Moonlightaholics

librarian_7 wrote:I'm actually well along in chapter 8, I promise...it's been too long, but I keep getting sidetracked, with other stories!

Lucky

Slade seemed to reach a final decision, wiping a hand over his mouth as he looked at little Sally Watkins. He might be able to walk away from this man, but she needed his help. And if he’d never cared before what anyone thought of him, it occurred to him that he was tired of being nothing but a disappointment to everyone. He nodded to Josef. “When?” he asked, with a feeling he’d assented to his own execution. What the hell, he thought. Life was wildly overrated, at least the way he’d been doing it.

Josef smiled like a spider regarding a freshly-caught fly. “Nightfall,” he said. “Come back at nightfall.”

The light was growing, the low clouds streaking the dawn sky with bands of color, orange, purple, pink against the graying expanse.

He’d seen this type in two varieties. The decadent sort lolled obscenely on a throne, dreaming opium fueled dreams of grandeur and conquest. Those were usually hereditary nobility, men born to the purple who carried their self-importance as a taint in their inbred blood. The others, like this one, were more up-through-the-ranks, the ones burning with the zeal of some vision, the ones who claimed divine sanction for whatever holy madness they undertook.

It didn’t really matter, Josef supposed. Either type was capable of extreme violence. Their ends, they felt, justified any means, whether the goal was personal power, or the kingdom of God on earth.

librarian_7 wrote:“Ah.” He gave her an enigmatic smile. “I’m a creature of whim, Mrs. Watkins. And my whim, now, is to be opposed to senseless slaughter of innocents. I haven’t always been so nice. But there you are.”