There had been blood in the last one. Sticky rust, vermilion toffee, garishly garnet against showdog white, blood. Caspar had thought it too much at the time. The screaming red, a curtain call, a fall of velvet and vintage brocade to say goodnight sweet prince, because nobody could survive that much red. But the hospital bed had come after with its room of dove pallor, and so they had survived after all. Caspar toasted his brandy to the shadows, because he'd thought that a lot of blood.
But this...
This is so much worse. This arterial spurt, the frenzied release, the living fountain of vitriolic wine encapsulated in one capacious chest. The weapon in picturesque hand, a nostrum for the villainy of men. Every sedulous hack, the star-bright gleam of a Valkyrie sword sent to obviate the horrorshow in a crystal ball kind of mind.
It had been him, the soi-disant playboy, all vanity and little valor, proud as kaleidoscope-plumage birds. Reliving the act of it wasn't nearly as staggering as the nightmares briefly glimpsed in the molten core of her machine. Caspar knows that he was consanguine with veritable evil, so it is very easy for him to believe this about himself.
His hands are shaking too badly to pour the brandy now. His only solution is to grasp the ornate, crystalline decanter with both hands, to drink from its open neck.