about that,”

“When?” She began to bleed now. The blood traveled through the cracks of the tiles.

“Who knows.”

"I didn't sign up for this." She grit her teeth. It made her voice go a tone deeper, more pained, more desperate.

"You did the moment you were born, without your consent or care," He knelt down. “And no one can you help you now, not even me. I don’t even know if you’ll survive.”

He lifted her. By now, her cheeks were flushed, and her body was limp and tired, and the fever all across her body was so intense even he was beginning to sweat. He dropped on the bed and put the covers over her.

“It’s just you know.” He said, in a voice, she had never heard before. It was low. Slow. Maybe even a bit sad. “You and whatever thing is coming after you, and all I can say is good luck.”

She heard his voice, but her eyes were so tired she couldn’t even try to see. Instead, they opened slowly, at long intervals. It was like watching a slideshow. Her body shivering, her fever high rising. She saw him in his chair. The cigarette in his mouth. The cloud of smoke rising in a long stack of clouds, up and out the window.

She blinked. And blinked. Until finally her eyes closed stubbornly. The veins in her arms bulged, the fire flowed through her like poison. Into her chest, until breathing became painful and her fast-beating heart became a burden. The pain of existing rose and rose and rose - until finally - even thinking about it became difficult. By then, she was unconscious and only living in dreams. And it felt like she drifted, like the cigarette smoke, up and out the window to leave her writhing body down under the thing sheets below.

♣

"Where are you going?" A black rod shot out. Dion dodged, his back against the wall. He was running the opposite end of the walkway. Floyd approached with the heavy clanks of his steps, slow, steady.

Floyd was precise. Even if he looked shaggy, rough, insane. His instincts were sharp enough. With a wave of his hand, a black pillar would erupt the floor. With a clenched fist he would break through, chip away little shards from his black tree trunk and fling them out like daggers.

Dion was outmatched.

All he did was dodge. Get a shot in. Miss a shot or have it blocked. Then crystals flying back.

He must have made it to the end of his hall. There was nowhere left to run but down the stairs. Instead, he chose a door. He put his foot beneath the doorknob and pressed down. His body landed with a thud on the brown carpet floor.

He was lucky to have ducked.

Three crystals zoomed past him. They impaled the wall in front of him.

He closed the broken door, it wavered in and out. Dion turned his head. A frightened couple with floral patterned clothes were face down on the floor, whimpering.

He felt his stomach drop.

"Relax," Dion said. "Get some cover, alright?"

They couldn't hear him. They just kept repeating, 'this isn't happening,' like glitched robots.

A crystal shot through the window. It struck the lamp in the room, then the shelves, through the bathroom and out of the room altogether.

He felt the breeze left by the hole.

Dion reached into his pocket and found his mask. He put it on. His hands fiddled again with his pocket. They were shaking, and the ammunition was falling between his fingers. He ran his hands through the carpeted floor, looking for the cartridges. Then found one, in particular, one with a red marking around its body. He filled the last chamber with it.

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He dragged himself with knees to the window and peeked outside, to the oddly silent world.

It was more a war zone than it was a parking lot. More a battlefield, than a hotel. Half the doors across the extensive motel were open. There were screams off in the distance. Certainly, the police had been called. Right? Yet they weren't here. He could use them, use any help he could get.

He ran his hands through his pockets. His cell phone was missing.

"Oh, god," He slapped his forehead. He put his back against the wall, straightened out.

Something was wrong.

There were murmurs. Pouts. Whimpers to his rear. And something...else. He put a finger to the lips of his mask.

"Be quiet," He whispered. They tried the couple. They put their hands over their mouths, but they kept making noise. At least it was muffled, and it wasn't like he could blame them.

He put his ear against the wall.

Something was crawling. Creeping.

In some slow rhythm. It sounded like the prow of a wolf. The lone animal, stalking, with a barkless antagonism. It sounded like death. Death was always quiet.

Dion pointed one gun up. The footsteps stopped. His other gun was pointed down at an angle, like a cane to walk.

The sweat made his mask slide.

Creak.

He licked his lips.

A step.

His cheeks went numb.

