A Cautionary Tale of Devils and Moonlight
A Cautionary Tale of Devils and Moonlight
Part I
Times had been a little tight for Holliday recently, ever since Mr. Lincoln’s War. Frankly, he had no horse in that race, he didn’t really care one way or another about lofty ideals like the morality of slavery or government overreach. All he cared about was that a steady supply of rich suckers continued to wind up and down the Mississippi.
Less and less folks were willing to gamble their money away as the way dragged on. If anything, Holliday had been hoping that the North would storm in and end it already. The Mississippi being split in two would make things rather inconvenient for him.
Luckily, his wish had come to pass and the war had ended with a Northern victory. And slowly, the country was healing. A slow process though it was, those with pockets a might too heavy were starting to make their way back to he who who might relieve them of their weight. But still, he was having to work extra hard to keep himself in nice waistcoats and fancy pocket watches. He had to maintain his own mystique, after all.
For anyone in his profession, or hell, even anyone who traversed the waters of this fine country via river locomotion, Holliday found himself a somewhat infamous character. He practically lived on the riverboats, going up to St. Louis and then back down to New Orleans, where he would spend his ill gotten gains on booze, women, and fancy trinkets before starting the whole process over again.
Luckily for him, gamblers had sealed lips and he didn’t usually cause enough of a ruckus to irritate the crews. If he slipped the bartenders a little something they wouldn’t spill to the captain about his little hustle.
Most of the steamboats had been out on the water for decades now, and so were getting a little worn—antiquated might have been a more delicate term. Still he would set up in one of the lounges that retained some elegance despite their age, and people would always flock to him.
Charisma hadn’t been something that had come naturally to him, but by this point he was well practiced. All he had to do was sit down and start shuffling a deck of cards. The trick was to do it smoothly but not too well, good enough to be catching to the eyes but not so good that he immediately read as a professional.
As soon as a few wealthy patrons of the fine establishment ambled over, then the game could begin.
His main specialty was a little trick called Three Card Monte. The objective was simple. He only needed three cards, the two jokers and an ace. Most liked the Ace of Spades for obvious reasons, but he preferred the Ace of Diamonds personally. He’d flip them around on the table a bit, and ask how much someone wanted to bet that they’d find that Ace. Of course, most would suspect that something was amiss with that simple set-up. But that’s where the accomplice came in.
And Old Mags was the best there was. Primarily because no one would ever suspect her of being in on the take. She was a stooped old woman, most likely of some sort of Gypsy stock. She always wore long shawls and was constantly futzing with a deck of cards she claimed were for fortune telling. That’s primarily what she did: tell the fortunes of the women and children aboard the steamboats. That is, when she wasn’t helping Holliday.
She would always be the first to “take the bait.” As someone who claimed to have mystical powers—fake though they clearly were—it made sense how confident she would be in guessing right. And she would be, of course. Because when Old Mags betted, Holliday would deal it straight.
After seeing her win a few times, someone would step up to the plate, or if they didn’t, Mags would goad them by marking the correct card with a little bend when Holliday “wasn’t looking.” A sucker would try his luck, but with just a little slight of hand, Holliday would soon find himself significantly richer, and the poor fool on the receiving end would find himself up shits creek with nary a paddle in sight.
He could pull this one once or twice a voyage for a big pull, and then might play some rounds of poker to supplement. It certainly wasn’t a very noble living, but it was his, and he was right content with it. Someday, he might burn in hell a sinner. Of course, being an unrepentant cheat, Holliday didn’t actually like the gamble all that much, but that was one that he was willing to take.
Unfortunately for him, he wasn’t particularly lucky.
It was a good day for gambling, horribly cloudy and just a bit cold and damp. Weather like that discouraged a man from watching the water and instead to be inside drinking, smoking, maybe even gambling. Needless to say, the lounge that day was crowded.
Holliday wandered in around mid-afternoon, just a little before peak hours, and sat himself down at a table near the center of the room, right under the hazy, yellow light of the chandelier, and started shuffling.
