Our Dark Prince (The Scottish Play) - On Hold

CXII. Our Bloody Business

23
LA DAME BLANCHEʼS HUT
Scott & Angus
New Orleans, Louisiana
Bourbon Street
October 31st, 2014
___________________________

"This is as far as Iʼll take you."

Louieʼs had eaten them alive. As the dead turned the New Orleans into a rotten cemetery of pure darkness, cradles of blood streamed across Wil, Lafayette, Scott, and Angusʼ faces from clawing their way through the unhallowed battleground: unseelie fae blood dripping on their faces and the wolvesʼ faces. Night had swallowed them whole, bleeding into the bayou, and the dark elves and black fairies had risen from the ashes: a blood bath of fae corpses and wolf carcasses licking their wounds in the earth. The earth had broken its teeth in New Orleans, the mouth of the Mississippi flooded with blood, and as the group roamed – neck deep in blood – a black swarm of fae, glistening like silky smoke, shot upwards, eerily illuminating their path.

Scottʼs knife had always been familiar with the taste of blood, but what was happening, this...

      "Itʼs a bloodbath," Wil let out, breathless.

New Orleans was swimming in a sea of bodies, rivers of blood, with corpses writhing to the surface of the Mississippi, screaming for all to hear, before choking on their own bile. In the horizon, that Hut of rot and ruin, underneath the vaulted sky stood, angry, waiting, perched on skinned, bloodied chicken legs. The unseelie fae replaced were devouring meat and grinding on bone, and the screams could be heard from a mile away. The Hut sat on a sea of decapitate heads. With his longsword in hand, Angus scoped the horizon, listening to the cannibals feast on the dead and the rougarous eat babies amidst the churches; all with slitted eyes glowing bright in the haze of redness.

   Scott and Angus shared a look.

   Just as it was, so it shall begin again.

"I reckonʼ someoneʼs sendinʼ a message. Tryʼna tip the scales," Angus offered, as Roderick, Lynx and Louise, and the wolves crunched over the mountain of carcasses, eyes red with bloodthirstiness.

"As far as you go, Lafayette?"

"Far as I go, chief."

"And why's that?"

The fae snarled. Before his eyes, La Dame Blancheʼs Hut grew into a rougarouʼs purgatory, of flesh and skin, where they ripped off babiesʼ faces with starved hunger. The blood moon rose in the sky as the wolves sang their songs and the rougarous reaped their raptured souls. With faces stricken in blood and dirt, his body cried in pain, as if it were remembering a painful affliction that wouldn't leave his bones. The rougarous would screech, trying to gorge on their flesh, and the wolves howled.

"ʼCause that hut is Goëtiaʼs Hut," Roderick called out, green eyes swallowed by a werewolfʼs black, sizing him up. Roderick DeMarcus, Robinʼs eldest brother, was enormous – damn near seven feet of lean muscle, Cuban skin, and tousled black hair that would sit on his chest as he would shift. The devil might have been in Louisianaʼs eyes, but pure bloodlust and anger sat in Roderickʼs. And after Scott beat the sh*t out of his niece and nephew, Scott knew he would be gunning for them next.

Roderick stood, snarling, fists heated with rage.

"But I reckon you already knew that, Beowulf."

The two wolves sized each other up, the mood growing darker.

"Hey, hey!" Scott snapped, as Lafayette and Wil drew their weapons, standing in the middle of the two of them. "Back off."

One shove, nothing. Roderick was fuming, his eyes red, as he attempted to clock Angus a new one.

"I SAID – BACK OFF!" Scott thundered.

"With all due respect, you gringo piece of sh*t," Roderick snapped. "Folk ʼround here know of what this son-of-a-b*tch did to make Louisiana the devilʼs playground. I found clean work, work keepinʼ me honest, away from the Order, and you beat the sh*t out of my sisterʼs kids and yʼur man here pulled my *ss back in the fire. So frankly, Prescott, Iʼm entitled to tear one up your f*ckinʼ
*ss."

Lafayette slammed Roderick back, adding gasoline to the fire.

"Yo, yo, yo! Cut the sh*t, man!"

"QUIET!"

And as the gas and oil were added to the fire, Scott jumped in the middle, meeting the barrel of an olʼ shotgun:

And the sky exploded.