Redemption: The Slayer Chronicles
Prologue: Los Angeles, CA
Christian Edwards stroked his chin in deep thought. The time for his great Lord to rise was approaching quickly and there were more souls to capture. He knew his time was running short, but he also knew that he must be careful or the Slayer, Serena, and her vampire with a soul, will catch on to what he was planning. He must move quick. They will not know what hit them.
He had sent his men to go retrieve the soul David Bentone so generously supplied. Soon, it will be over, and he will rule.
Redemption: The Slayer Chronicles
Chapter 1
Serena stared at the intruders in horror as they pulled down their collars and removed their fedoras. Oh my gosh! They don't have faces! Serena thought frantically.
These intruders were indeed featureless. There were indentations where the eyes should have been, a bump where a nose would normally protrude and a lipless gash instead of a mouth. Yet they were not identical. One wore black metal hoops through the misshapen lumps that might have been ears. Another had a small red teardrop drawn beneath the indentation where its left eye would be. On the right cheek of the one that had spoken was tattooed the circular image of a snake consuming its own tail.
The one with the snake tattoo pointed at Serena and demanded, "Give us the vessel. Give it to us now." It outstretched its hand in anticipation.
Serena bounded across the room with amazing speed. "How bad do you want it?" she asked.
The thing demanded the vial once more. Serena shrugged. "You want it that bad, huh? Then you're gonna get it!" With lightning quick speed, she lashed out with her feet, knocking Snakeface off balance. Earring and Teardrop attacked Angel, hurling him across the room.
Snakeface head-butted Serena, sending her flying. She stood, gripping her nose which began to bleed. "Hey, do you realize you could've broken my nose?" she asked incredulously. She flew at the creature and knocked it down, beginning to punch its face. "Seeing as you don't have a face and I can't tell for myself, you're gonna have to tell me if I'm hurting you or not." Snakeface caught her hand mid-punch and twisted, throwing her onto her back.
"Now, see, that kinda hurt." She kicked him in the face and flew back onto her feet, in fighting stance. "Bad, bad boy." She clawed at his tattoo. Snakeface howled in pain and clutched his cheek. The flap of skin that the snake once rested on flapped onto its cheek. Snakeface turned on her and backhanded her into a wall. She bounced off and landed on top of a nightstand, making it splinter beneath her. Serena glanced at Angel.
"Angel, the earrings and the teardrop! Destroy them!" she called weakly. Angel grabbed Earring's lump of an ear and tugged, the earrings falling into his hand immediately. Earrings screamed and fell to his knees.
Snakeface walked up to Serena and reached inside her coat, pulling out the vial. "No!" Serena screeched, digging her fingernails into its arm and scraping deep. She struggled to reach for the vial, but Snakeface threw her back down before she could reach. She fell on something that broke. She looked at it. It was the collector, now in several different pieces. She ignored it.
"Angel! He's got the vial!" She called frantically, getting on her feet again and hurling herself towards the faceless creatures, which had huddled together. Suddenly, the featureless creatures were gone. Serena landed on hard floor.
"Oh, gosh, where's my luck?" Serena mumbled into the floor. She wiped the blood from her face and tried to pull herself up. A pair of hands gently helped her to her feet. She turned to Angel.
"Thanks." She mumbled. She looked around. "Wait, where's Bentone?" she asked.
Bentone had disappeared as well, probably in the heat of the fight. Angel stared angrily at the floor. "Angel, we'll get the soul." She put a hand on his shoulder. "We'll get it, I promise."
*****
Cordy was hanging around her desk when Angel and Serena strode in. She was about to say something, but stopped herself. There was a look on Angel's face that told her if she was something evil, she should seriously consider a change in careers, maybe to food services. If that hadn't given it away, the little shake of Serena's head tipped her off.
So Cordy just stood there, watching Angel hang up his duster and remove something from his pocket. There was some bruising around the vampire's mouth.
Serena stepped up beside Cordelia's desk. She, too, appeared to be banged up. "Rough night?" Cordy asked in an attempt to break the oppressive silence.