His deck was very old, a little worn. He had a couple of them, but this one was his favorite. He’d modified it just a bit; had to buy two packs even. The simple reason was that he needed three jokers. If Mags didn’t bother folding the card, he could just simply trick the dupe into picking the wrong one. But if she had to, he needed to swap it out with the identically folded Joker, which he kept hidden just within reach.
It took maybe about ten to fifteen minutes for someone to approach him and ask if he was looking for a game.
“I certainly am, though it might not be the kind you’re thinking.”
The man, a slightly scruffy farmer-type, asked him what he meant. He wasn’t a particularly good mark himself, but he was doing wonderfully at drawing other eyes. Already, several others were looking up in interest as Holliday explained the wager.
“So all you have to do is guess which card’s the ace?” the farmer clarified, his face a little skeptical.
“Yes indeed, my good sir,” Holliday smiled, trying to appear less shark-like than was his natural disposition. “The way I see it, I’ve got two-thirds chance of winning.”
The farmer’s frown deepened. He was deciding whether to mention that he could quite clearly just follow the card with his eye.
“In fact, I’m so confident that I’ll bet five dollars right now.”
That got some attention. Five whole dollars was not a small amount of cash. A crowd was beginning to gather around him. The farmer clearly suspected something was afoot, but before he could decide whether he wanted to say something, a short, gently tinkling figure waddled right up to the table.
“I’ll take your bet,” Old Mags beamed.
“Yes indeed ma’am.” Holliday pushed his grin a little wider than came naturally. A bit of the trick was to appear just a little dumb. “Now, here’s your card,” he gestured to the Ace of Diamonds, before flipping all three face down. “Be sure to follow it now.”
He shuffled them around just fast enough that it was barely possible to keep up with them. When he was done, Mags confidently pointed to the one on the right. Flipping it over, it was definitely the ace she was looking for.
“Oh, well shoot,” Holliday shook his head. “Guess you can’t win ‘em all. But I’ll get all my green back if I bet you ten.”
Of course, Mags won that bet too, and the one after. Holliday shook his head, acting utterly baffled. “Well, I guess I’m just piss out of luck today.”
This performance wouldn’t fool most people, but he just needed it to work on one. Eventually, one sucker would think that Holliday was genuinely such an idiot that he could win, but he’d need to get in before Holliday ran out of money.
And so he did. Mags had to fold the card this time, but a young fop in a somewhat ill-fitting waistcoat approached, his mild smirk indicating confidence. “I’ll bet you twenty dollars that I can guess it right.”
Holliday’s heart leapt just a bit. A fish! A really big fish was on his line! “Well, young man,” he said, expertly hiding his giddiness, “that just so happens to be the last of my gambling money. But what’s life if not short. I’ll make that bet.”
Still pretending he hadn’t noticed the fold, he shuffled the cards once again, and in a flash, palmed the ace and traded it for his secret third joker. “Now,” he grinned, already feeling himself twenty dollars richer. “Pick your card.”
The man was looking right at the card with the fold, staring right into Holliday’s trap. He opened his mouth…
“It’s none of ‘em.”
The crowd that had formed around them turned, but it was a bit too thick for Holliday to see through. However, it didn’t take long for the voice to make itself known. The first thing Holliday noticed—despite the large hat—was the brilliant shock of his slightly frizzy, white hair. He almost thought him an old man before noticing his features were honestly a bit on the boyish side. By appearance alone he certainly couldn’t be older than twenty-five or -six.
Despite that, he held himself with the entirely self-assured confidence of a much older man. There was something… disconcerting about that. He didn’t imagine anyone else noticed, but Holliday had developed quite an eye for these things over the years. This was a man not to be trifled with.
However, Holliday was also a man worth pause, so he had nothing to worry about.
“I apologize, my good sir. I’m not quite sure I heard you proper.”
“I said that the Ace isn’t there.” The man approached, leaning on the table. “You exchanged it for another joker up your sleeve.”
Holliday puffed up indignantly. The crowd was giving him concerned looks, and his mark was turning a shade of red only commonly found among produce.
