Little Gods

THE WRAITH

A blue-white coil of smoke slides it’s way silkenly from the mouth of the pistol like a soft breath from a lover’s mouth.  It winds and explores the sensually mechanical skin of it’s oiled steel womb, almost pauses and tenuously moves over the hand that birthed it.  Beneath the calloused palm and enclosed by the hard fingers, the weapon is warm and alive.  It nearly breathes as it speaks its desires slickly and with a gleam to the bones of the one who holds it.  There is also a sound.  A song of such fury and grace it is truly sublime and powerfully subliminal.  A high, supersonic ping that rings in the subconscious of warm blood and parting flesh.  It is a sound of chromium beauty.  A voice of angels held aloft on black wings.

The color comes now.  A rich, velvety line of purest crimson.  A vermillion of incandescent allure lit from within by the cold glow of a sword’s blade.  Blood is the river that bears the carol of its sweet kiss.

He can smell the sharp acrid tang of the gunpowder.  He smells the warm sweetness of the blood, delicately slithering from his blade in glittering rubies.  His ears hear the wet “plip” as they spatter onto the thick oriental rug.  He can also smell the heavy aroma of the newly dead, scattered and torn about the room.  Though his eyes are closed, he can see the fading glow of ebbing life in each one of his victims.  It too has a taste, though it is not one savored with a tongue.  For one such as he, the warm, electric flow of their souls into the swarming maw of his own is far sweeter than even the purest blood.  When only darkness fills his unfaltering gaze, he opens his eyes of opalescent white.  Under a hard brow they blaze in frigid intensity and they menace from beneath the brim of a death black hat.  The paladin’s hat is pulled low on his head, casting his face into somber shadow.  Only his teeth, sharp like a canine’s, are visible and they shimmer wetly.  Skin, pale and wan as a November moon is stretched tautly over sallow cheeks.  Gradually, his breathing calms and the snarl crawling across his lips settles into a slow smile.  A smile that is somehow worse and loses none of its ferocity.  The smile is a smile of excitement that is almost sexual but so much more than just that simple, bestial urge.  It is a smile of fulfillment, a sated smile.  No guilt, nor anger nor malice mar it’s predatory charm.  It is the smile of a cat with a mouse beneath it’s claws.

He pads as silent as any cat upon the oaken floorboards.  His heavy, thick soled black boots uttering not a whisper to betray his passage.  Kneeling gracefully next to the nearest corpse, he lovingly wipes the blood from the exquisitely crafted blade of his Japanese sword.  It moans a low, whispering lament as it is slid smoothly into it’s sheath.  His ears alone hear it’s sighs, his hand alone feels it’s heartbeat.

The first wave crashes fully over him in a squall of color and sound.  A gale of sensations threaten to drown his senses in turbulence and confusion.  A door shatters on it’s hinges, exploding in pine-scented knives of richly lacquered wood.  From behind the door rushes fire and black death.  It’s roar is the thunder of gunfire and it’s bite is silver agony.  A door is blown to pieces and it’s fragments bury themselves deep into the man behind the door.  He gurgles briefly in surprise before two wet holes appear violently in his face.  The shadowed specter from which those caresses issued cocks it’s head for a sin