It crashed down on him. Rooftop, wood, light bulbs, darkness. A hole in the roof the size of a small car. He shot twice. Nothing. The crystals came down on him like arrows, the wood, and the tubing and the water and the night sky all collapsed onto him. So he pushed down on his other gun, almost vaulting off the length of his barrel. His shoulders were cut up. He rolled onto the floor, out the broken door. The whole room caved in.

The windows broke. The glass cut his ears and the side of his head, blood dripped down his hair.

Standing in front of him, upon the wreckage, a black pillar. One conveniently where he was sitting at. One that collapsed the room and reduced the man and woman into bloody mist and rags of a floral shirt. Their bodies sunk through the hole made by the pillar. He could hear them drop, the weight of their fat and flesh, down to the first floor. Then he heard whoever was down on the first-floor scream.

Now in the walkway, he looked up to the gap in the roof. Floyd was there, eyes green and arm even greener. He was holding the shaft of a spike. He had it wound up, behind his head.

"It's over," Floyd said. "Clear shot, you don't even have your gun pointed."

"I'm still breathing,"

"Then I'll make sure to get you square in the lungs," Floyd said.

Dion's shoulders rose.

"Careful, heart-eater. This isn't the wild west. You can't outshoot me." Floyd smiled. "But you can try. I'd love to see the look on your face when you miss."

"You're really insane, aren't you?"

"Me? I'm not the one wasting my last words on taunts." The lights behind Floyd broke. "Madness - Clarity. They're weapons just like anything else, and I chose the weapon that would win me the fight. Could you call that true madness?"

"Yeah, you're crazy," Dion said. "You've massacred all these innocent people. And you're going to get caught, put all over the paper. And when everyone else - the church - the bounty hunters hear about you and how you've jeopardized our secrecy they'll -"

"They won't find out," Floyd's smirk widened. His yellow teeth flashed for a moment. "Mother's bought them off. I never really could hide anything from her. I'm sure she knows by now that I've escaped, and I'm sure she knows by now that I've come here to kill you."

"That's a bluff."

"Who cares what it is? It won't save you either way."

Dion felt the sweat come down on him again. It made his body sticky. All his clothes felt heavy, his shoes and his shirt and his pants and his coat. His guns especially. Flinching, twitching felt like a struggle. It was as if his whole body was made of stone. He certainly felt that way, at least. He stared at the black spear, a wide rod like a harpoon, arrow-pointed on one end with small fins opposite.

"I'm not going to beg," Dion said.

"I wouldn't expect that," Floyd said. "So draw, cowboy."

One beat. Two beats. Three. He couldn't count his heart rate but heard it all across him, like he the throbbing acoustics of his chest right against his ears. He couldn't hear or think or feel. His eyes narrowed, and his hearing focused to this single moment, to this single picture in front of him.

Floyd, pointing his damn spear down to him.

One.

His ears went hot.

Two.

He held his breath.

Three.

He did not point his gun. He did not pull his trigger. He threw himself to his rear, his whole body in that single conviction. He rolled on the floor, hoping to dodge.

The spear went through his thigh. He didn't feel the pain at first, but he felt his body move. He went through the metal rail guard, down a floor, into the asphalt that shattered. The spear pinned him to the floor. It was unsplintered.

Hell, it hadn't even lost its edge.

Dion screamed. He grabbed his leg with one hand (one gun had gone flying somewhere along the trajectory), and he put pressure. It only seemed to push the blood out of his wound. The pain shot through him. He leaned back with a broken cry.

"Hurts, doesn't it?" Floyd said from amongst the clearing smoke. It was a voice so warped and cruel that it was hard to believe it came from a human at all. Dion pointed his gun up, towards the walking shadow. He looked as if materializing, as his body wafted in through the smoke.

"Don't waste your time, heart-eater."

"It's Dion. Remember it," He said.

"Dion? Dion." He said. He had a finger to his chin. "You expect me to remember your name? Did you remember my sisters' name?"

"Can't say I did," Breathing was hard. Talking was even harder. His voice broke every word of the sentence.

"Yet you expect them courtesy," Floyd said.

Dion cocked his gun.

