The Redeemer

" We will be lost and found a thousand times on this cobbled road of us."

Atticus

~

"Show me that you are redeemed, and I will believe in your redeemer."

Friedrich Nietzsche

Prologue~ one year ago

Time is a funny thing. It never stays the same. It always changes. Sometimes, it speeds up, sometimes it slows down. Sometimes, it's gone in the blink of an eye. Sometimes, it stops altogether. But that's time's little joke. The good moments slip by, and the bad ones stay.

At your wedding. The day you graduated. The last Saturday afternoon you spent playing with your childhood friends. That's when time likes to put on its running shoes. Carl Lewis, the Flash, they couldn't come close to catching time when there's a smile on your face. But the night you watch your wife die. The morning you bury your children. The day you try to live in your house without them. That's when a sloth could catch time. When the tortoise beats the hare. When time turns into a black sludge that drags you down into hell.

~

My eyes stare at the door in front of me. I keep my vision locked on its oak surface, tracing the grains of the wood, not wanting to see the pictures hanging on the wall to either side. The life shown in those pictures is too painful. The memories I have buried deep underneath the soil of my mind are too painful to dig up. They belong in their graves. If they ever found their way out, their weight would collapse me to the floor. And I'm already close to not moving. To not getting what I need.

Slowly, I stand from where I've been sitting on the floor in front of the three-piece sectional I picked out with Julia a year after we moved in. I can't bring myself to sit on the cushions where she used to tuck in by my side when we watched TV. My legs move across the floor. I stare at the hardwood below my feet, knowing what would happen if I let my eyes wander to the sadness surrounding me. Just the thought of it sends a wave crashing down over my thoughts. I can already feel the air tightening in my lungs. When I reach out for the door, I see the red glow of my anger beginning to radiate through the sleeves covering my arms.

My hand turns the aged brass knob on the door before I walk out into the night. My senses come alive in the fresh air. I can feel the synapses in my mind start to work. What I seek is out there in the distance. A dark, evil release. A release I need to escape the pain swimming around my guts. Pulling the door closed behind me, I step forward. I don't bother to turn the deadbolt or lock the door. There's no need. This is the last time I will cross the threshold of this house. Reaching behind my neck, I flip the hood resting between my shoulder blades up over my head and stuff my hands inside the pocket in front before I begin my journey.

Each step I take is a goodbye to a life already gone. To survive, I must let it go. I must hollow myself out and become a ghost moving in the night. I can no longer be a part of the social everyday world surrounding me. I am a wounded soul who can never be healed. An outsider living on the fringes. A vigilante taking too many risks, praying for death. There is no good in what I am about to do. No light. I am darkness. I am vengeance.

These final days, however many there may be, will have no redemption song. No salvation will find me. From this point forward, I am an empty vessel. A hollowed-out redeemer looking to gather souls who have wandered from their path. I will bring them back to set them on their way again, or I will send them on a ride with Charon, the ferryman, down the river Styx to Hades and the Underworld.

"Life isn't always what it seems. Sometimes a hero is really a villain, and sometimes a villain is really a hero. No one really knows what lies behind the masks people wear."

H. Calson

~

"The world is full of magic things."

W.B. Yates

Chapter 1~ A Villain Hero

present day

Every night at midnight, the purple clouds come out to dance with the blushing sky. Every night at midnight, I come out to watch the purple clouds move with the moon's rhythms. Every night, I come to search for serenity in their flight across the shades of blue and green that color the dark. Every night, I find momentary peace in their movements before the tragedy of everything I have ever known comes crashing back down on me. Every night, I turn my eyes away, unable to look anymore. Knowing the peace I felt in those brief moments is gone. Knowing the pain will grow until my knees feel like they will buckle underneath me.

Taking a deep breath, I move forward and exhale the air out of my lungs. The purple clouds are still dancing above. The momentary peace is gone, and the pain is back. But I won't wallow in it tonight. I won't drown myself in bourbon till the thoughts haunting my head slow. Tonight, I will be sober. Tonight, my head will be clear for what I am about to do. There will be other nights when I will allow the ghost of the life that was taken from me to creep back in.

Each step I take reminds me to push the suffocating weight aside. To focus on the small measure of vengeance, I will take. To cherish the brief escape from the purgatory keeping me chained to my hell before it's gone.

The man in the car down the street has no idea I've been watching him. No idea of the fate that is coming. The judgment that has been passed. The sentence that is ready to be carried out. He will soon. His moment is coming. His life is closer to changing with each step I take. Each footfall down the alley makes my heart beat faster, and my adrenalin pump harder. This is what I need, what I crave. A momentary escape from my thoughts. My eyes focus on him. Tracing each one of the chins below his mouth and moving over the skin of his bald head.

