And the universe said ‘I love you’

[backslash]

Any satisfaction Salem might have felt as Beatrice toppled over was destroyed when her own bullet ripped through his arm, tearing a chunk out of his bicep. If he'd had time to prepare, he would have tried not to scream; as it was, his shriek echoed off the mountainside before finally getting swallowed up by the empty, snowy landscape.

His grip temporarily went slack, letting the gun fall and thump into the dirt at his feet. Salem staggered back to lean against the rock wall, clapping his free hand over his bleeding arm and breathing hard.

"Bitch," he hissed at Beatrice's crumpled form. "Does that feel like you won, huh? You wanna know my story? Here's how it ends: with me alive, and you dead!"

His words, too, vanished into the quiet winter air.

He sat, gasping for breath and clutching his arm, for a long time. Finally, he staggered up, and the first thing he did was kick a spray of dirt over Beatrice. Not so much as a twitch, of course.

"I hope feeling all morally superior helps," Salem told her bitterly. He'd have added "in hell" or something, like Jacob had shouted at him, but he'd never believed in an afterlife. Mythology had always been California's thing, and Salem estimated that was about 85% academic and aesthetic fascination, 15% self-delusion for the sake of comfort, if she'd ever believed any of that was real at all.

It had always made the most sense to Salem that there was nothing after death. It had always made the here and now feel like it actually mattered.

He opened and closed his fingers a few times to make sure that they were actually still working. They were, even though his whole upper arm was throbbing with pain. The bigger pain (in the ass, as it were) was going to be trying to actually lift and flex his arm, now. Oh, and the cold crawling in through yet another tear in his coat.

Teeth gritted in annoyance, Salem bent to pick his gun back up and replace it in his pocket. He grabbed the rest of his belongings and then pressed his left hand back over the hole in his arm before staggering up the path. The hot spring wasn't too far. He needed to take care of this, but he probably wasn't going to bleed out from it before he had a chance to sit down somewhere warm for once.

Beatrice was never going to whatever she intended to do at the hot spring, and if there really was someone there waiting for her, they weren't going to see her. But Salem was going to get that hot bath.

((Salem Fox continued in the only emperor is the emperor of ice cream))