by Joseph Kiel
Vladimir lived for his work, the only job that he’d ever had. Vengeance was central to his beliefs, central to his very essence, and under the wings of Alan Hammond and Henry Maristow, Vladimir had shone in his role as an Angel of Karma, dealing out retribution to those that deserved it. It was, quite simply, a role he was born for.
The supreme energy that Vladimir brought to Halo of Fires had transformed the organisation into a resolute force. The flames of their inferno pervaded throughout the entire town, mercilessly burning down the wrongdoers without compromise and seeping into the conscience of those who might decide to commit misdeeds. The Fires was a fate that was simply best avoided.
He walked briskly down the footpath that ran along the cliffs, the burgeoning blades of grass rippling in the gentle sea breeze. At his normal pace it took him only fifteen minutes to get into the town centre. He would be at the meeting point at least ten minutes before his colleagues, and it was most likely that they’d be late anyway.
Although he was tall with his six-foot frame, Vladimir did not have the action man figure to go with it. Then again, Vladimir rarely had to get ‘hands-on’ with his work. Vladimir just seemed to have such a dense aura to him that when he looked at people with his menacing eyes, it was enough to intimidate anyone and overpower their self-assurance.
If he didn’t have such an intense look on his face all the time, he would probably look quite personable. He was actually rather attractive with a somewhat elfish face, delicate lips, and neat yet heavy eyebrows that sat above his eyes in a fixed frown. If he hadn’t chosen this line of work, he could very easily have swapped professions with a movie star, playing a swashbuckling pirate or an officer on an intergalactic starship. But nobody noticed his good looks because Vladimir had no interest in projecting them. They didn’t count for anything.
Another thing you would notice if you looked deep enough was something lying beyond the heavy stare of those large eyes. It was as though looking at a vault. You knew the outside to be uninviting and the inside to be impenetrable, but you would guess it must be because what was hidden inside must be of unbelievable value and significance. Or maybe the thing inside was tightly locked up in an iron box so that Vladimir could control it and it wouldn’t consume him, like a profound, soul-aching sadness would threaten to crumble one’s fibre and turn one’s self to worthless rot. Feelings had to be closely controlled in this game. They would only undermine the masterpiece that Vladimir was striving to create.
As he never saw much sunlight, his face had a pale complexion that only contributed towards his gothic appearance. One could almost imagine he had just risen from the churchyard grave, and was about to open his mouth wide to reveal a set of blood-seeking, vampiric teeth. The irony was that blood was the last thing that would pass between Vladimir’s lips for he was a devout vegetarian. Not being interested in gaining any pleasure from food, Vladimir instead ate only what was good for him. He didn’t like impurities, and except for caffeine, he hardly consumed any.
Walking along in the moonlight which cast his shadow before him, the young vigilante went over the main job that they had on tonight. The guy they were going to target was a former major in Her Majesty’s Forces. Not that Vladimir was apprehensive by that at all. He suspected that Jake and Clint were most probably looking forward to this one. Finding a challenge for them was an impossible task.
Years ago, the major had done something very wrong, and he’d kept on doing it for a long time. It didn’t matter how long ago it was though; crimes were never forgotten. Sometimes people would forget them, or bury the memories so deep in their subconscious that they would think they’d forgotten them, but every evil deed would send out ripples of karma, and the Fires was the force that brought that karma back to them.
In a little under thirty minutes, this ex-major would feel the full brunt of this force, and he’d find it the most unpleasant experience of his life.
Chapter 2.2
The Legionnaires Club in the town centre is a members only club, traditionally for British service veterans. To get into the club, members present their card to the person on the desk (although for the recognisable regulars this obviously becomes unnecessary). Non-members usually find that they are politely refused entry. This wasn’t the case with the representatives of the Halo of Fires organisation as they discovered on this particular night.
Witnessing the sight of the tall and intimidating Vladimir walk through the door with his Powers: the square-jawed, muscular Jake, and Clint, who looked like he could be Lennox Lewis’s brother, the chap on the front desk felt it was best not to say anything and just let them pass through.
Heads turned when the three vigilantes entered the main lounge. They brought with them such a heavy atmosphere, and most of the punters hugged their pint glasses tighter as they intuitively sensed trouble.