"Very," Angel grumbled, not bothering to turn around as he went up to his room. Cordelia waited until he was out of sight to say anything.
"So what's got what's got tall, dark, and brooding even moodier than usual?" She asked, nodding in the direction that Angel left while sitting and beginning to shred a napkin.
Serena shrugged. "We found Aubrey's father and the missing soul." She said softly.
Cordelia fidgeted in her seat nervously. "So, he's the one who took it? You're telling me a petty thief with a big time gambling problem somehow mastered the black arts and stole his daughter's soul? I'm going to need the instruction manual on this one."
Serena brought her up to speed with Bentone's debts and the deal he made to square the balance. Cordy thought she was going to throw up. She picked up a paper clip and began to bend it out of shape. "Suddenly I'm understanding why the marriage didn't last."
Serena rubbed her eyes. "We figure that Edwards is some sort of sorcerer. He gave Bentone the means to collect the soul and Bentone was supposed to drop it off tonight at the bus station."
Cordelia began to jot notes. "So, I'm guessing with the grimmest man in the world sitting in his bedroom in the dark, Aubrey's soul wasn't rescued?"
Serena sighed and slid into a seat and cupped her face in her hands. "I think Edwards might of tried to change the deal. Edwards sent some faceless goons to get the soul. But they didn't count on us being there. Situation turned ugly."
"Not good," Cordy remarked.
"You know, we find Christian Edwards and I bet we find Aubrey Bentone's soul," Serena said thoughtfully.
Angel called from upstairs. Serena and Cordelia hurried up the stairs and into Angel's room. Cordelia flipped on the lights as she walked in and let out a little shriek when she saw what was lying on Angel's bed.
"Please tell me you didn't find that thing crawling up the wall in here."
She watched in disgust as Angel picked up the fragile looking device and studied it more closely.
"No. It came in with me. This is what was used to steal Aubrey's soul. It's called a collector."
"I call it gross," Cordelia retorted.
Angel picked up one of the glass vials and attached it to the bottom of the device. "If it wasn't broken in the scuffle it would be capable of stealing a soul from your body and storing it inside this vessel." He set it back down on the bed.
Serena picked up the collector and examined it in her hands. "This doesn't look like it was built. I'm guessing the ugly thing was grown." She put it back down on the bed, crinkling her nose.
"You're probably right. Grown, just like the faceless trio we fought tonight. I didn't make the connection at first, but looking at this, I'd guess those creatures were homunculi. Artificial life forms created with magic and a mixture of flesh, blood, and, if you can believe it, horse manure."
Cordy held her nose. "All together now, ewwww."
Angel leaned back, his dark eyes never leaving the device. He appeared tired, worn out.
"We're going to need every bit of information we can get on Christian Edwards." He looked at Cordy. "Cordy, I need you to search the magic user database to see if Edwards is."
Cordelia interrupted him with a yawn. She tried to stifle it, but couldn't. "I'm sorry, Angel, what was that again?"
Angel pressed his palms against his eyes. "We're not doing anyone any good in this condition. I think we all need to get some rest."
Serena had lain back on Angel's bed with her eyes closed. "I say that's a great idea. I've been going ever since early this morning. We can start fresh in the morning."
Angel wore a deep frown. "We were so close tonight."
Serena blindly reached for him. "We'll get there again." She promised, using his arm to pull herself up. Angel turned off the light again, just as Cordelia left. The collector still laid on his bed.
"It's going to be dawn soon. Are you staying here for a while or what?" Serena asked at the door.
"I think I'm going downstairs until I get good and tired." Angel answered after a few moments of silence. "I haven't been sleeping too well."
"Oh, okay." Serena sensed something wrong, but decided not to push it. He needed to be alone. "Goodnight Angel."
"Goodnight, Serena." She left him behind in the darkness.
*****
It wasn't long after Serena left that Angel went downstairs. He thought a cup of tea would help him unwind. He fixed himself some Earl Grey, took a book of poetry from his library, Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience, and went back upstairs and reclined in his bed, trying to relax. He was distracted. All he could think about was Aubrey's soul and how lovely it was. He wondered if his own tarnished soul could ever be as beautiful.
