The Redeemer

"For we do not know the beasts the night dreams when it grows too long for God to even be awake."

Hildred Castaigne

~

"Whatever walked there, walked alone."

Shirley Jackson

~

Chapter Six, A Haunting

The nightmares that come for me in the night are no longer just of my family. The monsters that search for me in the darkness of my sleep now are creatures this world was never supposed to see.

In the hours I stay awake, a new terror lingers inside me. A fear that these monsters are not just wraiths trapped inside the dark corners of my mind but premonitions, deadly promises of what's to come.

Rubbing another night's restless sleep from my eyes, I move from the bed in the single room of the cabin where I've stayed for the week since I jumped into the river. My injuries have almost healed, but the invisible ones have grown deeper. The devil from the forest who rules the realm of my nightmares, still haunts me even in the moments when my eyes are open. Stoking the fire in the small woodstove resting in the center of the cabin I search for comfort in its warmth.

Leaving the glow of the fire, I go to the cabin's lone window, To watch a new sunrise stretch over the California Mountains. A feeling that has been growing for days wells up larger than it has before. Every minute that passes makes me more sure that I am on the precipice of something big. My family wasn't killed because I was a cop or because of a senseless act of violence. They were killed for a reason that goes far beyond anything I've considered.

Watching the light of a rising sun gleam in through vacant spaces of sky left between the outstretched branches of tall trees, I realize I am no longer just a redeemer carrying wayward souls. I am an actor with a part to play, big or small, in a production of hidden truths and secret roles. But, I don't want to take the stage. I want to send my understudy out. I want the curtain to stay closed. In my heart, I know I am not a hero or a star. Whatever the night I spent running in the woods from the Devil meant. One truth outshines the rest. I don't want any part of the coming show.

A voice deep inside me shouts from the back of my mind that I won't have a choice. Fate is coming for me. It's just a matter of time before my destiny takes hold. Pushing away from the window I let a breath of frustration out before I begin to gather up the few things I've brought into this cabin. The time has come to move on. I need a distraction in the form of a soul that's wandered from their path. Grabbing the Coronet's keys, I open the cabin's door and head outside.

On the road. I count the miles to San Francisco. That should be far enough from LA for the watchers to not be flying in the sky overhead. Far enough to be out of reach of the web the FBI has cast.

~

Walking out of Wolf House, Lizzy lost herself in the feeling of cold morning air blowing against her skin. The night before, and Ankareeda's words weighed heavily on her thoughts. She could feel her life changing. Could feel how helpless she was to stop it. Taking her phone out she scrolled through her contacts list until she came to the name she was looking for. Pressing the call icon, she moved the phone to her ear. After only one ring, the call was answered.

"Where are you?" Trevor Williams, her supervising agent, asked. The chill lying just beneath his too-calm voice gave her goosebumps.

"I'm working the case." Lizzy let her frustration bleed into her words before she asked. "What's going on Trevor?"

"You need to come in." His voice was too monotone, too flat. He was holding something back.

"Come in where?" she asked, not really wanting the answer.

"Daniels is back in LA. How fast can you get there?" Lizzy hesitated before she spoke. She hated this. Hated the way the pit in her stomach was opening wider and threatening to swallow her.

"Why?" She asked, hoping she'd been able to keep the sliver of ice running through her from her voice.

"I'm no longer your supervising agent. You report to Daniels now. He will be handling the lead on this case." Her slivers turned into icebergs.

"What aren't you telling me, Trevor?" Silence hung between them before Trevor finally answered.

"It isn't my place, Lizzy. I'm not in the loop. I don't know anything. I got called in yesterday and told my career would have an abrupt end if I didn't get you back to LA." Lizzy felt the bottom of her world slip out from under her feet.

"If this goes wrong. If I need you-"

"Call me. Jesus, of course, you can call me, Lizzy," Trevor blurted out.

"Thanks, Trevor." Her voice was quiet and unsure.

"Just be careful, Lizzy."

"I will," she promised not knowing if she could keep it. Pulling the phone away from her ear she pressed the end button and looked up at the overcast sky. Ankareeda was still inside. Dismissing her first thought to leave the watcher behind, she made a decision.

Now more than ever, Lizzy felt she would need as many friends as she could get in the coming days. Returning her phone to her pocket, she headed back into the ruins. As she went her mind shifted to Daniels. He was dangerous. And that meant going to LA would be dangerous, too.

Her instincts told her Daniels would have something waiting for her, something she wasn’t going to like. Really, it didn't matter what he had waiting for her. She didn't have a choice. She would go to the FBI building and not meet him anywhere else. This had to be on her terms as much as possible. Pulling her phone out of her pocket again she looked at it and considered calling Daniels before she put it back. It was too early to let him know she was returning. He would have too much time to plan.

