Secretum Testimonii

The date really took a turn when Seb pulled the gun.

It had been going so well, too. 

He returned from the bathroom with a confident smile on his lovely face, all cheekbones and chin and brown skin, that cocksure Big City Native shining through and through. If you know you know. His dark hair was pulled up high and bunched in curls, oiled and teased into a perfect coif, high fashion for the time. He wore a wide-lapeled burgundy suit with the fat checked tie, a silver bird brooch and pleated gray trousers. His feet dazzled in shining derbys, black and gleaming.

He walked towards her with open affection and longing, and she had to admit, it got to her, it made her heart pound and her skin prickle. Watching him watch her like that she forgot who she was for a moment and it was she who came under his spell, she felt dazed, dazzled, euphoric in ways she hadn’t felt since she lived in the isles.

Singular. That's what made these interactions so difficult.

Over dinner they had flirted, they had teased and joked, touched each other’s hands, she’d tucked her hair behind her ear, thinking at the time that if he knew what kind of creature she was... 

She wore a green dress with silver brocade, sleeveless, her finely shaped shoulders muscular and lean, her cleavage suggesting youth, the look in her blue eyes wise and wary, ancient. She was crowned with a dazzling flow of thick red hair, framing her face - a broad smile of square-cut teeth, a hint of freckles and a nose neither long nor short. For most she was the epitome of human beauty and youth - laughable, since she was neither.

I really like him, she thought as she watched him return from the bathroom. Their gazes lingered as he approached - but then she saw a secret hardness to his eyes, a distraction. When she looked down, the Majesty .45 was pointed right at her chest with a steady hand, a hand belonging to Sebastian Keller.

I am such a fool.

She threw her hands up in the air and let them fall limply to her lap, slapping her thighs loudly. She huffed and her notorious, some would say mythical - fury - rose to the surface, blue eyes widening, delicate eyebrows narrowing sharply, forehead furrowing, her entire expression transforming from sweet-natured beauty into something feral, something primal, something...dangerous.

"Seriously?" She said, clearly exasperated.

They stared at each other in silence, each studying the other. She could feel a small tremor rising in his hips. He was nervous. 

Good.

"I don't want to hurt you," she said, a lie, her voice quiet but commanding, but the expression on his face shifted, as if he knew, instinctively knew, as a calf knows, as a fawn knows as the cougar races with unmistakable fury and swiftness.

This is the end, unavoidable and true.

Fortunate are those for whom death comes on hidden, silent wings.

Sebastian Keller would not be so fortunate.

She sighed again, but this time it was resolute, someone who recognizes an unfortunate, messy, but unavoidable task has been placed unexpectedly before them.

"Did you really think you could pull this off?" She said, wrinkling her nose as if he were a naughty student caught stealing biscuits and jam. She giggled a little. “Really?”

He shrugged. His smile was hesitant.

"I'm not dead yet," he said.

For their date, she’d picked a quiet, unoccupied booth in the corner of the Old Hadrian, but within moments of Seb drawing his gun, the patrons in the other sections were fleeing loudly, the women screaming, the men shouting alarm. 

Clearly he'd counted on doing this publically. Smart. There would be eyes on them. Within ten seconds the restaurant had emptied, with shrieking patrons spilling out into the street.

"You know how this ends," she said, looking at her manicured nails. She paid a small fortune to have them done, and now they were probably going to be all cracked and bloody by the end of the night.

Damn.

"There's several possible outcomes I think," he said, nodding, "hopefully." The confident smile wavered, recovered, wavered again. 

"No." She looked up from her nails, a quick glance full of meaning.

"No?" He cocked his head, eyebrows arched high, the smile widened, forced itself to a full measure of confidence, his gleaming, perfect teeth having a nearly hypnotic effect on her, but she shook it off and her scowl deepened.

"It's really too bad," she said, softening for a moment. She liked him. A lot. She hadn't enjoyed a date this much in decades.

The veal was perfect, the wine sparkled, the conversation was stimulating. They had connected, too. She felt it, and it was true.

Humans. They complicated everything. Big City Humans? The worst.

Sure, he would have died regardless, but they would have had so much fun before she'd sacrificed him. 

They'd have reached heights of ecstasy few mortals had ever experienced. Yes yes, no one would have ever known what happened to him but that was the price of Big City living, was it not?

Didn't he know? Didn't he know he'd been chosen? A more important question was how did he know who she was?

She was certain she’d find out.

"I lied. I have to hurt you now," she said. She looked at him gravely, locking her eyes with his, forcing him to see her, to see into her core, to that forbidden place, where admission wasn't merely death, but extinction. "It's nothing personal."

But Seb was wily, he looked away.

He’d done his homework.

"The pleasure you would have known tonight," she said, extending her inverted hand, palm-up, as if it held a silver tray laden with mysterious delights.

"I was dead the moment you noticed me," he said, and his smile dropped and he was being authentic. "I didn't want to hurt you, but I knew if I didn't do this, I had no chance. You were hunting me.”

