The Redeemer

"To fight evil you must understand the dark."

Nalini Singh

~

"The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance observes."

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Chapter 2 A Villian Hero

Everybody needs a rest, even a hollowed-out monster chasing the fires of hell needs a moment to meditate outside the midst of madness. A chance to escape. Somewhere on the road ahead of the Coronet's headlights that escape is waiting for me. Far away from all the buildings and lights of the city, growing smaller in the rear window behind me. A place where the only skyscrapers are the Redwood trees growing tall in the Northern California woods.

The pollution inside me is growing too thick. I need fresh air before the smog swirling around chokes out any shred of a soul I have left. If I keep going the way I’ve been, I will be nothing but the blackness. Part of me wants to slip inside that darkness and disappear. But the small part of me that still doesn't is pushing me to put the madness of my rage aside for a minute, to catch a glimpse of the man I was before. The one who spent Saturday afternoons dancing in his living room with his daughters listening to Sam Cooke and The Spencer Davis Group. The one who stole glances at his wife and got smiles in return when she caught him.

If I don’t, if I let the sludge flowing in my veins grow any thicker, I will go too far down the rabbit hole to ever get out. Still, part of me wants to keep the promise I made the night I left the house I shared with my dead family and go all the way down that hole until I am nothing but a hollowed-out Redeemer taking souls to the river Styx.

Yellow lines painted on the pavement pass silently underneath the rumble of the 383 magnum's exhaust. Lights from a dead city stretch further away in the rearview mirror. A breath of contaminated air from a cigarette fills my lungs. Her voice rings out inside my head. Those things are killing you. The sound of her memory brings a familiar sadness and I inhale deeper. Death would be a gift. Maybe there is an afterlife, maybe there isn't. Either way, it would be a relief. A black void of nothingness or a moment of glory where I would see my wife and girls again. Whichever way it turns out, I just want this to end. I'm tired of the miserable existence I live without them. My throat closes like a vice. A tear pushes up over my eyelid. I inhale again, breaking the vice, and breathe in more of the smoke.

Turning on the radio not caring what it plays, just needing the white noise, I push the accelerator down. The other thoughts are coming. The ones I can't stop thinking. The ones that have become an obsession. Four faces swim around in my mind, haunting me. Four ghouls who took everything. Eight menacing eyes that stare at me. The road on the other side of the windshield disappears. As details from that terrible night come into focus more and more.

A tattoo under the left eye of one of the faces. A watcher with a sword through its breast. A trail of blood dripping down the face's cheek in black ink below the watcher. The ceiling spinning above me. The cold feel of the floor underneath me. Pain pulsing from every part of my body. A chorus of maniacal laughs filling the room around me. A foot crashing into my side, my already broken ribs screaming out. A gunshot drowning out the laughter. Blood pumping from a hole where I felt pressure on my chest a moment before. Black dots appearing before my eyes, slowly chasing away the light.

Shaking my head, I rub my eyes with cold fingers. The road curves ahead and I go faster, not caring if I careen off the side. I will never stop thinking of those faces. I will never stop searching for them. There is no cost I wouldn't pay to hurt those faces. To keep hurting them. To bring a slow torturous death to them. The Coronet screams down the asphalt in front of its hood. The yellow-orange needle in the dash marking speed buries itself to the right. The sides of the road become a blur with only the pavement ahead in focus.

~

Mr. Smith stood in front of Lizzy. The black leather of his trench coat swayed in the breeze blowing in through the surrounding concrete. Hi-rise Buildings stretched like pillars into the sky above the alley. Lizzy went over his features with her eyes, starting at the combat-style boots he wore on his feet all the way up to the oil in the dark hair he slicked back on his head. An ominous feeling rolled over in her thoughts. What was he doing here? The question asked itself over and over in her mind. Looking away from him Lizzy turned her attention to the rest of the alley where Laurence Donald’s hips had been shattered by his own car.

Taking in a deep breath of the not-yet scorching hot Los Angeles air she prepared herself for what was about to come. Mr. Smith’s arrival from the shadowy organization of the administration's Department of Special Services was a new wrinkle. With every passing second her gut was telling her this case was going to change her entire world before it was over. The Redeemer wasn't just a special ability gone rogue Special Services wouldn't care about that. This was something more. Which meant that she now had two mysteries to solve. First, she needed to find out who the Redeemer was and stop him. Second, she needed to figure out why President Clark’s administration had sent one of its henchmen from Special Services to poke around.

The evidence collection team was nearly finished. Like the rest of the scenes she'd reviewed in the Redeemer's case file, there was nothing to collect that wasn't left by the victim. If you could call Laurence Donalds a victim. In the short time she'd had to profile the uptown lawyer, she'd already discovered he was a vile human being. Pushing thoughts of Laurence aside she began ticking off the things she'd already learned about the case.