"I said it once, I'll say it one last time. Don't waste your time." He said. "I can make pillars rise from the floor faster than your bullet can reach me,"

"That's not possible," Dion said.

"There are many things I'm sure you thought were impossible. Dying must have been one of them,"

"No, I accepted death a long time ago." He said.

"Then accept it now. You're out-armed. Out-skilled. Out-smarted."

Dion flinched. The spear went through his thigh, and a little through his shin and the feeling of his joint struggling to move through the skewer made him lose his breath. His gun wavered for a moment.

"Aha," Floyd laughed. "I thought heart-eaters were something special. Killers of demons. But here you are, skewered, struggling to breathe. They say it's hard to find men who match their reputations, but you really are a special kind of disappointment, aren't you?"

"Keep talking," Dion rotated the cylinder in his gun with one index finger. He was going through each chamber, searching.

"I will!" Floyd said. "And take your shot while you're at it. That's the fun of it. That's where the pain is for you when the hope leaves and your future dies. I can't kill you when you've got that stubborn look in your eyes. You need to feel my suffering, you must."

Dion took deep breaths. His aim faltered. His body tried healing, tried to resolve the wound in his thigh. But the black spear would not budge, would not pull out. It was stuck firmly, pinning Dion.

"You should have brought your friend. You could have died together, at least."

Dion groaned and angled his leg. With one gun still pointed at Floyd, he used his other to remove his leg slowly from the black spear. He felt the quills cut his open wound as he approached the end of the skewer.

"But this is good too." Floyd clapped. "It's a beautiful gift isn't it?"

The blood shot out of the hole in his leg.

"Gift? That's what you call it? Gifts don't come with a price tag, but looking at you, I can tell how much you had to give," Dion's armed hand shook. "The abuse on your body is second to the abuse of your soul."

"My soul died a long time ago." Floyd approached. His eyes feral, teeth protruding. "I've done what I've done. I do, what I do. All, for love. Love of what was lost, love of what I stand to lose. You could never understand that. You could never understand the pricelessness of defending that kind of thing."

Dion looked him straight now. Floyd stood only yards away from him, his metamorphosis now visible; Hollow cheeks, gaunt eyes, a strange almost toxic glow.

"I am no demon, heart-eater," Floyd said. "I'm above your pay-grade."

"No, you're not a demon." His finger felt the trigger. "You're too dumb to be one."

Floyd flinched at the words. His eyes widened. The bullet fired out, sparks and fire exploding into the air behind the cartridge. The pillars rose high, into a dome around Floyd. The bullet traveled, slower than the others, but oddly more menacing. With a trail of blue, it went along the straight path, a giant cannonball almost with its large caliber.

When it hit the dome, it did not break it, did not shatter or even bruise the shield. But it exploded. Fire erupted out of the cartridge. Blue flame that went every which direction. Blue flame followed by black smoke that covered everything around the two in a thick veil.

It was a good thing too - not the fire, which burned Dion - but the smoke. The smokescreen her traveled through.

"Where are you?" Floyd shot out his daggers every direction. It was too late though. When the smoke cleared and his anger finally visible, Dion had disappeared. And behind him, unnoticeable in his rage, a manhole spun and jumped and finally settled into its slot.

Dion's body landed with a thump. It felt detached from him. He was too numb and tired to even accept he was alive. He was, barely. All around him was the smell of piss and bile and shit and around him was the feeling of crawling things. Animals, bugs, webbing. He dragged his broken leg through the shit-piles and dirty water. His red eyes flickered on and off until they finally receded. When that happened, it was almost impossible to see. He could only notice small fragments of light from gaps above. They were like landmarks, small torches in the winding path. As he went deeper in, even those disappeared until finally he was left in absolute dark. Then, when vision failed him, he simply followed noise. Running water. And after a while, he stopped moving altogether. When tiredness finally caught up to him. When his legs finally broke down, and his body leaned over. When he was so exhausted even the smell or the chills of crawling bugs could not bother him anymore, he rested. He put his back against the cornerstone. His body plopped down. His head slanted against a metal gate, and he fell asleep to the calm sound of running water. Curled up, like a dog.