I start to give in to the rage that is always within me. I feel the power of my inner orb brimming just below the surface. The storm inside me is reaching a fever pitch. I let my fingers uncoil around the nightstick in my hand before I wrap them around again.

I've watched this mountain of rotten flesh, this bag of meat, for weeks, deliberating how far he deserves to have this taken. As I approach, I am no longer sure if I will be able to stop this time or if I will kill again. I tell myself I will stop when I've extracted the pound of flesh I've come for. But part of me whispers that I will tear this man in two.

~

Elizabeth Holmes, or Lizzy, as most people had called her since she was a little girl, tapped her fingers on the cup of coffee in her hands. Her father began to materialize in the empty air on the other side of the wrought iron table, slowly coming into focus in front of her. Lizzy let her smile spread further across her lips as more of the warm feeling from the hot liquid inside the cup seeped into her skin.

She watched as her father continued to appear in the chair opposite her. She hadn't been able to shake the anxious feeling inside her chest in the time, she had waited for him to arrive, but now that he was here, part of her regretted not having had more time on her own. The coffee was only moments old, and as much as she tried to deny it, she wished she still had a few more minutes to enjoy it.

Her father sat with his usual air of refinement. Watching as he straightened his suit and returned her smile with a polite one of his own, Lizzy crossed her legs, shifting in her seat as she did. She knew it shouldn't bother her that she could see through his body to the chair behind him anymore, but it still did.

She should be used to the way people looked after their deaths. She'd been looking at ghosts her entire life. But this was her father. The strongest man she had ever known, her hero from before she had taken her first steps.

"How's the case?" he asked. No, hello, how are you, Lizzy thought to herself. Death hadn't changed, dear old dad. As always, he was straight to business.

"I'm fine, Dad. How are you?" He gave her an exasperated look.

"Lizzy, you know I love you. Of course I do. You know, I want to know how you are. It's just this case. Talk of it has made it all the way to where your mother and I are in paradise. This guy. This Redeemer, no one knows what to make of him." He reached forward to touch her arm. She could feel his touch, but like with all ghosts, there was no warmth in its sensation.

"Honestly, I don't know about this one, Dad. I don't know if we should be chasing him, or thanking him." Her father leaned back from the table. She let her eyes run over the lines of his face. Even in death, his features commanded respect. Her entire career, from the first day she stepped through the doors at the academy to this one sitting across from him, had been spent trying to live up to his shadow. The great Charles Holmes, the agent who started the Special Abilities Unit of the FBI. The agent who crafted and shaped it for its first thirty years. His voice interrupted her thoughts.

"He may be doing good now, but unchecked power like this can be dangerous. He will eventually go after innocents." Lizzy brought the coffee cup to her lips and took a soothing drink of the butter pecan-flavored dark roast before she spoke.

"I know, Dad. I know he has to be caught, but I'm way behind. I'm just catching up. I still don't have the entire case file. The agent they took it away from to give to me isn't very happy. He's been dragging his feet." She took another sip and went on. "Even when I do get everything, I'm not sure where I should begin. He's not drunk with his power like the others. He's careful, meticulous. He’s different than anything I’ve come up against."

"With a case like this, you have to trust your instincts. Listen to the ghosts he leaves behind. I've seen special abilities like him before. I’ve seen ones who weren't drunk with power. Ones who were on a mission. True believers of some cause they made up in their minds." He paused to look deep into her eyes. "Cases like this one are the ones that make careers." His look turned to worry as he squeezed her arm. "They're also the ones that get agents killed."

"I'll be careful, Dad."

~

I almost missed Laurence Donalds. If I had, he would have continued to live his rotten life unabated. It was only by chance that I came across him, only by chance, that his wife stumbled and brushed my shoulder. I almost collapsed with the anguish I got from her. Visions of his bulking frame bombarded my mind. The feel of his pudgy hands as they smacked hard against the tender flesh of her face, leaving behind bright red marks on her skin. The wet streaks her tears made as they ran down her cheeks.

I felt the trapped feelings she had welling up inside her. Felt the desperation she carried with her at every moment for her children. I heard each wish she made to save them from the violence that swam through their lives. I felt the pure fear she lived with. Felt the stabbing pain of knowing her children saw what he did to her.

At the bottom of the helpless pit inside her, I felt the tiny bit of hope she kept there, shimmering in the dark. I watched her dreams of packing suitcases and running in my mind. I listened to her every thought of finding the courage to get in her car with the kids she loved and never looking back. The anguish she felt knowing she would never make those dreams come true. Her pain swirled around inside me. The knowledge she held in her heart, that he would kill her if she ever did leave, slammed down like an eight-pound sledgehammer on my chest.

I barely noticed when the valet left to fetch his car. My breath huffed in and out of me. I watched him reach out with one meat hook arm and grab her. I listened to the almost silent gasp escape her lips as he closed his hand around her arm. I felt the pain of his grip on my arm. Felt the pressure of his swollen fingers pushing down. I was imprinted with her. I would be until I judged this monster who, I had seen in her memories, be as sweet as honey fresh from the bee when he won her heart.

