Sanguinis Memoria II

“He found him in a desert land, and in the howling waste of the wilderness; he encircled him, he cared for him, he kept him the apple of his eye.” Deuteronomy 32:10 

The sun had started to set a little too late. Maybe that was my sign to stay put just one more night in this cave. Omen had finally found a spot to get comfortable during the day while we slept. So had I. I crawled closer to the mouth of this cave and looked out at the expanse beneath me. Bright greens littered the side of the mountain and melted into an endless sea of brown. The sun sat low across the mountains across from me, reds giving way to blues and purples in the late evening sky. Wouldn’t be long now until my ability to walk the earth would come. 

There were few times in my miserable existence where I had actually wished death would come and take me by the hand. I knew her well enough, she wouldn’t mind me asking for a favor. There were worse ways to be walked directly to the gates of hell than by a woman with a beautiful smile.  I stared at the final sun rays sliding back across the open desert and for a moment wished that I could walk into them and be released. I had sat in this cave, thinking about what he said since that night. How could I have been so stupid to think that some crossroads demon wouldn’t have twisted the pain and my begging from that night into something that would work out more for him than me? Why had I been so quick to hand over what little I had left without asking a single question?  

You never said it had to be your own. 

I flicked the end of my cigarette into the fire in front of me and stretched my legs out. I’d been wandering this desert like the woman from revelations for years of my life. How had I never once stopped to consider that he would have accepted my deal at face value? Not once in fifty years had I ever thought about whether or not I was an actual prisoner and not just a beast locked in my own labyrinth. Was I, too, out here for a specific amount of time such that the Lord would come for me? I snorted and shook my head at the thought. The God of my father had abandoned me long ago, as he did all people like me. 

My hair whips around my face as I spur Omen on in the moonlight. Emmylou’s words echo in my head as the dust from his hooves kicks up around us in the night. My heart beats out of my chest, my blood boils in my veins as I can hear men hollering up ahead. They stand in a circle in the dirt. 

It sounds like they laugh when the gun goes off. 

My chest feels like its ripping open, I’m too far from them to do anything. There are tears streaming down my face. My hands grip tighter to the reigns, I can feel the leather cutting into them. Instinct takes over as my heels dig too much into Omen’s side. My throat is raw from screaming her name over and over and over and over and over and over and over –  

Suddenly a man walks into the road where they are. And they run. Almost too quickly, they are gone from where they stood a moment ago and I feel as though, not for the first time, I am moving far too slow for my own liking, I am so close and yet I am too far to capture any of them. 

The man crouches over her body and lays a hand on her. My feet hit the ground and I pull the pistol from my belt. I grip him by the collar and force him back, pistol at his temple and pull the trigger. 

Nothing happens. 

Nothing happens. 

Nothing fucking happens. 

“Gun seems to be broken.” I grip it harder and come down on the side of his head with the butt. 

Her eyes are lifeless, open and glassy. Blood slides down her face from the hole that sits dead center. 

A wail lets itself loose from my body, guttural and painful. My chest and throat burn as I scream – my hands shake as I touch her face. She doesn’t react. I pull her into my arms and rock back and forth on my knees. She’s limp in my arms. She cannot be gone, she is the only thing tethering my soul to my body, the reason I have life. Her voice in the morning, the smell of her hair after coming in from her garden, the way her eyes wrinkle in the corners everytime she laughs. My breath catches in my chest and I know I have lost her, I have failed her in every way, I should not be allowed breath or life while she cannot have either at the hands of those demons. I start reciting the prayers beat into us when we were young. 

Maybe god will hear me, just this one time. Just this once, my father’s faith will pay off and god will hear me and search my heart and find me to be a person worth granting an answer to this one prayer. Words I haven’t spoken in years fall from my lips, but they still sound foreign and wrong and like a curse. 

“He won’t do that. Not many will.” the man’s voice comes from behind us. 

“I can’t give you what you’re asking him for, but I can give you something more real.” I’ve stopped rocking, but my hands still shake as I pull back to look at her again. Her silver star hangs from her bruised neck. I look down at her left hand. Her band is still there. 

“What could you possibly give me?” he crouches down across from me and makes me look him in the eye. I’m suddenly aware that I have tears still running down my face and that I’m covered in her blood. 

“I can keep them all alive so that you can do what you want with them. I can make sure that they stay alive so that you can make them suffer.” My heart stops in my chest. There’s not a man alive that can make a promise like that about a bunch of guns for hire. A vision of six men shackled and on their knees flashes in my head. The seventh is strung up on the wall, crying. I can make them pay if given the right opportunity. I look closer at his face, and his eyes seem to flash a dull red at me. 

Maybe only the devil heard the prayers of people like me. 

“I have a specific skill set.” it comes out like I’m begging him, “You promise me that they stay alive and I’ll do whatever you want.” 

