Redemption

by Mel Odom

  “I’m looking for Mama Ntombi,” Doyle replied.

  “Straight back past the meat lockers and bathrooms. The men’s is out. You want to go, you got to use the ladies’.”

  Doyle waved and made his way across the concrete floor through the aisles of canned goods and potato chips. He ducked the hanging scales by the vegetable bins and kept going.

  Mama Ntombi’s office was tucked away in a small room between metal stock shelves that leaned threateningly. Doyle almost had to turn sideways to get through. Beaded strings woven of white plastic skulls and black and red stones served as a door. Incense smoke drifted out in blue-gray waves. The scent was heady and cloying, drawing a series of coughs and sneezes from Doyle as he stood outside.

  “Come in, boy,” a hoarse voice ordered.

  Doyle parted the bead strings and stepped into a small, dark room. The incense smoke pooled against the ceiling, further dimming the candlelight in the room.

  A shriveled old black woman sat on the other side of the small secretary’s desk that nearly filled the room. She wore a plum-colored dress that had a lot of embroidered symbols in neon-bright strings. The symbols included silver moons, golden stars, ivory skeletons, and lime-green birds.

  “Sit.” Mama Ntombi gestured to a straight-backed pink and purple chair that looked as if it had been liberated from a fast-food restaurant. Three lighted candles in the shape of skeletons posed in suggestive positions provided the only illumination.

  Doyle sat and looked into the yellowed eyes. “You’re Mama Ntombi?”

  “That I be, boy, for all these years and more.” The old woman’s pink gums showed, her lips wrinkled and caved in around them. She lifted a pipe from an overflowing ashtray at her side, tamped it a couple times with a disposable lighter, and lit up. “You come here with a problem lying heavy on your heart.”

  In the circles Doyle traveled in the city while helping Angel, Mama Ntombi wasn’t just a fakir hustling rent money. She was reputed to be truly connected to the Voudoun gods. She had come from Haiti originally, and some people Doyle had talked to had said that was one hundred and fifty years ago.

  She took another puff on the pipe, let the smoke wreathe her head. “You got a gift for seeing, too, don’t you, boy?” She took Doyle’s hand before he could pull away. Her flesh felt leathery, dry and desiccated, like it was freshly unwrapped from the tomb. “You don’t have control of your gift, though.”

  “No.” Doyle looked into those old eyes, thinking they could see right through him.

  “Pity. It’s a strong one. A man could live on the power you have if you learned to channel it properly. But it’s not yours to learn and control, is it?”

  Doyle was surprised at her insight, and he believed in her enough that it scared him. “Maybe, but that’s not why I’m here.”

  “No,” Mama Ntombi told him, “you’re here about the woman. The one with the red-gold hair.”

  * * *

  “Are you Angel?”

  “Yeah.” Angel looked at the sheriff’s deputy seated on the other side of the desk in the small office. He felt nervous inside the sheriff’s office.

  “Got any ID?”

  “No.”

  The deputy looked up at him, eyes narrowing suspiciously. He was tall and lean, whipcord and rawbone, with a Colt Government Model .45 on his hip. The uniform was clean and pressed, and the nametag on his left breast gave his name as Pearson. “Letting someone in without the proper ID isn’t going to happen.”

  “Kate Lockley said you’d be able to help me.”

  “She said I’d be helping a guy named Angel.”

  “That’s me.”

  “I asked her if that was a first name or a last name. She said she didn’t know.”

  Angel didn’t say anything.

  “Maybe Kate knows you,” Pearson said, “but I don’t.”

  “That’s why I showed up.”

  Angel glanced over his shoulder and found Kate Lockley standing there. She wore khaki pants and a yellow shirt under a brown blazer. Her blond hair was pulled back in a ponytail.

  “You send me a guy without ID and I’m supposed to run him through the jail?” Pearson complained.

  “I’m his ID,” Kate replied.

  The sheriff’s deputy glanced at Angel again. “Do you know how far you’re sticking your neck out? How far you’re asking me to stick my neck out?”

  “You owe me,” Lockley stated clearly.