An hour passed and still Angel did not sleep. He set the book on his nightstand beside his empty tea mug and closed his eyes.
Splashes of color played across the insides of his eyelids: bright reds and greens, muted yellows and explosions of silvery white, similar to the colors he had seen manifest within the crystal soul receptacle. But nothing could compare. He had been correct those many years ago when he answered his baby sister's question about the appearance of the soul.
".the most lovely thing you'll ever see," he had told her.
He saw the vessel now, floating in the darkness. He felt himself begin to unwind.
"It's made up of all the colors of the rainbow and some that haven't even been thought up yet."
It appeared as a gas, billowing white. Tiny explosions of color erupted from the body within the wafting mist.
"To look at one, it would make you cry with sheer joy, it's so beautiful."
And then the mist and the blooming colors began to coalesce. The contents of the vessel became a liquid.
Like blood.
And the soul trapped within screamed to be free.
*****
Angel couldn't remember how he came to the ancient cemetery, but he knew well enough where he was.
It was where his family had been laid to rest two centuries before.
His bare feet crushed the dry leaves beneath them as he walked between headstones. A cool fall breeze blew across the burial ground, causing prickly goosebumps to erupt across the naked skin of his chest.
Why am I here? He thought. He tried to read the names on the grave markers as he passed but couldn't. It was unusually dark and many of the names had become obscure by thick, leafy vines that grew across the surfaces of the headstones.
At first he believed it to be the sighing of the wind, but then he listened more carefully. It wasn't the wind but a child's voice he heard.
"Hello?" he called. "Is somebody there?"
A thick bank of clouds slid across the face of the moon, allowing the cold rays of the midnight sun to shine, illuminating this place of the dead.
He saw her then, across the yard, a tiny figure kneeling before a grave. The child was speaking, but he could not understand the words. He drew closer.
She was busily ripping away the green, leafy plant life from the headstone. Her back was to him, but Angel could see that she wore a pink hospital gown.
He could suddenly hear what she was saying and realized the child was speaking to him. "I been here and she's been tellin' me stuff. She was really mad when you got dead, you know".
The child dug her tiny fingers beneath a band of vines across the front of the stone and pulled them away.
Angel moved closer. Before he even read the exposed name, he knew whose grave he stood before.
The little girl droned on. "And then you came back and she was happy. She thought you were an angel, did you know that? That's what she told me." She leaned back to survey her work. "But you wasn't no angel."
Angel read the name on the stone over and over again, the date she had been born and the date she had died. He remembered her birth. At his mother's urgings, he had reluctantly held the newborn. From that moment on a special bond formed between him and his little sister Katherine.
"You was a monster and you killed her." The child said.
Angel fell to his knees, overcome by the excruciating flood of memories, of the day that bond was torn to bloody shreds. He remembered killing her, the look of terror twisting her innocent face as what she believe to be an angel bore down upon her.
She had struggled briefly as he sank his fangs into the soft flesh of her throat. With sickening clarity, he remembered the disappointment that the monster he had become felt when she had not lasted longer.
"She wants you to help me, Angel," the child said as she rested her hand upon the cool face of the weathered stone.
Angel lifted his head, the agony of the past dissipating but the recollection still painfully tender.
"Who are you?" He reached with a trembling hand out to the child.
She began to turn. No more than five years old, the child's pale skin was stark in contrast to the blackness of her hair. Thick gauze pads had been taped over her eyes, to prevent them from drying out. An IV tube ran from her arm to the ground, snaking beneath the cover of the dry leaves.
Aubrey Bentone looked toward Angel and spoke. "You took your sister's soul and now your gonna help find mine."
He watched as she began to sink into the earth of his sister's grave.
"I gotta go now, but you gotta lot of work to do."
Aubrey was up to her neck in the rich black earth.
"I'll tell your sister you said hello."
And with that, she was gone, swallowed up by the hungry grave.