“Oh I’m expecting that. You’ll carry a curse with you while you carry out what I need and I’ll keep those bastards alive for you.” he reaches his hand across her body. I grip it and he says – 

“Deal, cowboy.” 

His other hand is shoved into my chest, knocking me back. I can feel his hand wrap around my heart and pull. My arms and body slack and she falls to the ground while he whispers something to the bloody heart in his hand. It lights on fire and he shoves it back into my chest. 

Everything stops. The night is silent but I can hear my ragged breathing. My hands hit the ground and suddenly I feel everything. The air around me, the dirt beneath me, the blood beginning to dry on my shirt, my heart – oh my body is so hot and it gets hotter with every breath I attempt. I can feel the beating, burning thing he put in my chest and I vomit. Everything is so loud, the crickets, the wind – it overwhelms me. I can’t stand it, I can’t hold anything in, I can’t, I can’t, I can’t, I can’t –

“I only have a few rules you have to adhere to.” He wipes the dust off his pants and towers over me. His voice comes out even, almost calm. My breath catches in my chest as blood comes out with every exhale. I can feel my stomach heave again, but there can’t possibly be any blood or viscera left in my body to come out. There can’t be. I can’t feel my body anymore, I can’t feel anything but the fire he put where my heart was. It hurts, it hurts more than anything I’ve ever felt in my life and I want it out. 

“Rule one: your meager existence belongs to me, and so does your name. There are none other than I who may command you by using it.” 

Was I not dying right now? The burning in my chest pulses much like a heartbeat and it is insufferable. There is a wetness on my face that has gotten thicker – I lift my hand to my eye and I see a deep crimson coat my fingertips. Did the child of god not also cry blood? The burning in my chest suddenly quickens, my chest heaves, but nothing comes out this time. I look over and her eyes are still lifeless. She cannot see me like this, cannot tell me that what I have done has condemned me more assuredly than anything else I had before. 

“Rule two: you are never to go into the sun.” 

I sit up on my knees, my hands shaking. My head turns up toward the night sky. Had the light from the moon always been this bright? What had I done? He grips under my arms and pulls me up to my feet. His eyes are indeed red, and oh how they look like dried blood. He is seething with a rage that feels like mine. An anger that almost feels righteous seeps into my skin where he grips me and seems to balm the sadness. How could the child of a preacher find so much in common with the devil? 

“Rule three, and this is important cowboy so listen close.” he pulls me impossibly close to his face and whispers raggedly, angrily, “You leave Silas for me.” 

I knew I needed to start moving, if nothing else to get my mind off of the memories that haunted me even while I’m awake. The reminder that on some level I had assured a violent end for a man that I had considered my brother. The people I had killed while in life and in this torment to keep my existence as secret as possible. 

That little redhead’s face also haunted my dreams. The way the black fire had crawled up her body and had begun to crack her open from the inside was there when I closed my eyes, and the smell of smoke stuck in my nose when I woke up. I had been tempted more than once to see if perhaps that would begin to happen to me if I stood naked in the midday sun. There was a part of me that hoped it would hurt. 

I leaned back on the cave wall and closed my eyes with a sigh. I had been a fool to trust that a demon would just hand over the men I had been waiting to kill for fifty years. Stupid to believe that he wouldn’t dangle them in front of me like a bone to a dog. 

“You know you can’t put this off forever.” I could hear the grin form while she spoke, which only pissed me off. I opened my eyes to see one of the most beautiful women in existence standing across from me. She leaned up against the opening of the cave, dressed head to toe in all black. Her golden pistols hung from both hips from an immaculate black leather belt and caught the last of the sun as it set. The buttons on her waistcoat as well as the chain hanging from her pocket were also gold. 

“Hard to get something started when you ain’t been told who you’re looking for.” I grumbled, and sat up to encourage the fire. “Got a new costume to match the new face I see.” 

“You know me too well.” She sat next to me in the dirt, one leg tucked up under her and the other bent. She always smelled good. Like expensive perfume oil.

“I came to check up on you. Make sure you aren’t feeling lost out here. I know you haven’t seen much of these particular lands.” 

“You came to make me move. I know he’s been watching me, keeping his distance from his murderous little pet.” I poked the fire again with the stick I had found a few days ago. I had caught a glimpse of him as the sun came up two days ago – he knew to keep his distance. 

“He seems to think that you don’t know who you’re supposed to be hunting.” She tries to look at my face, but I stubbornly stare into the crackling flames. I can feel the anger coiled in my chest, waiting. 

 “C’mon, cowboy. You know deep down who you’re supposed to be looking for. They’ll be the one to know where they need to be taken.” 

“I can promise you I have no idea who you’re talking about.” 

“You cannot be that stupid.” 

“Can be.” I wasn’t. I had never met him, but I knew him. Watched him grow up. Checked in on him from time to time to make sure that he wouldn’t end up like his father. 

