The Angel of Red stretched out within the carapace of its new form, tasting the soft feminine flesh against its singing nerve-endings, savouring the failing life juices of the newly dead as they melted into him, enjoying the desperate longing to live that lingered still.
He licked his tongue across her soft lips.
He felt the Colour Dance swell around his — her — body, the driving hungers of the spectrum demanding another sacrifice but outside the dance, or maybe inside it, deeper inside within the swirl of negative and positive, dancing to the tramp of lightning and thunder, he felt them coming, closing in.
He’d seen the Amerind’s face in her dying eyes, looked out through the Amerind’s eyes and seen seats and people, and a woman. So beautiful, so, so beautiful as she had tried to help the Amerind. He wanted to take her face in his hands and crush it. Feel the bone slowly give way. Feel the softness of her thoughts on his fingers as she stopped thinking forever.
Even as he felt his personality begin slipping away he dragged himself back to the present. The lights from the Christmas tree had gone out, a broken bulb somewhere in the chain, but with the tree up-ended on the floor and dirt spilling out of its pot it didn’t matter that a bulb had stopped working.
The Angel turned slowly, sensing rather than hearing the newcomer with his arcane toys of superstition, his stake and his garlic. He — she— smiled at the sweat blistering the Watcher’s pale, craggy face, at the intense relief burning in the pathetic man’s eyes.
More footsteps were coming up the stairs. A long way down but running hard. More strength to them. Younger. Urgent. A real threat. Not like this wreck in front of him.
He — she — had to move quickly. Started screaming. Really screaming. And threw himself at the stunned man in the doorway, knocking the wooden stake from his hand, clawing at his face, and all the while screaming.