"How did you know?" She said, leaning forward and resting her lips on her steepled hands, folded above the dinner table. “About me?”

"Really?" He said, looking at her with a wry, disbelieving expression. Come on, she caught a snippet of thought.

"Everyone knows what you are," he said. "It's an open secret in the warrens."

"It is?" She said, and her perfect eyebrows shot up her own forehead in surprise and alarm.

"Of course," he said. "Humans may be stupid but we can feel when the divine walks by."

She watched him but remained silent. It was rare when she was frazzled, she’d been around for so long that few things surprised her, but this, this - and not the part where Seb was pointing a gun at her - the part where everyone knew, that disturbed her.

"How long have you known?” 

"A few weeks." He shrugged.

"And do you -" She hesitated, frustration flushing red on her face. She looked at him hard, almost pleading with him. "- do you - know - what I am exactly?"

He shrugged again. “No, not exactly. I knew enough to know how dangerous you are. Knew enough that I haven’t slept in three days.”

"That's what I thought," she said. She scrunched her mouth to one side, wrinkling her nose, distant for a moment. How was she going to deal with this? How was she -

Seb pulled the trigger. He'd been told to watch for this moment, it would only happen once, a lapse - she felt his thoughts as his finger squeezed the lever and unleashed the full fury of his weapon, the hollow-point silver slug erupting out of the snub-nosed pistol and slamming into her neck, blowing a massive hole out the back of her, the violence of the collision blasting her out of her seat, snapping her head so hard it nearly came loose and throwing her five feet back from where she sat. She tumbled end over end, blood spraying everywhere until she sprawled out, face down, arms and legs spread eagle, her massive mane of red curls spread in a fan around her head. Her mane hid most of the grievous wound, but blood was flowing in a fountain from her neck, so much that her hair was saturated with it, spilling out in a halo around her.

For a moment, a rare moment, everything went silent.

He watched her twitching body, arms trembling at her sides, legs kicking like a child in tantrum and he approached cautiously, keeping the gun pointed in her direction. His hands shook

She heard him thinking: Careful, careful

Come closer, she thought, and she lay very still. He couldn't see her face under all her hair, but she was smiling, widely.

She heard his feet: shuffleshuffleshuffle

Yes, closer, closer still.

She could smell him, worry and anxiety pouring off of him in boiling invisible waves, overpowering his musky cologne and cheap deodorant. He sweat profusely despite the chilled temps inside the Old Hadrian. She'd chosen the spot precisely because it was as cold as a meat locker. 

Her kind always ran much hotter than their prey, and she didn't want to use her glamour to hide her flushed cheeks and sweaty upper lip.

Plus the girls always got fussy when it got too hot, and when the girls got fussy, someone always got hurt.

Meh, she thought, he was going to get hurt anyway.

The girls were pretty fussy now, what with the bullet hole in their beloved host. She could feel them rising to the surface, a restless bundle of muscular bodies flexing, unflexing, their venom burning sour in their mouths, their fires igniting, the process unfolding invisibly below the surface.

He had moments, and didn't know it.

What is that? Another thought captured, a trembling butterfly, and she caught a glimpse of the little boy trying to be brave. 

What am I seeing? He thought. Reality was setting in. He couldn't fully picture it yet, but there were forces, undercurrents of energy that were in motion and turning their considerable focus onto him, he couldn't see it yet, no, but...he could feel it.

The shot had hurt, of course, but the silly fool was counting on old superstitions to protect him, myths passed down by babushkas and grannies. It was almost laughable, but he had hurt her, and that put her - and the ladies - in a foul mood. Not great for his survival.

She pushed herself to her knees. Every fiber in her body ached. Blood poured off of her like a waterfall.

Behind her, she heard him gasp, a sharp inhale behind clenched teeth. She sensed his trigger finger wavering on the metal, wanting to squeeze off another round but not wanting to be too hasty.

He has one bullet left. 

Not that it mattered. It was a waste of good material. Silver was her favorite. Gold was boring. Silver was - different. 

But she still didn't want to get shot. Being blasted by a Majesty .45 was still incredibly painful.

She threw her hair back, out of her face, the soaked ends splattering blood all over him. He gasped again, staggering backwards now, wiping the blood from his face, spitting it out of his open mouth.

By the time he cleared the blood from his eyes, she was standing three feet from him, facing him, feet wide, strong legs rooted to the hardwood floor, hands in fists at her side, her head tipped down, an evil stare coming from her blazing eyes. As he watched, the terrible wound in her throat closed, healing itself, closing with a wet noise.

After ten seconds, all that remained was drying blood.

She felt his trigger finger waver. She held out an impatient hand. She grimaced. Don’t. Fucking. Shoot me.

"Just stop," she said, weary. "Silver isn't going to - "

He pulled the trigger again. It missed, barely, whistling by her head and shattering a picture of a minotaur hanging on the wall behind her. She flinched. 

