with half a year gone since i breathed life into the dying light of my fatal truths, my new predilections have steeped my existence in ceaseless violence.
for one hundred eighty days and some change, no soul has been burdened with my complaints, because i have not carried any worth voicing.
no god has received the generosities of pleading prayers; those old theologies were shed from me like dead skin, and i have yet to find reason to reclaim them. most importantly, i have not quarreled with the man in the mirror. he and i have finally reached an understanding.
we will not be 'duke of gloom'. the sun will not have us so easily.
my odyssey pushed past whatever fragile lines were left to me. the ugliness of that so-called savage garden has been laid bare to the world, and in doing so, i have made myself into something unwelcome, something that spreads where it should not and refuses to be removed.
i do not regret my attempt to tell my truth.
i understood what it would stir, what it would invite. what i regretted how the false story was out for the public's consumption. i regretted how it left the names of claudia and myself to be among the long list of exploited black men and women whose voices were taken away and would be left without the opportunity of defense.
we didn't deserve that. she didn't deserve that. not again.
and now it's out there. and the wolves would be at my door.
some might feel death would be a kindness for what i've done. and to some margin, i might agree.
yet i still desired to be left alone to what remained of my immortality, rather than hunted by those who cling to laws older than their own relevance. those who mistook my confession for invitation, for weakness, for some veiled desire for death, were free to test that theory at their leisure.
they came, as expected, and they came organized.
two weeks ago, it was a belgian coven. tonight, from reliable reports, malaysian. vampires that traveled across oceans just to die in my home, as though distance might lend their purpose weight. they carried their history with them—parang, tombak, steel shaped by generations that believed it could still matter against something like me.
i felt them before i saw them.
the shift in the air pressing in from the edges of the room, the quiet tightening that always precedes violence. i did not wait. the first made the mistake of thinking he could close the distance unseen, stepping in from my left with more confidence than skill. i turned into him before he finished the motion, drove the machete clean through his chest, and caught his body before it fell, already pivoting with it.
the second came fast from my right, tombak angled for my ribs, and i used the first corpse to take the strike, felt the weapon catch where bone met resistance. that hesitation was enough. i freed my blade and took his head before he could recover,. the motion was clean, and final.
after that, they stopped pretending at caution. they rushed.
steel answered steel, fire followed instinct, and the room collapsed into noise and heat and the wet percussion of bodies failing faster than they could adjust. i did not track them as individuals anymore. i tracked direction, weight, openings.
my body moved ahead of thought, each strike placed where it needed to end something quickly. the smell came next—copper thick in the air, cut through with the sharper stench of burning flesh where my hands had caught hold. it clung to everything. the sound followed behind it, the break of bone, the low, animal strain in their throats when realization came too late. time stretched the way it always does, seconds widening until there is nothing left but the act itself. there is no morality there.
only the completion of the wanton carnage.
somewhere in the middle of it, something shifted.
not the violence—something within it.
bodies began to fall in ways i had not caused, movements cutting across mine with equal certainty. i caught it at the edge of my awareness, but it did not hold me. it could not. not yet. i was already too far inside it to step back.
by the time it ended, the room had been reduced to stillness layered over ruin. bodies where there had been intent. silence where there had been certainty. only then did the world widen again. only then did i allow myself to see what remained.
he stands there as though the wreckage had summoned him, untouched in the ways that matter, carrying that same impossible ease like nothing in this world has ever truly managed to mark him. for a moment—just one—something old moves through me. something i would have traded a century of wars not to feel again. i bury it before it can take effect.
my hand tightens unconsciously around what i’m holding. i glance down. a torn limb. i had not realized i kept it. i discard it with ease and wipe my face slow with what remains of the bloodied sleeve, giving myself the time to settle back into my casual composure. when i look at him again, there is nothing offered in it.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀“ you always did have a way of arriving where you ain’t wanted, ” i say, my voice even, low, carrying no invitation and no need for one.
i step past the bodies, past him, as though neither the room nor his presence requires anything more from me than that. the ruin sits where it fell, and i move through it with grace, careful only in the way one learns to be when the floor is no longer entirely level. i do not look at him again immediately. i let him stand in it.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀“ i don't recall dubai listed among the stops on yo' tour, ” i add, my tone even. like the question was barely worth the breath.
my gaze drifts to the clock out of habit, then toward the hallway, before settlin'g' back on him at last. whatever brought him here was never gon' be simple,. and i got no plans to make it easy for him to say it loud.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀“ lestat. ” I incline my head just a fraction — enough to show I see him, not enough to offer anything more. It was enough.
my hand slips into my pocket, fingers closin'g' around my phone still slick with what remains of my would-be killer. i draw it out slow, thumb already wakin' the screen, already dialing the number i know by heart. practical things still got to be handled, no matter who decide to appear in the middle of my mess.