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Somewhere between here and there, he had sold his home, his car, quit his job punching tickets. The money saved up burned a hole in his pocket until he spent both the cash and his golden years gathering things needed for this moment. The ritual that his family warned him about but he never believed.
But then the maelstrom happened and all chances of a normal life died for him alongside the failed marriage. The gods ruined his chances for a happy life. So he decided he would ruin theirs. He made contracts with spirits that would clutch and kill, mixtures of herbs and oils and minerals that explode, and of course the all American invention he had a death grip on. It fired .45 ACP, it sounded like a rattling drum, and it brought him no comfort.
It was a companion and it was the weighted ball and chain around his foot alike. Freedom’s Cost, he called it. For all the propaganda the military complex used to butcher young men and old traditions alike, it was right about one thing: freedom is not free. It never will be.
He put on his father’s uniform for this moment, had his mother’s gloves and her cape added on, and he bought the best boots the magazines recommended. He wanted to look like an officer. He wanted to be the righteous protector of New York. But people took one look at him, his cap hiding those beady chicken eyes and didn't see a cop or even a vigilante. They saw the person who trapped people in cages. They saw a person who crippled others and took his sweet time tearing them apart. They saw a man who was a walking prison. They called him Warden.
And now as he leaned against someone’s lemon of a car, bleeding from knives, back bent out of shape from a spiked bat, Achilles heel torn from that ancient vampire’s claws, he was thinking to himself. If all they saw was someone who locked people down, he’d make sure they’d never leave the hallway he was now limping towards.
People always said that you see your life flash before your eyes when it's nearly time to go to that great pale beyond. Warden couldn't remember anything. He forgot his first love, he forgot what he felt when he graduated from the academy, he even forgot the faces of his parents who sent him down this path of familial duty to the world, the duty to seal the patrons away again and again.
Two things came to mind clearly for him. One, he was never going to see the patrons banished from this world. He was losing too much blood, even with that stubborn willpower of his making him stand straight. Two, his mother’s words filtered through the pain fog as he saw the Hidden King’s chosen filter into the hallway between Broadway and Greenwich.
As the punk goat rushed forward, his gaudy patches catching the light, and as he heard the haunting chuckle of the vampire behind him, Warden raised his hand to the air and repeated his mother's words as her spirit lent her aid to him once again.
The bullets pierced him. “NEVER SHOW FEAR”! The vampire’s claws stuck into his back. “NO MATTER THE ODDS!”
A knife landed somewhere in his gut.
“TODAY I STAND BEFORE THE MIGHTY AND MAKE THEM KNEEL!”
He trapped. He crippled. His gun drummed up his march to the end. He was a walking prison. As he watched the otherworldly cages of hands and metal claws close around his foes, Warden finally felt even this moment fade from his memory, the only thing left being his mother’s voice in his ears.
“Never show fear, no matter the odds. Make sure to die on your feet rather than kneeling to a false god.”