“I beg your pardon, are you accusing me of cheating?”
“A serious offense, I know. But it is a common enough con. You even had an accomplice to draw the crowd.” The man pointed across the room to where Mags was futzing with her fortune cards again, blissfully unaware that the game had taken a decidedly negative turn. Everyone followed his hand, and by the time they’d turned back, all three of the cards had been flipped over.
They were all jokers.
Holliday was honestly a bit impressed. The man knew misdirection well. But that didn’t change the fact that he’d cost him not only this con, but any others he would have attempted to pull later on this voyage.
“So,” Holliday scowled, “you see yourself as some sort of Robin Hood, hmm? Exposing the con to save the innocent.”
The man cocked his head, then laughed. “Oh no,” he said. “I just wanted to let you know what you were up against.”
“I don’t follow,” Holliday felt, as subtly as he could, the weight of the cold steel under his jacket.
The man leaned in, staring straight at Holliday. He couldn’t help noticing just how unnaturally green his eyes were. “Let’s play a game, you and I. A game of chance.”
An intense dislike of this man built up like bile in his throat. He wanted that cocky smile gone. “I feel I have no choice, if I want to regain my honor. I accept. Name your game, Mr…?”
“Bacchae,” the man grinned. “No ‘Mr.’ involved.”
It couldn’t have been a real name, too outlandish. But Holliday wasn’t one to talk.
“And I myself am rather partial to Blackjack.”
“Blackjack?” Holliday found himself perplexed. “You can’t play Blackjack against each other.”
“Sure you can,” Bacchae waved his concerns off. “We take turns dealing, and whoever gets closest to Blackjack without busting wins the pot.”
Holliday thought about this for a second. Bacchae seemed to have chosen a rather simple game on purpose, so he could watch Holliday and make sure he didn’t cheat. But if there was one thing Holliday knew, it was a deck of cards. He was pretty confident that if he was cautious, he could certainly… stack things in his favor.
“Oh, one more thing,” Bacchae’s smile turned a bit malicious, as if he’d been reading Holliday’s mind. “I don’t trust you as far as I can fucking throw you, so to prevent any shenaniganry, let’s play with a different deck of cards. Something like…” he glanced around. “Oh! Her’s!”
Groaning, Holliday followed his finger, only of course to meet the gaze of Old Mags, shuffling her fortune cards in the corner. He had a bad premonition about how this game was going to go.
They explained the situation to her, and she handed over the cards willingly. Upon examining them, Holliday realized two things. Number one: that these cards were longer than your average playing card, which would make “shenaniganry,” as Bacchae had called it, more difficult. Number two: that there were many cards in this deck that would cause them to bust immediately. The suited numbers were normal, save for the extra face card, but the ones with the odd pictures…
“Well, then we’ll just pick a different number for Blackjack,” Bacchae shrugged in response to Holliday’s concern. This was quickly becoming complicated, and more than a little idiotic. “Let’s say, like sixty-nine.”
“Why sixty-nine in specifics?”
For some reason it appeared that Bacchae was very close to laughter. “High enough to give us some wiggle room, but I just picked it at random, really.”
And so, as the sizable crowd got larger, the two of them sat at a table. As soon as both got a drink in his hand, they commenced.
Part II
There was something Holliday didn’t understand about this whole situation. As Bacchae shuffled the cards he looked so… driven, almost angry. He had never met this man before in his life, so what could he have possibly done to bring this out of him?
As was customary in Blackjack, Holliday threw down his bet before the hand was dealt: a crisp five dollar bill. Not a small bet. He wanted to show that he was a high roller. After he was done shuffling, Bacchae glanced down at Holliday’s bet, grinned, and placed a ten on the table.
“You must be a man of means, sir,” Holliday whistled. This told him one of two things: either Bacchae was rich enough that the value of dollars was entirely distorted, or he was very foolhardy.
But he just shrugged in response. “Money doesn’t mean a lot to me,” was all he said, which didn’t tell Holliday anything.
