Our Dark Prince (The Scottish Play)

LIX. Drink Your Rich Manʼs Candy, Don Quixote

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    She sang, with the eeriness of a lullaby:

"Siege to storm, the world will fall;
"Bloodied crowns for bloodied shrouds; her broken shawl,
"In Chaosʼ tomb, in Darknessʼ womb;
"A soul purged from Hellʼs dying fires shall meet Heavenʼs breath,
"And when the Scotmanʼs hunger reigns supreme;
"Hail Death,
"And all his glories."

    Oro woke up, chained to his bed, gasping to the sight of Simón Bolivarʼs war room in La Quinta de Bolivar, plagued by the sight of Colombian ghosts and cocaine powder. For the 100 battles Bolivar fought, the war room of El Libertador towered over him with 100 swords rusted by dried blood to honor his legacy, and in the thick of darkness, La Madrina stared at him with a ravenʼs black gaze. The moon seemed to cower behind Griselda Blanco, the godmother of the Miami and Medellín drug underworld, shaking as she clung to the shadows. The devilʼs mistress stood before him, a woman who had robbed heaven of its beauty, and hell of its youth, and replaced it with a bloodthirstiness that knew no bounds. And above her, a young girl – one of his girls – was impaled on Bolivarʼs swords, bleeding from above.

    "Pretty little thing," Griselda mused as the blood drip-dropped on her face. "Shame she had sh*t taste in men."

    Griselda turned to Oro, sizing him up, a predator stalking her prey.

    "Sleep well?" she mused, circling The Sword of Simón Bolivar – one sliver of moonlight running down the shining steel – with the blood of the girl running down slowly. The Sword was at its Table, a marvel of obsidian that was carved into a map of the Orderʼs territory in South America. Of Pinochetʼs violent, bloody regime and the dominion it held, of the Old King Midas and his resurrected hold of Brazil and its indigenous lands, of the 1984 world and the modern day communist South America. Of Pablo Escobarʼs narco-continent.

    History was fiction, literature was the worldʼs currency, and the pure race was the master race. This was the truth that made Ruth Tudor face death in Chile, that made her run into its arms. When Havana fell, Pinochet became Simón Bolívar reborn, forging South America into the communist world that a horror author wanted. Unaccepting of this world, Oro and his narco-brothers came to level the playing field, to settle their score. Now, the Order of Dragonʼs Arme – its policing unit – came to keep the peace and eradicate Pinochet and Midas internally. On the edge of the War Room, Oro saw the Hellbendersʼ territory, and neighboring packs, raining in their own hell to the Latin earth.

    But here, as the obsidian boiled under his touch – where magical realism went hand-in-hand with murder – he saw a land struggling since the beginning the time to win.

    Manʼs motivation to win.

    "Welcome back to the land of the living, Orito," Griselda hummed, popping open a bottle of Johnnie Walker, what the Volta Grande affectionately called rich manʼs candy.

    "Thereʼs something in El Dorado, Griselda," Oro blurted, urgently looking towards his friend, trying to explain what he saw in his dreams, what he saw while he was inside Robin.

    One look at Griselda, however, and Oro saw that unbridled darkness. A wolfʼs thirst for blood plaguing her in shades of black. The devilʼs liquor did nothing to satiate her cravings for violence.

    He was alone; there were no friends here.

    "I remember there being something. Dimelo, Orito, little girl p*ssy isnʼt making your d*ck hard anymore? No morning wood?"