I entered the warehouse, cautiously peaking around the doorway into the blackness which lay within. I’d followed the sandman all the way to the docks. This was it. His lair, or its, I still couldn’t tell which. I pressed the panic button as I stepped in. Scarlett would be able to find me now. Inside it was quiet. I squinted but I could only make out the faint outline of stacked crates and metal containers.

As I went further in, the echoey tap of my shoes on the concrete floor and the shallow rhythm of my breath sounded alarmingly loud to me. I looked left and right. Where’d that monster disappear to?

With a sudden flash, the warehouse lights flickered to life, momentarily blinding me. I heard slow footsteps, approaching across the concrete floor. I blinked and saw that it was indeed the sandman. Nonchalantly strolling towards me, a swing in its step. The vampyric figure was whistling a tune. I quickly recognised it.

“La vie en rose?” I said.

It stopped whistling and smiled. “Je vois la vie en rose,” it replied.

My eyes glanced at the flickering fluorescent lights above. “So, you can stand the light.”

“This unnatural light of yours, I’ve found, is tolerable,” the sandman replied. It took a few further steps.

“Does water hurt you?” I asked, thinking of how there’d been no killings since the rains had started.

The monster smiled a beautiful smile. “No. But when the patter of the water comes down, I get so absorbed in listening to it fall that I forget about killing for a time.”

I scratched my head. It was sentimental?

“Would you like to hear a story?”

I wasn’t sure how to respond. Curiosity eventually got the better of me. I nodded.

“Good. You see, when I came to this world, I was devoted to my queen.” It paced up and down as it spoke, but its glimmering eyes never left mine, holding my gaze entranced. “To keep things simple, I was gathering information for her when I met someone. A human girl. She was whistling that very tune you heard just moments ago.”

The sandman whistled the chorus line once more to demonstrate.

“I don’t see why you’re telling me this.”

“As your friend so kindly put, she likes to know her enemy. I thought we could come to some kind of understanding before anything grisly has to occur.”

It suited me to play along with this. After all, it gave Scarlett more time to catch up with us. Truthfully, I didn’t feel bad leaving her behind. Not really. I knew she could handle herself and with me out of the way, she wouldn’t have to worry about protecting anyone but herself. Still, I hoped nothing went wrong.

“Anyhow, coming back to my story. This girl, through her I witnessed first-hand what your humanity had done to its planet. It was almost as bad as what they’d done to my world.”

“Your world?” I asked, confused by what the sandman meant.

It simply paused briefly to smile before continuing.

“She lived on the surface. Not up here in one of these floating settlements. For some time, I wandered the ruins of past civilizations with her. Many times, I asked why she remained on the surface when there was nothing there for her. She always replied the same. ‘Je vois la vie en rose’.”

The sandman moved its hands dramatically as it spoke. “I couldn’t understand her positive philosophy. One day she was killed by a follower of my queen, sent to summon me back. She had need of me once more, he’d said. I felt no remorse at the time. No anger.”

The sandman’s words, despite their cold, masked appearance, wrung with emotion. I felt a pang inside at them.

“You look as though you’re trying to escape,” the sandman said. “But you have no object of your own, do you? You follow aimlessly. Do what you’re told for some higher purpose.”

My breath caught in my throat. My mouth felt dry at the words.

“I was the same. I followed my queen without question. I fulfilled my role for her purpose and not my own. But I ask, où est le rose? Escape without purpose is no escape. Now however, I’d found mine, and so I fled. Which brings us here.”

“Hmm,” I said. “And why the killing? What purpose does that serve?”

“Life must be lived. Tue rest ma rose.”

“You’re insane.”

“Au contraire. There is no such thing. There are only the limitations placed on our freedom by others. I am free. Je suis libre. Je vois la vie en rose.”

The sandman spread its collared cape dramatically at these words. There was no way I could reason with this person. In fact, I couldn’t see someone who justified killing in such a way as a person at all. No, this thing was a monster. There was no salvation for something like that.

I felt it again then. The pulsating rise in my forehead. Something inside me wanted out badly. My hands were shaky.

“There’s no point in fighting me,” the sandman said. “You can’t win, and you know it.”

It was right. But something compelled me, nonetheless. I approached my foe, gritting my teeth at the pain in my head. It felt as though my mind was being torn apart. With each step my thoughts were assaulted by fragmented glimpses of the past. Blood. Fear. Emilia. The picture was slowly forming. The scene that had eluded me for so long. Locked away in the depths of my mind until now when it surfaced once again.

Her body lying still in my bloodied hands. I screamed as, on my forehead, my third eye opened.

***

Scarlett breathed heavily. The moonlight that night was not in her favour and she’d ploughed her way through a mass of adversaries. Still, she thought with a grin, she’d defeated every last one of the sandman’s minions. Across the rooftop, their corpses lay scattered.

Still panting, the Lunar Knight looked up to the clouded sky. The waning moon had appeared once more from behind the cover and she sighed as its rays touched her skin. She could feel the lunar energy passing through her body, from her fingertips up to her chest. In the dark section of the moon she could make out city lights. Probably Byzantium-2.

She heard a beeping sound. Her brow furrowed. It was Sander’s panic button. So, he’d gotten to the lair, huh? She examined her device’s display and saw the blinking dot, which represented her companion some distance away.

She felt worry fill her. She doubted he could take on the sandman alone. With a sharp intake of breath, she ran. She’d have to try reach him as fast as she could. She just hoped she wasn’t too late already.