“The box has some numbers on it that should definitely look familiar to you. Maybe if you spent more than a handful of seconds looking at it before throwing it back into your saddlebag, you would be more on your way to getting this done and over with.” she pulled a worn box of cigarettes out of her pants pocket and lit one up. Her’s always smelled like pipe tobacco – the stuff my father used to keep around for special occasions. 

“To do what? Be given another assignment? Kill more innocents for nonsense that isn’t their fault? Have to hunt down someone else for that treacherous fiddler? When does it end? I need to know whether or not I will ever be able to do what I bargained for.” Of course I had recognized those coordinates the moment I saw them. I’d know them anywhere, hell I had carved them into every bunk I had ever spent away from my wife, waiting for the day I’d ride back to her. 

“I knew you’d come back for me.” she beams at me. She always was prettier than the last time I saw her, and she knows I loved that blue dress. I wrap my arms around her waist and kiss her until she pushes me away with a laugh. 

“C’mon cowboy, dinners about ready. Your friend beat you here this time so you might have to wait to dry your boots off for a little longer at least.” I smile and take her hand. Didn’t think there was ever gonna be a time when seeing that silver band on her finger was not going to warm my heart. 

“I guess I’ll just have to let him have the space for now. Man’s got to head to texas by first light.” She pulls my hand to lead me into the house, that smile still all over her face.  

“Once the two of you are done for the season and get started on the big house, we’ll have our own separate space and both of you will have dry clothes and boots at the same time.” she looks down at my boots just as we get to the door, which makes me chuckle. 

“I’ll get the bucket and start washin’ ‘em.” I hold both hands up, “No dirty boots inside, I know.” she kisses my cheek and disappears into the house. 

I sighed and let the one good memory wash over me like a breeze. Those didn’t appear on their own very often, especially since seeing the box. That house, that land, had all been a dream we had harbored from the time we were kids in pews at my fathers church. We had picked a place on the map as soon as we had been able and done everything we could to get it. 

The smoke from her cigarette swirled over the top of the fire as she exhaled. 

“Where did you go just now?” she said softly. I shook my head and stared harder at the fire. 

“Nowhere.” we both knew that was some bullshit, but I knew she was obligated to report back to that fucking demon any serious memories I had from my past no matter how much she liked me. 

“You should also consider talking to more people while you are out on these hunts he has you on, and not just the bartenders you look up for leads. Swap a story or two and you might find ways to get what you want.” I looked over at her to make sure I was hearing things right. She could not be trying to give me any sort of advice. 

“Oh? And how well did that work out for you?” the corners of her mouth twitched. At least she would leave me alone now. I hadn’t asked for her help, and I hadn’t been out looking for her in any way. 

“Since you’ve decided to just be cruel, I’ll leave you with this until the next time we meet.” She tossed a brown leather journal and a pen at me.  

“What the hell is this for?” 

“You should write your adventures down.” I should do what exactly? 

“There’s no use in that. The only person who would read this is me and I ain’t done anything forgettable yet.” not a full lie, but what whore remembered the names of every single man who paid her? My own ledger only had seven names on it, and they sat in the front of my mind every moment I was awake. I poked the fire again, desperate for this conversation to be over. 

“You never know what you’re going to discover when you have to revisit a day. Could help guide you to redemption. Or find something in plain sight.” I huffed at that. The idea of a creature like me being capable of redemption was laughable at best, and she knew it. I had heard all about her attempt at redemption, and how that had backfired on her. 

“You never had a problem killing innocents when you were alive. I’ve never quite understood your guilt about doing it now.” She stood, inhaled the rest of her cigarette, and disappeared through the opening of the cave. “I’ll see you around cowboy.” 

I turned the notebook over in my hands. The leather was thick and smooth, and there was a thin black leather band attached that seemed to be a placeholder. She must have stolen it from someone with money. As much as her presence was unwanted, her advice hadn’t led me astray so far. She’d been the one to show me my boundaries in the beginning and I owed her still for those months. 

The fire popped and woke Omen, who shook his mane and looked at me expectantly. I could sit here, isolate myself in this cave until he came and confronted me. There would probably be some sort of punishment for putting off this revenge, something that might even be uncomfortable. I looked over at my saddlebag hanging on the wall. The knot in my chest tightened. 

At some point that demon would come looking for me to make sure I was keeping up my end of the bargain. The thought of having another conversation with him made me want to see just how much it would take for me to die. I’d be free from the torment of being his little bitch the rest of this existence and he would be out a lapdog. The image of that redheads hands on fire and shaking stirred me out of that daydream. I pushed myself off the ground and tapped Omen’s rump. He stood and waited while I saddled him up. At least one of us would be excited to get moving. I swung myself over his back and patted his neck. Omen took off into the night, eager to get to that cursed town.