First was something that had not been evident or noticed by Sam Reynolds, the investigator whom she was supplanting as lead. The Redeemer had more than one special ability, and not just more than one, he had several. The Watchers were among the most powerful special abilities and the Redeemer had clouded the watcher who had been searching for him last night seemingly with ease. He had created a fog with a wave of his hand so thick that parts of it were still hovering above her head.

It was also clear that The Redeemer had tremendous physical strength beyond that of a normal human being. Laurence Donalds weighed at least three hundred pounds and he said The Redeemer had ripped him out of his car like he was a feather. But that wasn't what was sticking in her mind the most. What was, was what Laurence had said just before he slipped back into unconsciousness as the EMTs were wheeling him away.

“His eyes were glowing red.” That was something new. Even the fire abilities didn't have eyes that glowed red.

~

Light from an early dawn breaks over the Northern California horizon in the distance. I rub my eyes and try to keep fighting off the sleep I've been battling for miles. Beyond the windshield the backdrop of the Klamath Mountains is breathtaking. If I were anybody else, I would be in awe, but my mind is fixed on her eyes staring back at me from the floor. The plea in them haunts me with visions of her soul calling to me, begging me to break the bindings, holding my hands to the chair, and save her before she dies.

All my life I have been afraid to use my strength. I have always held it back, but I have always known it was there for me if I wanted it. Before I became who I am now, before I let that strength go. I went out of my way to avoid violence. I walked away even when it made me look small. But after a life of restraint, of not using my strength, of battling to keep it down the one night I needed it more than anything in the world, it wasn't there.

Rumbles from my stomach finally refuse, not to be heard. Reluctantly, I pull from the highway onto an exit ramp marked 136. Looking at the gauges in the dash I realize I need gas as well. Fuel or food, which to grab first is the only decision I have to make before I get back on the highway. My life at this moment is simple. I'm running again. All I have to do is keep moving. I’ve grown used to it. I haven't stopped running since the four faces came and ended my life. Running from the loss. Running from the pain, and now running from the dragnet in the city hours behind me.

A sign that reads Charlie's All Day Diner answers my question for me and I pull the front tires of the Coronet onto the worn pavement covering the parking lot before coming to a stop between a pair of faded orange lines. Stepping out of the Coronet the diner in front of me sits like a monument to a bygone era. Chrome wraps around underneath large windows that stretch the entire length of the diner. The tables that adorn the other side of the glass in each of the windows, sit mainly empty. A waitress spots me and smiles. I lower my head and pretend I didn't see her before I shuffle toward the front door along the cracked and broken sidewalk outside.

~

Lizzy wrapped her coat a little closer around her waist hoping to keep out a fresh breeze blowing in off the Santa Anas. She walked fast, the feeling of being followed had continued to chase her all afternoon. The black trench coat guy, Mr. Smith, a man she had only heard of in rumors before this morning was still giving her the creeps. Taking a quick look over her shoulder, she couldn’t help asking if that was the first time, she’d seen the stranger matching her pace fifteen steps back. Without warning she slipped inside the back door of a restaurant and pushed her way past the surprised looks on the faces of the cooks preparing for the lunch crowd. She almost ran into a waiter when she pushed open the doors leading from the kitchen and made her way across the poorly lit dining room. Then she was outside again bustling through the pedestrian traffic of the early afternoon rush.

After seven blocks traveling over pitted concrete sidewalks, Lizzy made her way onto a path leading into Augustus F. Hawkins Nature Park. Breathing deeply, she let the smell of fresh-cut grass overtake her senses. With each step she kept her eyes moving, searching for anyone who looked familiar from the earlier parts of her journey. She couldn't shake the feelings of being followed. Her heart lifted from its sunken place in her chest when she saw the familiar semi-transparent figure of her father sitting on the bench just ahead of her.

~

Bacon, ham, turkey, lettuce, tomato, and mayonnaise spread on three slices of bread in the form of a club sandwich is one of the only things left in this world that can make me forget who I am and what I carry with me. The bell hanging above the door rings and a man walks inside. I reach forward to take a drink from the glass of iced tea in front of me. As he turns toward me, and I see his face, the glass falls from my hand, crashing down on the table’s surface sending ice and tea everywhere. The attention of the entire diner, including the newly arriving man turns toward me. Fear registers across every line of his face as he recognizes mine from a night long ago.