  Pearson stared back at her, and Angel knew that whatever debt existed between the two wasn’t a friendly one. After a moment, Pearson broke the eye contact and opened the desk drawer in front of him. He made out two ID badges.

  “You got a favorite first name, Angel?” the deputy asked.

  “No.”

  “Fine, then I’ll pick one. Even rock stars don’t get in here with only one name.” Pearson pushed the ID tags to the other side of the desk and looked up at Kate. “You know the way. I’ll call ahead.”

  Kate took the IDs and handed one over to Angel. She left the office without another word. “He’ll remember you,” she warned.

  “I had that feeling.” Following Kate’s lead, Angel pinned the ID badge to his shirt.

  They walked down the corridor and passed through two checkpoints. Kate had to surrender her weapon at the first one. An overweight deputy checked them off on the clipboard he held.

  “You’re here to see the John Doe from the truck stop last night?” the deputy asked.

  “Yes,” Kate replied. “Has he been Mirandized?”

  “If he speaks English, Korean, Japanese, Spanish, or Ebonics, he has,” the deputy replied, pushing the button that opened the last security door. “But since he hasn’t spoken since we brought him in, we don’t know.”

  “He speaks English,” Angel said. “He threatened Whitney Tyler last night.”

  “Amazingly,” the deputy said, “that doesn’t count in the court’s eyes. A good attorney will argue that this mook was only saying what someone taught him to say, without knowing what it meant.”

  “He attacked Whitney Tyler,” Angel pointed out.

  “Oh, he can be tried on his actions, but the district attorney still has to prove he can understand what he’s on trial for. They do wrong, but we’re the ones gotta do it right. Go figure.”

  Kate followed the trustee through the checkpoint, and the heavy steel door clanged shut behind them. Angel felt a brief surge of claustrophobia but quickly pushed it out of his mind.

  “You okay?” Kate asked.

  “That door shutting was a little too absolute for me,” Angel admitted.

  “Don’t worry,” Kate said with a smile, tapping her ID badge, “we’ve got Get Out of Jail Free cards.” She glanced at his. “Johnny Angel, huh? Pearson’s got a sense of humor.”

  “I guess you’d have to know him to see it.”

  Kate chuckled and walked by the long rows of cells. Prisoners got up from their bunks and started calling out obscene suggestions. She kept walking and ignored them.

  The coarse vulgarity offended Angel, and he felt the back of his neck tightening and reddening. The dark hunger that twisted in his guts constantly rose up threateningly in reaction to the threats, pulling at his features.

  “Don’t,” Kate said.

  “What?” Angel touched his face, wondering if she’d seen something there.

  “Don’t respond to them,” she said.

  “It’s hard to ignore.”

  “You don’t get used to it,” Kate admitted, “but you do get to where you can tune it out.” She smiled ruefully. “To tell you the truth, after I have to visit here or the city jail, I usually have to take a shower as soon as I can to feel clean again.” She stopped at a cell on the left.

  Angel peered through the bars.

  Even sitting down on crossed legs between the bed chained to the wall and the stainless steel toilet, the man looked tall. He wore an orange jumpsuit, his back straight and his face blank of emotion. His left leg was in
a bright, white cast from the knee down. If he saw them there, he gave no indication. His lower lip was swollen, congealed blood sitting on it. His head was bruised in several places, and one eye was purpled and nearly swollen shut.

  “Can I get in to see him?” Angel asked.

  The trustee was a big man, shaved bald with a gunslinger mustache. Gray scars tracked his black skin. He glanced at Kate. “I don’t know if that’s such a good idea. This guy got loose this morning after we took him back from the infirmary. Took six guys to put him back in his cage, and him with a broke leg. He sent two deputies to the hospital.”

  Kate looked at Angel. “The deal was talk to him, not visit.”

  “Standing out here isn’t going to work,” Angel said.

  Kate hesitated only a moment. “Open the door.”

  Reluctantly the trustee opened the heavy door and rolled it back. The prisoner didn’t even seem to take notice.

