Red and Blue

Memories and reality were mixing like oil and water. The Dixie Pig had been taken down to make way for new Sombra headquarters or something, but the kitchen was just like I remembered it.

I remembered the way that the smell of cooking meat made me sick and how it made my mouth water, and how my watering mouth made feel even more sick. Always after I had to make a trip through the Pig I’d go out hunting, like it stirred up the vampire part of me. But now the kitchen was empty and cold, and I moved through it with my hands near my guns.

I remember the hallways, doubling back on themselves, laid out in some Escher labyrinth studded with posters out of a twisted version of the Roman Coliseum. Bloosports for the Great Old Ones, going mad from ennui.

I was a hunter, but this time my prey wasn’t children and psychics, but the ones who collected them. Lead flew, bursting the tick-like bodies of the Grandfather Fleas. It felt good so blow them away and see the blood spray the walls. They hadn’t earned their meal anyways.

And then we found the door, the way back to Mid-World. I knelt and let Penny paint my face, but it took all of my self control to hold still and let her. I told myself that this is a thing that Roland might’ve done: taken the face of an enemy to survive, to do what he had to do…

…but isn’t that why Roland almost failed his quest? Isn’t that what Eddie and Jake and Susannah saved him from? Roland also gunned down all of Tull.

So there we were, surrounded by low men and vampires and humes all set for a bloody holiday in Mid-World. Like that restaurant at the end of the universe in that brittish book. All set to get off watching good men die. I wanted to kill them all. And then I felt my impulse returned, felt it touch my ka-mates and reflect back to me. Yes, kill them all.

I pulled iron and the sandalwood grips never felt so good in my hands, never felt so right. Bullets and blood flew. I saw a taheen wearing a human skin impale Eden on a spear. But even as her pain echoed through our khef, so did her determination. She might die here, but if that was so, then she was okay with that. Maybe it was a good death.

When the bloodbath was over, Alistair had saved Eden, and the tet of the Turtle was left standing. We found gear and horses outside, all that we’d need to get to Jericho Hill and see the Horn of Eld safely to its fate. But the outriders called me Hendrick, the name of the man I’d gunned down in contempt. We still had to wear the paint and we couldn’t just mow down all of Grissom’s army…

…But even though I knew that… I wasn’t sure if I could stand by and let the barbarians do what they intended to do. The face paint was blue, but I felt Red.