Let me watch night fall on the river
The moon rise up and turn to silver
The sky move
The ocean shimmer
The hedge shake
The last living rose quiver
-PJ Harvey- 'Last Living Rose'
"Windsor! Damn it woman, where are you?"
Chela's fingers were bone white and bird like, clutching frantic grip around the most recent portrait of death. The next 'victim' as Chela saw them to be.
The woman was shaking and bleeding but the wounds she carried would be nothing to match the words that would beat at her in reprimand for bleeding on Windsor's gallery floor.
The Dark Man had to be messing with her. He was surely toying with her now.
Unconsciousness was meant for the weak. Sinking down to knees a close second.
Chela chose the lesser of two evils even as one blood red hand was pressed to her side, the other possessing a death grip on the rolled up canvas.
A serial killer. He had made her 'collect' a serial killer in the hour that dripped the sunlight into ribbons of gold to paint the darkness.
He had left her to collect as a human. As human as ever Chela could be.
Which meant she was vulnerable. Which meant she was breakable. Which meant she could become the collected rather then the collector.
"Windsor..."
She screamed out the curator's name before the risk became to great. Bloody footsteps and handprints and a tainted canvas the only signs that Death's Collector had come to pay a visit.
Living proof that Chela's bargain was no longer paid by her soul alone.
Now to be paid in blood.