  Angel moved cautiously inside the cell. He could smell the scent of Galway Bay inside the small room, and its presence was shocking. He breathed in again but smelled only the disinfectants used to keep the cell clean.

  The man stood, uncoiling in the liquid movement of a trained athlete despite the cast.

  Angel spoke, keeping his voice light, “I’m —”

  “I know what you are,” the man whispered hoarsely. Evidently he’d been hit in the throat as well.

  Angel studied the man’s face. “I don’t know you.”

  “No.”

  “Why are you after Whitney Tyler?”

  “I follow the trail of a hellbeast,” the man said softly. “I have staked my honor and my life, that I may follow the divine path I have been led to.”

  “Whitney Tyler is a hellbeast,” Angel said. He was vaguely aware that he had Kate’s and the trustee’s attention, but he hoped that they thought he was playing along with the man, getting him to talk.

  The man looked at him. “You don’t know, do you?”

  “Know what? I don’t understand what you’re talking about.”

  “All these years you’ve been walking this earth, yet you bother to learn so little.”

  “Tell me about Whitney Tyler.”

  “There is no Whitney Tyler. She is an abomination just as you are an abomination.”

  Without warning the man drove a fist into Angel’s face. Angel’s head snapped back, rattling off the bars behind him. The man had hit harder than anything human. Before Angel could recover, the man was on him, gripping his head in both hands. He was aware that Kate and the trustee were trying to get the cell door open.

  The man’s bruised and battered face filled Angel’s vision. His spittle flecked Angel’s cheek as he strained and started twisting Angel’s head. “If I twist your head off, will you die?”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  As the old woman held Doyle’s hand, a sudden surge of pain rattled his brain, starting at his shoulders and seeming to shoot through his skull. A vision descended over him, strong enough and different enough that he knew it wasn’t caused from the abilities the Powers That Be gave him, taking him back to the ship in the middle of the wild, bucking ocean. He wanted to scream at the old woman to get out of his mind, but he didn’t have the strength.

  “Let me use my power,” the old woman said. “I can show you what I see.”

  Moonlight silvered the blades that danced in the hands of Angelus and the woman warrior with red-gold hair. Again, Doyle was acutely aware of the woman’s resemblance to Whitney Tyler. He returned to the present, staring into Mama Ntombi’s rheumy yellow eyes.

  Mama Ntombi sat leaning back in her chair, puffing on her pipe with consternation. “This thing you be chasing, boy, it’s old and it’s powerful. Ain’t no thing to be triflin’ with if you got a choice.”

  “I don’t have a choice.” Doyle reached into his pocket. “How much for your help?”

  “I can’t help you that much,” she replied. “All I know is that I can point you in a direction. What you find out from there is up to you.”

  “Fair enough.” In the past Doyle had learned that information in those secret circles was often as hard to interpret or come by as his visions. Mysterious ways were basically mysterious by definition.

  “It gonna cost you one hundred dollars for my time, boy.”

  Doyle counted the money out and passed it over. Normally he might have haggled, but not after seeing the demonstration she’d just given.

  “What you have for me?” the old woman asked.

  Doyle unfolded the paper napkin Angel had drawn on the night before. He’d stopped and made copies at a Kinko’s, but he didn’t want to show the old woman one of those. He wanted her in touch with the original to give her skills a better chance to work.

  Mama Ntombi smoothed the folds from the napkin, seeming mesmerized by the lines. “The one who drew this, boy, he has him a strong hand.”

  “Yes,” Doyle agreed.

  “And he carries much pain within him, old and new.”

  “Do you know what this symbol is?” Doyle asked. He was uncomfortable with how much the old woman seemed able to read into the drawing.

  “This ain’t no voodoo symbol.”

  “No, but voodoo has its roots in Christianity and Catholicism. Is this something bastardized from one of those?”

  Mama Ntombi nodded. “You right about that. But you holding something back.” Despite being as elderly as she was, she reached across the table too quickly for him to move.