It wasn't the bruises I saw flowering on her cheeks the next morning when I knocked on her door and asked if she knew where the Marstens lived. Of course, she had no idea because the Marstens didn't exist. But I wanted to hear her voice. I wanted to see her up close. To see the desperation she carried myself.

It wasn't the hopelessness I saw in her eyes when she opened the door that made me decide what I would do. It wasn't the women he visited on the side or the other disgusting things he filled his days and nights with. It was his secretary. Alice Whinetrof, a pretty girl with a lovely smile I met pretending to be a lost delivery man. More specifically, it was the vision I received when I touched her hand as she passed me a pen that made me decide what I would do to him. The moment her fingers touched my skin, I was carried away by the horror of what he'd done to her.

Alice was alone in his office with him. I could feel her anxiety, her discomfort. She wanted to be doing anything but the job that required her to be there alone with him. He paid her well, which she presumed was because of the way he misbehaved. Because of the crude things that came from his mouth almost every time he opened it.

She hated everything about him. There wasn't any part of him that didn't make her skin crawl. The only way she had been able to stomach him this long was the belief she held inside that one day, her sister, Clara, would save her from ever having to see a man like him again.

Clara was brilliant and talented. One day, her drawings, her paintings, and the beautiful sound of her voice when she sang would carry them far away from his office. But those days were tucked away somewhere in their future, and right now, in their present, this job was all she had.

Clara’s future was her dream, and until that dream came true, Alice had no choice but to put her faith in the thin hope that there was a line he wouldn't cross. The worry she constantly felt inside her chest told her it was only a matter of time before he stepped right over the imaginary line she prayed was there.

"Alice baby, turn that sexy caboose around and get me the print up on the Clasky billables." She told him where he could go in her mind before she turned to grab the papers. When she leaned forward, she felt him lean against her. A feeling of revulsion made its way up from her stomach when she felt his hand slide over her hip and onto her ass.

She froze. Fear gripped every part of her. There was nowhere to escape. This was it. This was him wrapping her imaginary line around an assault "You really get me going. teasing me the way you do all the time." Alice put her hands flat against the desk and pushed back, trying to escape. "That's it, baby. Push it up against me." He grunted at her. His gut was like a ten-ton weight pushing her further down against the desk.

"Let me up, Laurence.” Alice raised her voice to a shout. Even at the higher volume, she tried not to sound frantic. She didn't want him to know how scared she was. In response, Laurence reached forward and pulled her left arm out from under her. She went down hard. The side of her face landed against the last week of January on his desk calendar in a smack that echoed in the room.

"Na na honey. It's time I got what I want." Alice could feel him thrusting his middle against her.

"NO!" She screamed. This time, she didn't try to push back. She twisted around, bringing her right arm up at the same time. Then, with all her strength, she raked her nails down Laurence’s face, digging deep into his pudgy skin.

"Bitch." he said, stumbling back, one hand holding his face. Alice didn't care. She made for the door. Her eyes locked on it. She was going to make it. She could see herself flinging it open, rushing through reception and out to her car, and never returning to this place again. Then her shirt went tight against her neck as Laurence pulled her back. His fist slammed into her before she managed to turn all the way around. A couple more of his blows, and she was barely aware of his sweaty hands clumsily undressing her. The rest of the time he held her on the floor, she spent wishing she was dead until he finally climbed off her.

When it was over, he smiled at her like they had just had a nice lunch. Trying to keep the tears inside. Trying not to give him the satisfaction, she got dressed. Her head throbbed where his fist had hit her. She just wanted to get out of there and never come back. She wouldn't go to the police. The people he knew. She knew that wasn't a possibility. She knew he would do it again to the next girl, but he wouldn't do it to her again. Opening the door, Alice longed to already be outside. Just before she made it, she heard his voice.

"Alice." Her blood went cold. "Before you go, there's something I need to say." Slowly, she turned toward him. He was leaning back against his desk, holding a gun calmly in his right hand with his left hand wrapped around his right wrist above the weapon. "I look forward to seeing you tomorrow. The first time is always rough. It's like when you're breaking a horse. You have to break the horse's spirit before you can get a saddle on and go for a ride. Next time will be easier. You've got your saddle now." She started to turn, praying he wouldn't say more. Taking a step forward, she told herself she'd never return.

"Alice." Her breath caught in her throat. "It's real nice how you take care of your sister. You do a real good job of it. I'd hate for anything to happen to Clara. Because if you didn't show up tomorrow, I'd have to be the one to take care of her, and you wouldn't want me to do that.” He stopped, and she hoped again he was done before he went on. “But don’t worry, I’ll give you some time to rest before we do this again. A couple of months, let’s say. Now you have a good night. Say hello to Clara for me. I hope I don’t have to visit her anytime soon." Alice lowered her head, pushed the door open, and kept her tears inside until she reached the parking lot.