Prologue: Los Angeles, CA
Christian Edwards stroked his chin in deep thought. The time for his great Lord to rise was approaching quickly and there were more souls to capture. He knew his time was running short, but he also knew that he must be careful or the Slayer, Serena, and her vampire with a soul, will catch on to what he was planning. He must move quick. They will not know what hit them.
He had sent his men to go retrieve the soul David Bentone so generously supplied. Soon, it will be over, and he will rule.
Redemption: The Slayer Chronicles
Chapter 1
Serena stared at the intruders in horror as they pulled down their collars and removed their fedoras. Oh my gosh! They don't have faces! Serena thought frantically.
These intruders were indeed featureless. There were indentations where the eyes should have been, a bump where a nose would normally protrude and a lipless gash instead of a mouth. Yet they were not identical. One wore black metal hoops through the misshapen lumps that might have been ears. Another had a small red teardrop drawn beneath the indentation where its left eye would be. On the right cheek of the one that had spoken was tattooed the circular image of a snake consuming its own tail.
The one with the snake tattoo pointed at Serena and demanded, "Give us the vessel. Give it to us now." It outstretched its hand in anticipation.
Serena bounded across the room with amazing speed. "How bad do you want it?" she asked.
The thing demanded the vial once more. Serena shrugged. "You want it that bad, huh? Then you're gonna get it!" With lightning quick speed, she lashed out with her feet, knocking Snakeface off balance. Earring and Teardrop attacked Angel, hurling him across the room.
Snakeface head-butted Serena, sending her flying. She stood, gripping her nose which began to bleed. "Hey, do you realize you could've broken my nose?" she asked incredulously. She flew at the creature and knocked it down, beginning to punch its face. "Seeing as you don't have a face and I can't tell for myself, you're gonna have to tell me if I'm hurting you or not." Snakeface caught her hand mid-punch and twisted, throwing her onto her back.
"Now, see, that kinda hurt." She kicked him in the face and flew back onto her feet, in fighting stance. "Bad, bad boy." She clawed at his tattoo. Snakeface howled in pain and clutched his cheek. The flap of skin that the snake once rested on flapped onto its cheek. Snakeface turned on her and backhanded her into a wall. She bounced off and landed on top of a nightstand, making it splinter beneath her. Serena glanced at Angel.
"Angel, the earrings and the teardrop! Destroy them!" she called weakly. Angel grabbed Earring's lump of an ear and tugged, the earrings falling into his hand immediately. Earrings screamed and fell to his knees.
Snakeface walked up to Serena and reached inside her coat, pulling out the vial. "No!" Serena screeched, digging her fingernails into its arm and scraping deep. She struggled to reach for the vial, but Snakeface threw her back down before she could reach. She fell on something that broke. She looked at it. It was the collector, now in several different pieces. She ignored it.
"Angel! He's got the vial!" She called frantically, getting on her feet again and hurling herself towards the faceless creatures, which had huddled together. Suddenly, the featureless creatures were gone. Serena landed on hard floor.
"Oh, gosh, where's my luck?" Serena mumbled into the floor. She wiped the blood from her face and tried to pull herself up. A pair of hands gently helped her to her feet. She turned to Angel.
"Thanks." She mumbled. She looked around. "Wait, where's Bentone?" she asked.
Bentone had disappeared as well, probably in the heat of the fight. Angel stared angrily at the floor. "Angel, we'll get the soul." She put a hand on his shoulder. "We'll get it, I promise."
*****
Cordy was hanging around her desk when Angel and Serena strode in. She was about to say something, but stopped herself. There was a look on Angel's face that told her if she was something evil, she should seriously consider a change in careers, maybe to food services. If that hadn't given it away, the little shake of Serena's head tipped her off.
So Cordy just stood there, watching Angel hang up his duster and remove something from his pocket. There was some bruising around the vampire's mouth.
Serena stepped up beside Cordelia's desk. She, too, appeared to be banged up. "Rough night?" Cordy asked in an attempt to break the oppressive silence.