Clearly he handled cards a great deal, because Bacchae shuffled and dealt them very cleanly. However, his gambling etiquette left much to be desired. Firstly, He dealt to himself first, laying down a card labeled “The Sun,” and one called “The Tower.” Each featured a visual depiction of its namesake, and a number on the top in roman numerals. Secondly, he didn’t alternate dealing the cards. This would make it a lot easier for him, or Holliday, to cheat. He was confident that he could call Bacchae out on anything he’d try, but was he trying to get him to take the bait? Or was he really just stupid? That would remain to be seen.
It took Holliday a second to recall which numeral was which, but it appeared as though they were nineteen and sixteen, respectively. Bacchae’s opening hand was worth thirty-five.
Of course, you couldn’t apply basic Blackjack strategy when the numbers were so fucked up, but at the very least, there wasn’t a single card that could bust him at the moment.
Holliday’s cards were the seven of swords and the Page of Wands, which was a face card, so worth ten. Seventeen. Still a long way to go before the dreaded sixty-nine. And less than Bacchae’s to boot. So he had a little wiggle room.
He decided to test the waters. Bacchae was playing it cool, but he seemed to be a rather emotionally-driven individual. So Holliday chuckled, quietly, under his breath.
“And what’s so funny?” Bacchae asked immediately.
So he could be pushed easily. “Nothing at all,” Holliday replied. “Just feeling like the good Lady Luck is on my side today, that’s all.”
“Well, if you’re feeling so lucky, why don’t you go first?” Bacchae sneered.
Smiling affably, Holliday continued to play it cool. If he was always smiling, nobody could tell what he was really thinking. “Suits me just fine,” he said. “Hit me.”
Bacchae drew another card off the top of the deck and placed it next to Holliday’s. The Emperor, worth four. Of course, Holliday hit again—the Knight of Cups—and again—the Wheel of Fortune, ten. Now he was at forty-one. Not there yet, but getting close. Next was the King of Swords. Fifty-one. Now there were several cards that could put him over. But this was far too low, he’d have to take a chance…
“Hit me,” he tapped the table, and the next card out was the seven of wands. Fifty-eight.
He could take a chance and keep going. If he was honest, he probably should have. But something was pulling at his gut. Something told him to stop. This would of course force Bacchae to aim higher or bust. It would be a chance.
“I’ll hold,” Holliday nodded, trying to look confident.
But Bacchae scoffed. “Is that it?” he asked, leaning forward over the table. “I can do better than that. Check this shit out.”
He drew a card, and was immediately presented with the Hermit, increasing his score by nine. The Page of Swords right after that was worth another ten, bringing him to fifty-four. Next was the four of cups. He was now tied with Holliday, so he had to draw again. Holliday wanted to try to get under his skin early. He could get anything worth eleven or under and win, but there was always a chance one of those rare, high-value cards could show up.
Unfortunately, Holliday didn’t get a chance to try anything, because Bacchae drew almost immediately, and then froze as he glanced at the card in his hand for a moment. He set it down on the table, sighing.
It was the Hanged Man, worth twelve. He’d busted by one point.
Holliday laughed, scooping up the pot while Bacchae scowled. “There’s something about that card,” he muttered to himself. “I don’t like it.”
“Mayhaps it’s warning you to give up now, before you end up like him,” Holliday smirked. Usually he wouldn’t lay it on quite so thick, but he had to compete with the man’s sense of drama somehow.
“You know, you’re real fucking confident for someone who just got his ass publicly called out.”
“It’s called a poker face. Doesn’t seem like you’ve heard of one.”
Bacchae drained his glass of whiskey and slammed it on the table. “Start dealing so that I can wipe it off your goddamn face.”
Of course, after seeing Bacchae stumble so hard, Holliday had a lot of confidence in his odds. This immediately proved to be premature. Seemed Bacchae has gotten a read on him, and his game tightened up immensely. In the next few rounds, Holliday snuck in a win or two, but Bacchae had started to even out the odds a bit.
Gradually, Holliday felt himself itching to do something that would switch the odds back in his favor. A little insurance, at least. But Bacchae knew his game, and was watching him like a hawk.