~

Lizzy stood at the railing of the small balcony on the apartment the bureau had rented for her, watching the city's lights stretch out across the San Fernando Valley. A figure flew darkly across the sky just underneath the clouds. She watched the figure's wings move oddly in and out from the sides of its human form.

Even at a distance, the sight of a watcher unnerved her. There was something she couldn't get past in the voyeurism of their existence. They were in the sky patrolling the city in search of her villain. In a sense, that meant they were here for her. D.C. wanted her fugitive stopped. The Redeemer had been moved to the top of their wanted list. That's why the agent who had been chasing him was pulled when she locked, the special ability who liked to set people on fire with her breath away. Lizzy was the only agent currently serving at the bureau who had never failed to capture an out-of-control special ability.

~

I'm closer now. He still doesn't know I'm coming. He won't understand why what's about to happen to him is happening when I get to him. He won't understand who I am. He won't understand anything. But when I'm done, if he is still breathing, I will explain to him why his life has been changed forever. His car is only feet away. Rain falls heavier on the hood, covering my head as I walk. I am glad for the storm, glad the red glow of my anger is still safely hidden beneath my skin. I know the watchers are in the sky.

My hand grabs the door handle, and I pull up on it immediately. His wide, round face turns toward me. His eyes go as big as ping-pong balls when he looks at me. One word escapes his mouth.

"Hey." He doesn't say the word too loudly. The round end of the baton in my right hand slams into his temple before he can speak again. He collapses his gut, folding over the rich leather of the console between the front seats. Sitting the baton on the roof of his BMW, I reach in with both hands and wrap my fingers around the collar of his shirt. With one forceful motion, I drag him out and flop his whale-like form on the pavement. Letting go of his collar, I grab his shirt further down and drag his massive body across the pavement so that he is clear of the car.

He is still unconscious when I slip into the M3's driver's seat. Moving the gear selector back one slot, I reverse away from his body, repositioning the car as I do. Then, I move the selector back two more slots and drive the car forward again. The man's eyes shoot open when the front tire rolls up and stops with the edge of the sidewall resting against the buckle of his Italian leather belt. In seconds, his arms are up against the tire. His screams erupt from his mouth, filling the air and starting a countdown on a short clock. The watchers will be on me now. Alarm bells will be going off in precincts all across the city.

Opening the door, I step out and close it again. Shoving him back to the pavement, I crouch down beside him. He is still screaming when I break his nose with a quick jab to his face. Blood squirts through his sausage fingers as he holds his crumpled nose.

The tears running from his eyes and the blood flowing from his nose have had the effect I'd hoped. His screams have stopped. I'm in a hurry now. I know I have three, maybe five minutes before the first agents arrive. The watchers above will not land. They will not engage. But the agents will be a different story.

Going to one knee, I move his bloody hands away from his smashed nose. Then I push the palm of my hand hard against his mouth and force the back of his head down against the wet pavement. Leaning closer, I meet his eyes with my own. Staring down into his, I let my pupils glow red. Bringing fire into my breath, I singe the hairs of his beard when I speak.

"You probably won't die from this. The weight of your car will probably crush the bones in your hips before someone gets it off of you. You may or may not be able to walk again after the car is gone. You will suffer chronic debilitating pain for the rest of your life." I pause to take a quick glance away from him. To listen for the sirens, I know will be coming in the distance. Then I go on, "You should start screaming again when I take my hand away. The longer the car is on you, the more damage it will do." His eyes glaze over, and I think he may be going into shock. With a quick movement of my hand, I shake his head until his eyes clear back up and I start again "You may have a normal life again one day, you may not. But you will never be strong enough to overpower your secretary again. Your wife will be able to outpace you if you ever try to hit her again." Even through the fear in his eyes, I can see a moment of recognition in them. Leaning closer so that my mouth is right next to his ear, I say. "Remember to scream. Remember, if you ever hurt them again, I'll drive the car onto your head next time and listen to the popping sound it makes when your skull collapses." Then I get up, turn away, and start walking. With my mind, I create a fog that will cover me from the watcher's eyes above before I call for my car with my thoughts and listen to the sound of Coronet's engine answering me as it barrels down the alley. Behind me, I listen to the symphony of my destruction playing in the notes of his screams.

~

Lizzy tightened her grip on the railing in front of her. Her feet were getting tired from standing in the same place. She hadn’t taken her eyes off the watcher in the distant sky hovering over the city in several minutes. They’ve found something, she thought. Have they found my something? She asked. Her phone, lying on the table just inside the apartment behind her, began to ring, answering her question.