"Very," Angel grumbled, not bothering to turn around as he went up to his room. Cordelia waited until he was out of sight to say anything.
"So what's got what's got tall, dark, and brooding even moodier than usual?" She asked, nodding in the direction that Angel left while sitting and beginning to shred a napkin.
Serena shrugged. "We found Aubrey's father and the missing soul." She said softly.
Cordelia fidgeted in her seat nervously. "So, he's the one who took it? You're telling me a petty thief with a big time gambling problem somehow mastered the black arts and stole his daughter's soul? I'm going to need the instruction manual on this one."
Serena brought her up to speed with Bentone's debts and the deal he made to square the balance. Cordy thought she was going to throw up. She picked up a paper clip and began to bend it out of shape. "Suddenly I'm understanding why the marriage didn't last."
Serena rubbed her eyes. "We figure that Edwards is some sort of sorcerer. He gave Bentone the means to collect the soul and Bentone was supposed to drop it off tonight at the bus station."
Cordelia began to jot notes. "So, I'm guessing with the grimmest man in the world sitting in his bedroom in the dark, Aubrey's soul wasn't rescued?"
Serena sighed and slid into a seat and cupped her face in her hands. "I think Edwards might of tried to change the deal. Edwards sent some faceless goons to get the soul. But they didn't count on us being there. Situation turned ugly."
"Not good," Cordy remarked.
"You know, we find Christian Edwards and I bet we find Aubrey Bentone's soul," Serena said thoughtfully.
Angel called from upstairs. Serena and Cordelia hurried up the stairs and into Angel's room. Cordelia flipped on the lights as she walked in and let out a little shriek when she saw what was lying on Angel's bed.
"Please tell me you didn't find that thing crawling up the wall in here."
She watched in disgust as Angel picked up the fragile looking device and studied it more closely.
"No. It came in with me. This is what was used to steal Aubrey's soul. It's called a collector."
"I call it gross," Cordelia retorted.
Angel picked up one of the glass vials and attached it to the bottom of the device. "If it wasn't broken in the scuffle it would be capable of stealing a soul from your body and storing it inside this vessel." He set it back down on the bed.
Serena picked up the collector and examined it in her hands. "This doesn't look like it was built. I'm guessing the ugly thing was grown." She put it back down on the bed, crinkling her nose.
"You're probably right. Grown, just like the faceless trio we fought tonight. I didn't make the connection at first, but looking at this, I'd guess those creatures were homunculi. Artificial life forms created with magic and a mixture of flesh, blood, and, if you can believe it, horse manure."
Cordy held her nose. "All together now, ewwww."
Angel leaned back, his dark eyes never leaving the device. He appeared tired, worn out.
"We're going to need every bit of information we can get on Christian Edwards." He looked at Cordy. "Cordy, I need you to search the magic user database to see if Edwards is."
Cordelia interrupted him with a yawn. She tried to stifle it, but couldn't. "I'm sorry, Angel, what was that again?"
Angel pressed his palms against his eyes. "We're not doing anyone any good in this condition. I think we all need to get some rest."
Serena had lain back on Angel's bed with her eyes closed. "I say that's a great idea. I've been going ever since early this morning. We can start fresh in the morning."
Angel wore a deep frown. "We were so close tonight."
Serena blindly reached for him. "We'll get there again." She promised, using his arm to pull herself up. Angel turned off the light again, just as Cordelia left. The collector still laid on his bed.
"It's going to be dawn soon. Are you staying here for a while or what?" Serena asked at the door.
"I think I'm going downstairs until I get good and tired." Angel answered after a few moments of silence. "I haven't been sleeping too well."
"Oh, okay." Serena sensed something wrong, but decided not to push it. He needed to be alone. "Goodnight Angel."
"Goodnight, Serena." She left him behind in the darkness.
*****
It wasn't long after Serena left that Angel went downstairs. He thought a cup of tea would help him unwind. He fixed himself some Earl Grey, took a book of poetry from his library, Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience, and went back upstairs and reclined in his bed, trying to relax. He was distracted. All he could think about was Aubrey's soul and how lovely it was. He wondered if his own tarnished soul could ever be as beautiful.