Except that Holliday realized quickly what Bacchae’s one fatal flaw was: the man drank like a racehorse. A few rounds later, he was already finished with his second glass.
So when he bugged the bespectacled bartender to simply bring the bottle over, Holliday subtly glanced at the top card of the deck. All he could see was the number fourteen at the top. The cards were longer than they should be, but he still managed to shoot it up his sleeve at just the right moment. The number was a bit large, but occasionally he was finding that large numbers came in handy. And at the very least, it gave him options.
Holliday was still up, so he decided to take a chance, to get serious. So he reached into his suit-jacket pocket—it was a tasteful brown velvet—and placed a twenty dollar bill on the table.
“Now we’re talking,” Bacchae chuckled, taking another swig from the bottle of the cheapest whiskey available. It was a marvel that he wasn’t even slurring his words yet. Although it was clearly affecting him somehow, as he matched Holliday’s bet without blinking.
It was Holliday’s turn to deal. He didn’t dare try anything, as Bacchae was watching intently again. He dealt him the ten and the King of Wands for a starting hand of twenty. Holliday got the Star and the three of swords. Also twenty.
“Huh, what a fucking coincidence,” Bacchae blinked at the cards, as if trying to gauge something from them. And while he did so, Holliday placed another card in front of him.
“I’d appreciate it if you’d not fall into a drunken stupor until after our game is finished,” he sneered.
“Aw, who cares?” Bacchae glanced down at the card Holliday just dealt him, the Magician. “I could beat your ass in my sleep.”
The cards came out, and Bacchae kept tapping. Finally, Holliday placed the Death card in front of him, bringing his total to sixty-five. Holliday fully expected him to take the chance, as he had a habit of forcing his luck, but Bacchae instead waved his hand. “That’ll do. Gotta keep you on your toes a little.”
“Well, I’ll be,” Holliday chuckled. “And here I thought you couldn’t count properly.”
“Even a dumbass like me is gonna be able to count your net worth by the time I’m done with you.”
Yet as childish as his taunts were, Bacchae had put Holliday in a pickle. He had to get within three points of sixty-nine now. A very thin margin. He had a little help if he needed it, but he wasn’t even sure that would work out.
First up was the seven of pentacles, then the Queen of Swords. The nine of pentacles brought him to forty-six. That card up his sleeve was worth fourteen, and that would only bring him to sixty.
So fine, he drew again. But perhaps the Blessed Lady had fled from his grasp. Number eighteen, the Moon, stared up at him. His total was now sixty-four. Not enough to beat Bacchae, too high to play his cheat, and most certainly almost too much to be able to cinch it.
“Aw, man. That must suck for you,” Bacchae laughed.
There was still a chance. Holliday held his breath as he flipped the last card over.
The King of Cups. A bust.
That hurt. Twenty dollars was a lot of money. But he would make it back. As long as he kept a cool head he wouldn’t lose.
“You know, there’s something my pappy down in Georgia always used to say to me,” he mused as Bacchae scooped up his winnings.
“What’s that?”
“When the going gets tough, always double down.”
“Words you live by?”
“Well, he gambled away the entire family fortune, so not particularly. But in this case, I think I can see what he meant by that.”
“Your ‘pappy’ sounds like my kind of guy.”
“I certainly hope so.”
Bacchae looked up from his cash, a little confused.
“Like I said, he always lost.”
Sometimes, Holliday almost thought himself a prophet. Because just like that, his luck turned again. Maybe he’d had—finally—a bit too much to drink. Or maybe it was just the sheer chance of the draw. Bacchae started losing.
Holliday was usually a somewhat conservative player; it helped mask the cheating, or when he couldn’t, minimized losses. Today he decided to take that advice, to go big, to double down. This son of a gun had besmirched his—if unwarranted—honor, and Holliday was going to make him wish he hadn’t.