From inside the ruins, she heard Ankareeda's voice calling her name. As she answered, she thought about how much she would tell Ankareeda before letting a quiet laugh go. The watcher probably already knew everything.

~

The city moves around me. The streets hum with traffic. I let the rage warm my skin but not enough to glow red. I let the power brimming below my surface guide me. The time has come. It's been days since the last, and it's time to get my fix. I don't have time to plan. To wait to find what I need on my terms. I am an addict, and I let my drug draw me through the night. Around corner after corner, through crowds of passing people, I follow blindly the pull of my addiction. Snippets of conversations float inside my ears before they leave again unnoticed.

My eyes linger on the trolleys that no longer run in this broken city. On the filth that covers formerly clean streets. Far ahead in the darkness lies a mansion where the ruler of this dying city sits on their thrown, looking down at the people their corruption has left to suffer. At my sides, boarded-up buildings sit where businesses once thrived.

Tonight I will carve out the pound of flesh this decaying city's ruler's greed demands. Ahead of me, a shadow appears from the dark. I keep walking thinking at first they've nothing to do with me. Before a crippling feeling slips over me and an image of Julia's dead eyes flashes in my mind.

I stop as the shadow steps into the glow illuminating from a street light. Rage lights in my veins and red burns against my skin. A face I recognize from my nightmares steps toward me wearing a sinister smile.

"I didn't think I'd have to see you again, innocent one." He clasps his hands in front of him. Behind me, I hear steps approaching on the pavement. "I understand you met Roger. That was his name. He wouldn't answer you, but I see no harm in letting you know." The smile on the ghoul from my nightmares, face stretches wider, revealing teeth filed into points. "You are full of surprises. I mean the blood I saw pumping from your chest, and you didn't die. Then you go out on a silly I'm going to rid the world of bad quest. Seriously, you're like a bad comic book. What is it they call you, Jagger? The Redeemer." He looks down at his feet and then back up at me. "You have no idea how ironic that name is." My fists clench at my sides. I think about moving forward but hesitate with the shock of who's standing before me. A chuckle escapes his lips before he begins again.

"How stupid are you? Only luck saves you in the woods, and still, here you are going on with your Redeemer bullshit. Do you have any idea who was chasing you through those woods? You don't do you? Well, let me be the one to enlighten you. These little dalliances are over. No more teaching lessons. If by some miracle you don't die in the next moments you're going to have to wake up and realize there's a lot more going on here than the murder of your family and your need for revenge." I fixate on the tattoo of the watcher on his skin almost not noticing that he has stopped talking. His hands move, one taking a pack of cigarettes from the pocket on his shirt, and the other taking a lighter from his leather pants.

He lights a cigarette from the pack, and I watch as he blows out a thick cloud of grey smoke. "Who are you?" I ask in a graveled voice that I refuse to let break as I struggle to maintain control of the emotions warring within me. He inhales and blows another cloud of smoke out before he answers.

"I am the nightmare that stole your dream. The pale horseman that rides in the night." He flicks the cigarette's end before he takes another drag. When he finishes, and the cherry grows dim again, he continues. "If you are alive after this and we meet again I will tell you my name before I take you to hell." Then, looking over my shoulder, he speaks to the two figures who have slipped into the alley behind me. "Hun, Vucub take his head to Xibalba." With a flick of his finger, his cigarette flies through the air. Behind me, I feel their movement before I hear it.

Turning I see the two figures are giants. Long black hair falls over broad shoulders, and high cheekbones adorn copper-brown skin. Dark, vacant eyes stare at me. No words are spoken as we face each other. In the last seconds before the fight begins I center my energy inside the orb glowing in my core. Red, angry light beams from my body, pushing back the darkness of the night.

Hun and Vucub move as one, and I move back away from their approach. My eyes catch on the ancient symbols tattooed on their arms as they swing them through the night toward me. Spinning I escape the blows. My leg lifts in the air kicking the one on the left into the one on the right as I move past. They stumble against the brick wall of one side of the alley and I don't hesitate. I let the power inside me surge into my fists. Then, one after another, I reign blows. I feel a hand as one of them manages to get hold of my leg. With a powerful pull, my foot loses purchase, and I fall. The giants are on me before I land.

White light explodes before my eyes. An audible crack resonates in my skull. My ribs explode with pain as what I think is a leg slams into my side. The fingers of my left hand dig into the skin stretched across the throat of the giant on top of me who's attempting to cave my face in. I concentrate all my strength on the tips of my fingers pressing into the giant's neck. Skin gives way to thick blood that runs down my arm as my fingers sink deeper into his flesh. Closing my hand, I pull back with all the strength I have. Blood showers down on my face as I tear his throat away. His blows stop, and his body goes limp before he falls to the side. Standing, I ready myself for the other giant.