An hour passed and still Angel did not sleep. He set the book on his nightstand beside his empty tea mug and closed his eyes.
Splashes of color played across the insides of his eyelids: bright reds and greens, muted yellows and explosions of silvery white, similar to the colors he had seen manifest within the crystal soul receptacle. But nothing could compare. He had been correct those many years ago when he answered his baby sister's question about the appearance of the soul.
".the most lovely thing you'll ever see," he had told her.
He saw the vessel now, floating in the darkness. He felt himself begin to unwind.
"It's made up of all the colors of the rainbow and some that haven't even been thought up yet."
It appeared as a gas, billowing white. Tiny explosions of color erupted from the body within the wafting mist.
"To look at one, it would make you cry with sheer joy, it's so beautiful."
And then the mist and the blooming colors began to coalesce. The contents of the vessel became a liquid.
Like blood.
And the soul trapped within screamed to be free.
*****
Angel couldn't remember how he came to the ancient cemetery, but he knew well enough where he was.
It was where his family had been laid to rest two centuries before.
His bare feet crushed the dry leaves beneath them as he walked between headstones. A cool fall breeze blew across the burial ground, causing prickly goosebumps to erupt across the naked skin of his chest.
Why am I here? He thought. He tried to read the names on the grave markers as he passed but couldn't. It was unusually dark and many of the names had become obscure by thick, leafy vines that grew across the surfaces of the headstones.
At first he believed it to be the sighing of the wind, but then he listened more carefully. It wasn't the wind but a child's voice he heard.
"Hello?" he called. "Is somebody there?"
A thick bank of clouds slid across the face of the moon, allowing the cold rays of the midnight sun to shine, illuminating this place of the dead.
He saw her then, across the yard, a tiny figure kneeling before a grave. The child was speaking, but he could not understand the words. He drew closer.
She was busily ripping away the green, leafy plant life from the headstone. Her back was to him, but Angel could see that she wore a pink hospital gown.
He could suddenly hear what she was saying and realized the child was speaking to him. "I been here and she's been tellin' me stuff. She was really mad when you got dead, you know".
The child dug her tiny fingers beneath a band of vines across the front of the stone and pulled them away.
Angel moved closer. Before he even read the exposed name, he knew whose grave he stood before.
The little girl droned on. "And then you came back and she was happy. She thought you were an angel, did you know that? That's what she told me." She leaned back to survey her work. "But you wasn't no angel."
Angel read the name on the stone over and over again, the date she had been born and the date she had died. He remembered her birth. At his mother's urgings, he had reluctantly held the newborn. From that moment on a special bond formed between him and his little sister Katherine.
"You was a monster and you killed her." The child said.
Angel fell to his knees, overcome by the excruciating flood of memories, of the day that bond was torn to bloody shreds. He remembered killing her, the look of terror twisting her innocent face as what she believe to be an angel bore down upon her.
She had struggled briefly as he sank his fangs into the soft flesh of her throat. With sickening clarity, he remembered the disappointment that the monster he had become felt when she had not lasted longer.
"She wants you to help me, Angel," the child said as she rested her hand upon the cool face of the weathered stone.
Angel lifted his head, the agony of the past dissipating but the recollection still painfully tender.
"Who are you?" He reached with a trembling hand out to the child.
She began to turn. No more than five years old, the child's pale skin was stark in contrast to the blackness of her hair. Thick gauze pads had been taped over her eyes, to prevent them from drying out. An IV tube ran from her arm to the ground, snaking beneath the cover of the dry leaves.
Aubrey Bentone looked toward Angel and spoke. "You took your sister's soul and now your gonna help find mine."
He watched as she began to sink into the earth of his sister's grave.
"I gotta go now, but you gotta lot of work to do."
Aubrey was up to her neck in the rich black earth.
"I'll tell your sister you said hello."
And with that, she was gone, swallowed up by the hungry grave.