And so Bacchae’s betting pool got smaller and smaller, while Holliday’s grew. True to his word, it didn’t seem like the money mattered all that much to him; he still doled it out with reckless abandon. It was the principle of the thing. Holliday could tell he was a man who was not used to being bested. His mood grew more and more foul as the game continued, and much of the crowd had started to move away in response.
“You know what, fuck it!” He slurred in his odd manner of speech. “You’ve been doing really well for yourself over there, but don’t you wanna go out in style?”
“I’d rather go out with money.”
“No, no no no, listen.” He banged on the table, probably a little harder than he intended. “Hear me out. We both go all in. One final round, winner takes all.”
Holliday laughed out loud. He couldn’t help himself. It was a desperate ploy to give himself one final chance. This was a man who truly loved his gambling. Holliday couldn’t relate, but he loved suckers who did.
“Allow me to make you a counter-offer.”
“A counter-offer?” Bacchae blinked incredulously. “What the fuck is this, a goddamn board room?”
“Now hear me out,” Holliday smiled affably. “Why on earth would I give up my superb advantage?”
“Because it would be cool!”
“But I’ll take your bet on one condition.”
Bacchae waited.
“If I win, you’ll take back what you said.”
“I say a lot of things, buddy. You’ll have to be a little more specific.”
“‘I am not a cheater.’ You’ll announce it to the whole lounge.”
Holliday expected him to take a second to think about it. He didn’t know why he had any expectations to begin with, really.
Leaning back so far in his chair that it almost tipped over, Bacchae nodded. “Yeah, alright. I’ll just win.”
Bacchae flipped his few remaining dollars in the center. Holliday rustled through his rather large stack, before placing the whole thing down. He didn’t necessarily like how precarious his profit was. But Bacchae was well into his cups and Holliday still had a bit of insurance.
“Then let’s play,” It was Holliday’s turn to deal, and so he gave the deck a quick shuffle—it was feeling a lot better in his hands now—and placed them down.
For himself: the five of cups and the Knight of Wands, for a total of fifteen. For Bacchae: the four of swords and the Hierophant, for a grand total of nine. Bacchae grinned. He definitely had an advantage here.
He didn’t even wait for courtesy, he tapped the table and said: “hit me.”
Holliday wanted to push the issue, but he instead laid down another card in front of him. Almost painfully slow, the cards came out: King of Pentacles, nine of wands, ten of cups, eight of cups, four of pentacles, seven of cups. He was twelve away now, hitting the danger zone. But of course, with an ominous thump, Bacchae’s finger hit the table again, and Holliday drew a final card. The Knight of Cups. Bacchae’s hand totaled up to sixty-seven.
For the first time in the game, Holliday’s chest properly tightened. His heart picked up its pace. Sixty-seven? How in the hell was he ever supposed to beat that? The odds were minuscule, next to impossible.
Across the table, Bacchae leaned back, and smiled like the devil. For a brief second, Holliday wondered if that was exactly what he was. “It’s your turn,” he said.
Breath a little quicker than it should have been, Holliday placed a now sweaty hand on the deck. This was exactly why he didn’t like to leave things up to chance. They always seemed to go wrong at just the worst possible time. But now it was all in the hands of the Blessed Lady. Holliday almost found himself praying. Almost.
He pulled the first card and flipped it: the eight of swords. Then the next, the Chariot, for seven. It felt like everything was moving far too quickly. The six of swords was next, then the Queen of Pentacles and the nine of swords. His total was fifty-five, starting to get close now.
Wait. One moment. Hadn’t he been waiting for a fifty-five? Of course! The card up his sleeve had been worth fourteen. This was his chance. His one and only chance. And it had to be clean, perfect. Bacchae could not know.
Carefully, oh so carefully, Holliday placed his hand on the deck, and slid the card out of his sleeve, directly into his palm. Then he made a motion as if he really was drawing a card, and flipped it.
He hadn’t been able to see it before, but the card was titled—ironically enough—Temperance, and was of course adorned with the number fourteen.
The two of them stared down at the row of cards, Bacchae genuinely calculating, and Holliday pretending as if he was. When enough time had passed, he shook his head and laughed. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he said. “I do believe that with that fourteen there, I have a total of sixty-nine. And with the ad-hoc rules in this farce of a game, that’s Blackjack.”