  When her fingertips rested against the back of his hand, another vision slammed into Doyle’s mind, shoved into place by the incredible power the old woman possessed. He was back in Whitney’s apartment staring at the harsh words written on the walls. He focused on PURGATORY. The room returned around him when she drew her hand away.

  “Purgatory,” Mama Ntombi repeated. “That is from the Catholic belief, the place trapped between heaven and hell.”

  “Yeah.” Doyle took his hands from the table and leaned back in his chair.

  She smoothed the paper napkin on the tabletop. “You have come to the right place, boy. I recognize this symbol.”

  The muscles in Angel’s neck quivered and felt as if they were tearing loose from the incredible strain they were under. His attacker kept twisting his head. Vertebrae popped, close to the breaking point.

  “Open the damn door!” Kate reached through the bars and grabbed the prisoner’s face as she yelled at the trustee. She locked her fingers around the prisoner’s cheek and gouged at his eye.

  Angel heard the trustee yanking on the door, but the combined weight of himself and the prisoner were preventing it from unlocking. Black spots swam in Angel’s vision, swelling to fill all his sight. He clasped his hands together, then drove them upward, smashing through the prisoner’s hold.

  The prisoner’s grip broke, but he immediately tried to get hold again.

  Pain shot through Angel’s neck and across his shoulders as he rocked on his feet. The prisoner came at him without pause, launching a flying kick. Angel dodged to the side, sweeping his left arm out to push the man’s feet farther away.

  The prisoner’s bare feet collided with the bars, nearly trapping Kate’s arm. She pulled back, yanking her arm out of the cell. Even as his forward momentum came to a sudden stop, the prisoner dropped and rolled back, getting to his feet easily. He came for Angel, arms outstretched.

  Angel blocked the searching hands against his left forearm, then drove the other hand into the prisoner’s stomach twice. He stepped in, but his attacker lashed out with splayed fingers, seeking his eyes. Dodging back, Angel managed to get just out of the man’s reach. The cell was eight feet long, leaving either of them hardly any room to move.

  The prisoner feinted with his hands, then when Angel stepped in to go on the attack again, he drove an elbow into Angel’s forehead. Driven backward, Angel slammed against the bars behind him. The prisoner was on him before he could recover.

  The dark hunger swirled within Angel, urgin
g him to go to full vamp-face and use all the strength and ferocity at his command in order to survive. The man’s hands circled his head again, covering his temples and ears, locking around the back of his head.

  “Now you will seek the true death, fiend,” the man snarled. Blood ran from the corner of one of his eyes. “There will be no more easy life for you.” He twisted with the inexorable pressure again.

  Angel slammed his open palm straight up, catching his attacker on the chin hard enough to daze him. As the man stumbled back, Angel caught him with a roundhouse kick that hammered him back against the bars.

  The prisoners in the other cells cheered, drawn by the prospect of blood and violence. Two more uniformed deputies rushed down the hallway between the cells.

  Angel snap-kicked the man in the face, finding the rhythm for his moves even in the small cell now. The man reached for him, but Angel slapped the arm away and followed up with another roundhouse kick that caught the man in the stomach and drove the breath from him.

  The prisoner dropped to his knees, one ankle stiffly encased in the cast, but his eyes stayed locked on Angel, hatred and fervor brimming in them.

  Angel locked his fingers in the man’s sweat-streaked hair and gripped tightly. Then he caught one of the prisoner’s arms and pulled it around behind the man, lifting it high on his shoulder to immobilize him. Angel yanked the man’s head back, putting his face close.

  “Why are your people after Whitney Tyler?” he demanded.

  “I told you,” the man croaked.

  “They went to her place last night,” Angel said, “and they killed the security guard on duty there.”

  The man’s eyes never lost their conviction. “No. My brothers would never do that.”

  “They did.”

  The prisoner’s voice thickened. “No. We are sworn. Sworn to protect lives. We destroy demons; we are not life-takers like you. Our missions are sanctioned by our deity, made clear by the training we are provided, made holy by our prayers.”

  “You drove a truck through the wall of a diner,” Angel went on. “You could have killed people yesterday yourself.”

  Kate and the deputy struggled with the cell door.