He was standing casually, his suede overcoat draped over one shoulder, snapping his fingers as he listened to an old Neil Young - Harvest Moon record. There was a lot of distortion.
Phillips looked up, giving Xander a big smile when he noticed the boy. “How are you?” he asked pleasantly, his nice-guy routine still firmly in place. The same smile he used to lull the girls into the dark now charming Xander.
“Been better,” Xander admitted, unable to hide the cuts around his eyes and cheeks.
“Pity,” Philips said. “You know, a kid your age getting hurt like that, it could lead to some real violence building up in you over time. Cause some real psychological damage. Maybe anger management would be in order...” he trailed off as the record played on, tapping the side of his temple contemplatively.
Wide-eyed, Xander began to wonder if the nice guy act wasn’t an act. If he really was a kind hearted man who’d apparently just gotten up one day and decided that he was going to be a rapist. To commit horrible acts on young girls. He kept the images of Cathy and Julie and Greer in his mind, kept thinking about how they must have cried. How they suffered. “Sir --” Xander started.
Phillips cut him off, closing his eyes and listening to the music, “I love this part,” he explained. He turned it up slightly, the music blaring, as he started to hum along. “When we were strangers, I watched you from afar...When we were lovers, I loved you with all my heart...”
Usually the song was wonderful, but now the words seemed to hold a near freakish meaning. As if the bastard thought his victims loved him. Without even so much as opening his eyes, Philips pulled a series ten revolver from behind his back and fired once, piercing Xander through the right breast with an ear-shattering bang. Xander fell to the ground, crashing through an end table as he slammed down. Chips of ashwood twirled in all directions at once, some of them sticking into the back of his head. Immediately he felt hard to breathe. His lungs were filling up with blood and he could feel the wound becoming infected already. He coughed, gangrene coming up his throat in a sick burp. Phillips walked over to Xander, the music still playing.
“Because I’m still in love with you, I want to see you dance again... Because I’m still in love with you, on this harvest moon.”
-BANG!-
He shot Xander directly through the central plexus of his chest. The young man’s body jumped slightly from the sudden impact, but did not move afterwards. Phillips grabbed him by the arms and dragged him into the closet, hoping that the blood would not stain his carpet.
“Well, isn’t this absolutely pathetic?” Genblade asked rhetorically, gazing down through the darkness as a pool of blood seeped from Xander’s open wounds. “That dude busted more holes in you then he did that brunette.” He laughed, then his brow crumpled and he seemed contemplative. “Why didn’t I ever think of that?”
Spider stepped out of the darkness, smiling warmly. It was a smile one would expect from a mother after a three year-old scrapes their knee. “I’m sure you will eventually, darling,” she assured him.
He smiled seductively in response.
“Not now,” she scolded him. “I have to tend to the boy-womb. Run along, Adam... You can let your Eve tempt you later.”
He smiled, glancing down at Xander with something mixing jealousy and fear. Then he walked away, fading into the darkness that surrounded them like a bad memory.
Spider leaned over Xander, touching his two throbbing chest wounds softly. It stung at first, but only at first. After that, it felt good. It felt as though he were healing. Without warning, she dug her nails inside of the bullet hole. Xander screamed wildly, thrashing about until she withdrew them again. Her fingers were almost completely covered in blood, but now held a thick banded golden ring which was spotlessly shimmering.
Xander looked up, confused. “Where did that come from?” he asked, his voice hoarse from the pain.
“Inside of you,” she said simply and truthfully as she stuck her thumb into her mouth, sucking some of his blood off. “It’s a ring, Xander. More than that, it’s a circle. See, circle,” she spoke to him as if he were a baby. There wasn’t much he could do about it. “Are you paying attention, little Abel?” she asked, using the Biblical references that her creators were so fond of. “Pain and power are both on a circle, Abel. Just like this one. And it doesn’t matter where you start when you begin your traveling. If you start at pain, it will lead to power. If you start at power, it will lead to pain.”
He kicked the door where the deadbolt was, shattering the wood around it. He thought there would be something more than that somehow, given whose house it was.
Mike walked into the hall of the cheap,