A war cry erupts in the night, and I see visions of Aztecs and Mayans crossing the fields of battle. The other giant comes toward me chanting the words "Buluc Chabatan." An orange glow lights his dark eyes as he charges. Every muscle fiber tenses in my body as I prepare for impact. Two steps away, he becomes a flash of motion that slams into me. My fists crash down on his back as his arms close around my legs. I throw my weight forward onto his back, sending us both down before he can sweep my feet from under me. Landing, I spin, keeping my weight on his back.

Grabbing a fist full of his long hair I rise so I'm sitting instead of laying on his back. With a rage that burns inside every cell of my body, my other hand fists into his hair joining the one that was already there. Then I lift the giant's head and shove it down into the pavement before I lift it again and again. Until only a wet thunking sound comes from the mass of blood and broken skull in my hands.

A voice envelopes the night around me breaking my murderous trance.

"I think he's had enough." The voice sounds gruff and aged. Lifting from Vucub or Hun, I don't know which one, I turn to face the newcomer. When my eyes meet the ones looking out from a weathered face I feel a familiar radiance in the power resonating from them. The newcomer wears a faded jean jacket with faded blue jeans above worn cowboy boots. Underneath his jacket, a western shirt covers a muscled torso. To him, I ask the same question I asked the ghoul from my nightmares with a watcher tattoo.

"Who are you?"

"A friend." is his only response. The hairs on the back of my neck stand as a large black dog trots into the alley to come and sit at his side.

~

A smog-colored sunrise lit the sky above Los Angeles as Lizzy drove into the city asking herself the same question on repeat. What would happen this morning when she met with Daniels? Lizzy had a feeling deep down in her gut that she wasn't going to like the answer.

Sides were being drawn and it wasn't looking like she was going to be on the side she'd spent her entire career on. Almost nothing about this case made sense the way every other case she'd worked before this one did. Glancing over at Ankareeda, who was sleeping with her face pressed against the glass of the passenger window, she wondered not for the first time if she could trust the watcher.

Twenty minutes later she was leaving the Impala with Ankareeda still sleeping inside behind. She walked down the street two blocks before turning left around a corner and heading to the Federal Building located at 11000 Wilshire Boulevard. Her mind raced as she considered what she was about to enter. Part of her wondered if she would ever walk out again or if Daniels would keep her in there forever.

In the lobby, she passed through security and headed to the four elevators at the far end. Pressing 13, she counted each second she had left before the elevator doors would open and she would have to walk into the Lion's Den.

When the doors opened, the floor in front of her was alive with agents. Keeping her head down, she made her way through the maze of cubicles to where Daniels had commandeered an office in one corner of the floor. Reaching the door outside the office, she paused, putting on her internal armor before she walked inside.

Daniels was staring at her when she made her way to the front of his desk and sat in one of the two visitor's chairs. On the outside, she was careful to appear like she didn't have a care in the world. On the inside, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were exploding, but she kept her face neutral as she returned Daniel's impassive glare. With a nod, the corners of his mouth ticked up in a wicked smile as if he could see right through her facade. Involuntarily, she swallowed back against the hint of bile rising up in the back of her throat.

"Elizabeth." He drew out every syllable of her name making them somehow sound filthy. Without further greeting, he asked her a rhetorical question. "Did you know I've always admired J. Edgar Hoover?" Without waiting for her to respond he continued. "He was a misunderstood man. Great men often are. I've spent many evenings studying his time as Director. If you'll indulge me, I'd like to share a favorite Hoover quote of mine." He laced his fingers together resting his wrists on the edge of his desk. "I think the quote might be fitting to our conversation today." Daniels raked his eyes over her. Revulsion crept through her body with the obvious way he was mentally undressing her. After another minute of pedophile-like glances, he nodded at her and went on. "What Hoover said was. There is something addictive about secrets." Daniels continued to eye-fuck her before he asked.

"Do you have any secrets, Elizabeth?" Lizzy waited several moments before answering wanting to draw out the tension pulsing between them.

"No, secrets. I just want to catch my bad guy and call it a day." Daniels sat back in his chair forming a steeple with his hands before placing them beneath his chin.

"You are working for me now, Elizabeth. Everything you do will be at my command. Your first task will be to deliver a copy of your notes and all the other information you have gathered searching for this Redeemer and have it delivered to my office by the end of the day." He leaned forward in his chair again. "I will allow you to continue your search for now, but you will send a report of your activities every day. And you will not hold anything back, Elizabeth. We will have no secrets." When he finished his eyes went back to whatever morbid sex they were having with her.

"Am I excused?" She asked, taking care to keep her voice level.

"You may go for now." Lizzy stood and turned to leave.

"Elizabeth." Reluctantly, she turned back to face Daniels.

"Hoover also said, What's important at this time is to reclarify the difference between hero and villain." Without responding, Lizzy turned and left Daniels in his office.