5
Macbeth
Zürich, Switzerland
Le Fleur de Lis Café
October 31st, 2014
Time: 12:30 AM
_____________________________
"If itʼs war you seek, Macbeth, many will pay the price. And forgive me for being candid, but I will not see this world burn for your wounded pride," Orion growled.
Macbeth fiddled with the butter knife, and the sunlight faded from his eyes. Orion observed him cautiously, observed him finger the dull, blunt blade with harsh pricks, the hurt and the pain in his eyes replaced with a venom.
"954 years," he told Orion, voice rough.
"I beg your pardon?"
"954 years," he repeated. "I spent 954 years in Hell. 954 years where I burned, bled, tortured, froze, maimed, killed, witnessed my insides rot before my very eyes. Every move I made had me on the charred floors of cold, blistering hellfire. I was a pawn without a plan trapped in the frozen, arctic tundra of Her rapture. Luciferʼs gaelic b*tch. The fallen fell again and again, battering me, ripping me apart from the inside out, using my organs for goddamn target practice – and I was completely helpless. There was no legion of demons...there were no pacts made in blood and s*x, there was no leverage.
"I couldnʼt control my way out of that one. Yes, I was idolized. Worshipped. Proclaimed a hellish God for sacrificing my humble self to sin on my own volition. All vile, wicked things in hell are Gods, you know. People that strayed away from virtue to vice and when the blood you spread is that glorious, that big, just like a womanʼs teats, everyone gets in line. But the difference between me and them was that I was completely and utterly alone. Decaying like the dying thing I was because some self-serving piece oʼ sheit thought he could take what was mine. But in the chaos, there was a clarity," he seethed.
"A slow and steady build up to a scheme that would shame even the most devout Machiavellians. Hell is not like Heaven, you see, Orion – thereʼs no time for sweet distractions. In Hell you donʼt sit around and stew in your greatness as you down cool river water from the All Mighty and soak in the honey of Paradise. Hell is gritty, cold, unforgiving. So you do everything you can to escape. Because Lucifer holds all the cards.
"Let me make one thing abundantly clear, Orion, I could give two sheits about Robin DeMarcus, the Cuban wh*re, and her b*stard daughter. If I had sworn to do so, I would...take their succulent bodies and rip the flesh from bone with my teeth. I would...consume every little morsel of skin and meat until I was sheathed inside their warm, wet bodies and r*ping their boneless, rotting f*ckinʼ corpses until they couldnʼt scream for mercy.
"I would beat them bloody, brutalize and batter their bodies until they were a tangled, gnarled mess of cadavers and flaccid muscle that I could wear like a necklace ʼround me filthy neck if it returned just a scrap of my future glory. You underestimate the cruelty of this skeleton, old Orion. I donʼt ask for legacy because of reason, I donʼt ask about what happened for love. I only ask about legacy for one reason: power.
"When Decarabia found me in the crowd of that Christ-ridden establishment oʼ hers, her filthy need for s*xual validation and her foolish young love brought her to me like a lamb to the slaughter and I didnʼt even have to do anything. She fueled my hunger and she did it willingly. Telling me all I needed to know, the most prized scrap oʼ news: that Robin DeMarcus and Prescott OʼMalley have not inherited the Order of the Dragon – the most powerful throne in the world – nor have a claim on it.
"My legacy has been reduced to two mindless animals in heat looking for a quick f*ck and that made the game sweeter. More enticing, more realistic. And when Decarabia died? Her forces pledged fealty to me without hesitation. Lucifer might be the Dark Prince, but I will always be the Dark King. The Red King. And you see, Orion, that is power. Fear, using the night as your leverage, plucking the bones from your predecessorsʼ cheeks and dashing in their brains when they choke you with the dreams youʼd long forgotten.
"Your angels and your barracks and your legions of pearly white followers always assume a reckoninʼ can be avoided. That bloodshed is never the simplest and purest of human motivations. That we care about the name we made for ourselves when we pass onto the underworld. But that, is simply fiction. As Paradise Lost is.
"I donʼt care for legacy, Orion. When you are burning in a mist of life-shattering frost, you donʼt care about the infamy of your reputation – not if that reputation is the one thing that brings yʼdown to your knees and plunges its dark dagger into your back. You care about competition, survival, and other semantics. Itʼs what makes me so skilled in the art of deception now.
"The Hellbenders are a petty little group of rogue mercenaries pretending to play the role of Templar Knights, North America is divided by the Prince hold on the Order and the rivaling families that submit to their corrosive hierarchy, and the South holds fear and instability with the ghost of Reina Santiago still terrorizing the brains of others. Your brethren have been given the reigns to a complex machine without understanding the beauty of its complexity, how it operates as your Heavenly Father dies in exile, and my brethren are reduced to nothing but ash and dust; hordes of demons unwilling to fight in their suffering.
"See, 954 years gives you time to wrap yourself up deep in your darkest thoughts and desires – and unlike you, I have known what I wanted for years. didnʼt bargain, I didnʼt negotiate, I didnʼt wear a smug smile and I did not bring my pompous arse to a sword fight with a mediocre butcherʼs knife. I brought skill, stealth, the dagger of Duncanʼs demise that silently slit his throat in the dead oʼ the night. When you assemble an army, Orion, you go to war. You claim what has been stolen from you, and you f*ck and fight until youʼre bloody and blue and the score is evened out. Come hell or high water: The North is mine, the South is mine, the East is mine, the West is mine."
A beat.
"The Order is mine. And I will take it by force."
For Marjorie; for my wife.
Macbeth lunged–
– and the butter knife dove into Orionʼs throat. Again-and-again, he lunged into Orionʼs throat. Tearing the scabbed flesh of his vesselʼs skin from bone, flaying it alive, and carving it out with his hungry claws. He tore, tore, tore until Orionʼs golden blood spurted into his chest. Chunks of flesh danced in-between Macbethʼs fingers, slipping down his fingers in a slick puddle of blushing yellow, and a: vicious, torturous, unpredictable glee overtook him.
As Orionʼs body struggled between healing and hurt, Macbeth wedged the butter knife into his throat and watched the flesh wrap around it instinctively, trying to dislodge it. Fingers coated in Orionʼs blood, strumming along his pulsing muscle, Macbeth tilted Orionʼs chin towards him and watched his labored breaths and gurgling mouth spew the same intoxicating golden elixir that forced Macbethʼs hunger up to the surface, as a king would a millerʼs wife. His fingers brushed against Orionʼs chin, his eyes glued on Macbethʼs gelatinous, blackening ones. Plunging his tongue onto the edge of his succulent, slim neck – Macbeth sucked in the golden ichor with a scalding hiss and stared at Orion with inebriating hate.
"I will be back and I will butt-f*ck your motherʼs corpse with your head when I do," Orion spat, swallowing harshly, a dying promise as Macbethʼs hand rested on his neck.
Staring at him listlessly, Macbeth inhaled Orionʼs scent sharply, and squeezed his chin and cheeks so the blood funneling out of his mouth stagnated, stopping, suffocating him even faster.
"The Order is mine, Orion," he ground out. "Come and see."