Holliday had been staring off into the distance, proud of himself for pulling it off. But when he looked back, Bacchae’s expression had changed. His lips were spread, teeth exposed, yet for some reason, it didn’t really look like he was smiling.
“You cheated,” he mumbled, still staring down at the cards, and Holliday’s heart momentarily rose to his throat. “You must have.”
He suspected, but he didn’t have any proof. Then it was time to nail the lid onto this coffin. “My good sir,” he shook his head. “I do believe you are breaking the terms of our agreement.”
“Terms?” If he had been paying enough attention, Holliday might have noticed the dangerous intonation that had crept into his voice.
“We agreed that if I won, which I did, that you would take back those words.”
And that was when Bacchae started laughing, low at first, but more and more manic until he finally looked up. Holliday’s breath caught in his throat. He looked too giddy to be angry, but far too angry to be giddy. And his eyes. Even under the brim of his hat, they glowed. They were an extremely unnatural shade of emerald green, and Holliday found himself falling into that terrifying gaze.
“I don’t have to do shit,” he said. “I know you cheated, even if I don’t know how. And while I frequently tolerate cheaters, you’re so damn smug about it that I don’t think I will this time.”
Holliday stiffened. Inevitably, Bacchae was about to pull a gun on him. He’d had to deal with that before, and he started reaching for the inside of his waist coat. But that wasn’t what Bacchae had in mind at all.
He lunged forward, across the table, grabbing onto Holliday’s collar. Though they were indoors, a fierce wind swept through the lounge, and Holliday shut his eyes against it. But when he opened them again a second later, Holliday screamed.
At least he would have, if he could. The table was gone, the chairs too. All the people around them, even the very room itself had vanished, and instead, Holliday found himself dangling from Bacchae’s grip over a roiling sea of greens and purples. It was a mass of shapes and lights and colors.
But that’s not where his eyes were stuck to. He was struck with the thought then that his earlier musing had been unfortunately right. Bacchae’s hat had been taken with the breeze, and now Holliday could see what it had been hiding: a pair of pitch black horns that spiraled around both sides of his head. He was the devil.
“Who… are you?” he asked, barely managing to squeak the question out of a constricted windpipe.
Bacchae just laughed, that expression on his face still as unfathomable as the colors around them. “Somebody you really shouldn’t have fucked with. But I guess it’s too late for the warning now, huh?”
Though he tried to get something else out, anything, Holliday felt as though he had met the fate of those cheaters less fortunate than himself: sunk to the bottom of the Mississippi.
“You know,” Bacchae said lazily, floating along as if this were nothing to him. “I came here because I thought you might be someone I’ve been looking for. But as it turns out, you’re not. You’re just some nobody shithead from some boring ass reality that nobody gives a shit about. And nobodies don’t get to fuck with me. You really thought you could play against a god and live to tell the tale? Maybe some, but not fucking me.”
Now, there was only one hand on his collar. He tried to claw at that remaining appendage, to do something. But Bacchae simply let go.
“Nice try, dickweed. You’re going to float there in the nothing and think about what you’ve done. Well, for the minute and a half that you exist before the might of causality just kinda… crushes you to death. Or whatever the hell it does. I don’t really care. I’m not even gonna remember you like a week from now. Nobody will. Arrivederci, assmunch.”
And with that last word ringing in his skull, Bacchae was gone. That, however, was the least of Holliday’s concerns. Pain shot through him as he felt himself crushed inward and pulled apart simultaneously. His bones crunched and popped. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move. Something was threatening to tear open his skull and flip his brain inside out.
Oblivion bit at him, raked its claws along his back, beckoned him into its frozen embrace. But he wouldn’t go. He refused. That man, that thing, that devil, whatever it was that had done this to him, had broken their deal. Holliday didn’t care what he had to do, what he had to endure. He was going to track that son of a bitch down, and hold him to his goddamn word.
Whatever it took.
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