live by the gun

They’re arranged across my table in military rank and file.

Black magic’s familiar reek mingles with the acrid gunpowder tang of cordite, all bound together in burnished brass shells. Behind them, cased in gleaming aluminum, the sanctified cartridges stand sealed with Solomon’s mark: the alchemical transmutation, fusion of opposites, vibrating with power between my fingers.

The latter I handle with particular care; but even so, I can feel numbness spreading through my fingertips and into my hand. Aching cold penetrates the thin snakeskin—I can feel how much they, how much Father hates me—but gloves any thicker, any clumsier, won’t do.

I’ve already disassembled the revolver, and I’m imaging (meticulous, exquisite daydream) Choire’s little virgin hands wrapped around the thickness of its engraved barrel, when Corbin calls.

I balance the receiver against my ear, let my eyes fall across the forty-five caliber cartridges and the antique Colt’s pieces scattered across the lamp-lit table like the skeleton of some dismembered organism bleached silver-white in the sun.

“The White girl?” I ask him, but I already know, and I’m smiling. Because I’ve been waiting. Because my tingling hand, my gunslinger fingers were waiting, and the joy of war threatens to spill from the core of me onto my tongue like the stinging-hot phantom memory of blood. My blood, or another’s, it hardly matters.

Two words from the vassal are enough: “Haborim. Tonight.”