Time freezes in the instance our eyes meet and then explodes in a fury of action. The man is back out of the door, and I am up, racing through the diner bumping into the other patrons and tables on my way outside. Sunlight hits my eyes as I come through the door blinding me in its glare for a moment. Squinting through the haze, I can see a Ford Explorer reversing wildly from the spot where it’s been parked, and I'm off again. My feet pound their way to the Coronet. I have the key in the ignition turning the engine over before I am fully in the seat. Then I’m moving the gear selector back to reverse. The wide twelve-inch tires under the rear quarter panels throw gravel as the large steel-bodied car lurches backward.

Rubber screams as the Coronet takes off across the pavement. The Explorer is already far enough ahead to barely be visible. I infuse warm tendrils of magic into the rhythms of the V8 engine, and like a shot of nitrous oxide burning more fuel, the Coronet takes off like a rocket. I am on the Explorer’s bumper in a matter of seconds. The driver, the man from the diner is undeterred as we race down straightaways and around curves. He tries to lose me by taking unexpected turns, but his efforts are futile. My reactions are too fast. My skill too good. We careen around curves. The sounds of our engines sing a duet together. My heart races. Images from a blurry drug-induced world on the night that changed everything in my life play in the background of my mind.

The memory of my girls lying silent in their beds. The horror of seeing the dark holes on their foreheads above thin red lines of dried blood running down the bridge of their little noses and onto their cheeks almost overwhelms me.

Refocusing, I grip the wheel and choke back the emotion that’s trying to come up with the bile in my throat. I push the accelerator all the way down. It’s time to end this. My sadness for my lost children is replaced with adrenaline. The wide nose of the Coronet floats in front of the windshield. The back end of the Explorer moves with the same rhythm. Coming in close I turn the wheel to the left to bring the Coronet just alongside the left rear quarter panel of the Explorer before turning the wheel back to the right and striking that same quarter panel just in front of the rear bumper.

The back end of the Explorer spins to the right. The driver overcorrects. The Explorer hesitates for a moment then flips up onto its side. A symphony of crunching metal erupts as the Explorer flips repeatedly down the road before finally coming to a rest in a cloud of dust. Rubber screeches as I press the brake pedal to the floor and the Coronet jolts to a stop.

Large clouds of dust are still floating in the air from the Explorer flipping and the Coronet coming to a stop when I get out. The taste of it fills my mouth and scratches my eyes. I move quickly. I need to be out of here before anyone else comes along. In seconds, my hands are on the driver's door of the Explorer. Pulling it from its hinges. I rip the twisted door from where it's been wedged into the frame surrounding it. In my mind, I pray the asshole inside is still alive.

Eyes looking through a red blood-filled haze greet me as I look inside the Explorer to the driver's seat. Recognition and fear stare back up at me. I assess him quickly. His face is covered with liquid red. White from bone protrudes through torn skin on his left forearm, but he is alive. With angry hands I reach in, wrap my fingers around the seatbelt that's still latched in place, and tear it away. Then ignoring his desperate cries of pain, I pull him from the Explorer.

“Trunk” My voice sounds far away as I speak. The lid of the trunk opens, and I toss Mr. Not going to live much longer inside. Walking back to the driver’s seat I freeze where I am. Instinctually I throw up a mist, but it’s too late the woman sitting in the minivan just on the other side of the wreckage of the Explorer has already seen me. Maybe this won’t get back to LA, but I know it will. Grabbing the wheel in front of me with one hand, I close the door with the other. The best thing for me to do right now is to get as far away from here as fast as I can. Then I can stabilize Mr. gonna tell me everything before I take my time tearing him apart piece by piece. Because I’m finally going to find out why he and three of his gonna be dead soon too buddies destroyed my life.

~

“Lizzy, I’m glad you’re here. You know I don’t worry much, but I’m glad you’re here.” Charles rested his hand on her leg and looked away for a moment before he took a breath and started again. “This is getting more complicated. The Redeemer is one thing, but Smith is another story altogether. I’ve dealt with him in the past. You need to be careful.” Reaching into his breast pocket he pulled a square piece of paper out. Unfolding it he held it so Lizzy could see what was written on it, but stopped short of giving it to her, knowing the ghostly paper would disappear in a living hand. “Memorize it. Call when you leave, but not from your phone use a burner.” She looked at him. He thought he could see a hint of fear swimming in the edges of her eyes. But her voice came steady when she spoke. Lizzy, you always were good at wearing a poker face, he thought.

“Who is it?” She asked. Charles folded the paper closed again and put it back into his pocket before he answered.

“An old friend. Someone who was dear to me after your mother passed. Someone you can trust, a watcher.”

“A watcher?” He could hear the trepidation in her voice.

“I know how you feel about them, but she can help.” When he was finished, he didn’t wait for her to speak.

Lizzy watched her father as he faded until she was only staring at the empty wood of the bench beside her. Taking in a deep breath, she turned her gaze to the purple clouds in the sky. They were still now but she wondered what their next midnight dance would bring.