She sighed and took a moment to look at him. He was pretty, almost feminine with his long lashes, full lips and soft expression. Even trying to kill her, the look in his eye was submissive. This guy wanted to give in to her, he wanted so badly to submit, and she found that intoxicating.

"What did you hope to get out of this?" She said. The ladies were at the surface now, pushing ghostlike from her scalp, into the wavy tresses of her auburn hair, sliding invisibly from her skull, their coming announced with a growing flare of light. Seb shielded himself from the brilliance with his gun hand, no longer concerned about shooting her.

She saw his final moments, she snatched the thoughts out of thin air, like scattered leaves gusting before a great fire. 

This is what he saw:

A goddess, her hair ablaze, enveloped, wrapped in streams of golden particle light, power flowing off of her, out of her, erupting from the palms of her hands and the soles of her feet. She lifted from the ground, toes pointed to the tiles, rising above them.

But it was her hair that drew his attention, it was the shapes manifesting out of her magnificent red hair, sinuous, fiery shapes like ropes, writhing, alien, familiar, he could not look away, she saw the fascination come into his eyes, saw his mind wander, saw the ladies raised up to seize his focus, they brought him back to the present.

His confusion made it difficult to grab his thoughts, they slipped away like slimy little gutter fish.

But then: He saw her, saw them, the ladies, saw them for what they were, saw through the glamor that kept them hidden in the folds of her glorious red hair.

Serpents, snakes, dragons, his quailing mind thought. She smiled.

Now the name would come.

A look of surprise. There it is.

Yes, she whispered in his head, you know me, you have known me since your mami told you stories to keep you safe. 

She of the serpents.

She of the statues.

He looked at her, his olive skin gone white, a ghastly shade of sick, he looked like a corpse. 

"Poor dear," she said, pursing her lips. "Not how you expected the evening to go?"

He shook his head, a trembling little furtive motion, the denial of a child facing punishment not considered. Oh dear Seb you have been a naughty boy.

"Muh - meh - muh -" he stammered, trying to get the word, her name, out of his mouth, but he was going into shock with the realization, she felt him growing cold.

Medusa, he thought, the words tumbling out. 

There it is, she smiled and couldn’t hide her gratification. Like a faded starlet being recognized after years adrift.

He choked back a sob, put a hand to his mouth and stumbled, his knees going out, he wobbled and staggered drunkenly before her.

Just put him out of his misery, one of the ladies hissed.

Fine.

She dropped every façade, stepping out of her myriad disguises like a debutante stepping from a dress, they slid from her like silk, sliding from her body and form, one after the other, layer after glowing layer cascading like ash to the floor.

She stood naked before him. The ladies reared back from her scalp, curved to strike.

She saw the dawning, unfiltered, unvarnished realization tear across his face.

"No," was all poor Seb could say. "No no no."

Her glow lit up his face as she was unmasked, his pupils compressed to tiny black points, his mouth opened wide to scream, a rasping sound as he tried to inhale - and deeply - to let out his final, futile scream.

She snapped her fingers. Her anger flowed to the surface and ignited.

The ladies manifested fully now, golden fiery bodies solidifying into a dozen distinct shapes, diamond shaped heads, flared hoods, sinuous and sexual, the perfection of serpentem vectem.

His lower jaw trembled. His eyes drifted towards the back of his skull. He was going. 

"Now, damn it," she snapped, irritated at her charges, always showing off. "We're losing him."

Methelda struck first, lashing out, her fangs sinking deep into the bony flesh of his face, her venom flowing with her rage, a dark patch growing and spreading from the wounds. Within seconds cloudy tendrils had spiderwebbed across his cheek.

He screamed, a single, high-pitched wail of pain and grief and loss, a thin shriek that faded to silence after only a moment.

Then Hesperides, then Wainwood, then Tressa struck, the triad attacking as one.

Seb groaned, his eyes retreated into his skull and she watched him go with a smile on her lips. He arched backwards, trembling.

Then all but Miera - the observant - had lashed out and sunk their fangs into his hardening flesh. He’d gone mottled and dark, within ten seconds of the first strike he was nearly covered in deep bruises, blue and purple and yellow and a terrible smell of decay was rising from his corpse.

Goodnight sweet prince.

One part of her story they always got wrong. The she of the statues part. They didn't turn to stone. The venom took but a moment to stop the heart, but the toxins would continue to spread and coagulate, until the body stiffened and solidified to a rocky substance, but that phase only lasted a few minutes, tops.

Seb was in the final phase, body brittle, stained deep black, arms held out stiffly in a final act of defiance, but already he was crumbling, dissolving, little streams of sand multiplying and falling to piles on the tiled floor. It was over in less than a minute, and all that remained of Sebastian Keller was a low pile of black dust.

The ladies faded. The fire faded. The light died.

She stood alone.

Alone. Again. Singular.

Well, shit.