‘I don’t see our Kolley,’ Clint said to Vladimir who stood in the middle of the room scanning the faces with his gravity-eyed glare.
He eventually spotted him through a doorway where he was playing snooker. Gridley wore a black moustache mismatched with grey hair on his head, just like in the photographs that Vladimir had pored over. The guy looked tall, bigger than he did in the pictures. He wore a grey shirt with the top three buttons undone, chest hair sprouting out, a gold chain around his neck, the type that guvnors wore.
‘Through there,’ Vladimir said to the Powers.
The people in the club sipped their drinks for comfort, timidly watching the wolves wander amongst them, wondering which lamb was about to be slaughtered.
Entering the snooker room, Vladimir approached the table and picked up the white ball. ‘Major Gridley?’
‘And who do you think you are?’ asked Gridley as he straightened off the table, his cue in hand.
‘Eva sent us,’ Vladimir replied, slithering the cue ball along the tips of his fingers.
‘Eva?’
‘Yeah. Your daughter. Remember her?’
A prickly silence hung in the room, aggression and adrenaline charging the air like a raw stench. The major studied the three visitors closer, mentally calculating the muscular ratio. He shared a glance with his burly friend who stood across the table. They didn’t speak but Vladimir could tell what they were both thinking.
‘This has nothing to do with him. He should leave the room.’
The other man didn’t move. He was big but he didn’t have the same physique as Jake or Clint, just rolls of muffin fat spilling over his belly and sweat stains under his armpits. As for Gridley, he may have been military trained but it didn’t compare to the training that the two Powers had undergone.
‘I don’t think so,’ Gridley said, his voice rising to a bark. ‘You know, I thought Eva would have been smart enough to put the past behind her.’
‘How can she?’
‘The hell’s that got to do with you?’ Gridley bellowed as he stepped closer to the cavalier vigilante.
‘It’s my role to ensure that your past catches up with you.’
‘You three punks think you’re going to do me over, do ya? I’ll tell you what you should do. You should turn round right now and get the hell out of here, or we’ll smash the lot of you to fuck.’
Vladimir turned to the big-bellied snooker opponent. ‘You really do need to leave the room.’
Gridley’s friend was defiant and stood his ground with a stern face. Vladimir shook his head. The fool. If only he knew what happened when people interfered with Halo of Fires.
‘Listen fella,’ Gridley boomed at Vladimir, ‘you really need to get out of my face!’
Vladimir stared at him, inhaling long, deep breaths. Eventually the young vigilante nodded, a nod of resignation that could very easily have been interpreted as meekness. He turned around and grabbed the handle to the door. Pausing, he then suddenly slammed the door shut. Gridley raised his cue but Jake stepped in and caught the stick in his hand before it could connect with Vladimir’s head. Vladimir stood confidently, not fl
inching at all.
Jake yanked the cue from Gridley’s grip and then hammered it down onto his head, causing the wood to shatter into sharp splinters. The next time that he brought the fractured stub down onto Gridley, who had now fallen to his knees and was bawling like a dog that had just been hit by a car, it would really start to tear his flesh up.
The muffin-fat friend tried to intervene but Clint wrapped an arm round his throat and effortlessly kept him at bay. If it proved necessary, Clint would send a heavyweight’s punch his way and soon end his pointless fussing.
The sheepish faces in the club stared curiously at the closed door to the snooker room, and it didn’t take much imagination to know what was taking place on the other side of it. They could hear every hammering punch being delivered, every rib being cracked, the bloodcurdling shrieks, the ‘No no no, please stop!’ belting out. They knew the major to be a bit of a tough nut so no doubt he would eventually get the better of those three goons.
After about ten minutes the commotion died down. Vladimir opened the door and calmly appeared, like a headmaster walking out of a classroom after punishing an unruly pupil. The musclemen Jake and Clint were following on behind him and there did not appear to be a scratch on either of them. The same could not be said of Gridley as the club members discovered when they crowded around him on the floor.
‘Oh God! Someone call an ambulance!’ one of them called out.
Most of them knew the sort of person Gridley was and as they looked at him in a splattering of blood and broken teeth, some of them wondered whether he had in fact just ‘reaped what he’d sowed’, as was the common day vernacular. They would be right for thinking that. Halo of Fires was what came to him, for reprehensible actions he’d committed in his life. The consequence of years of sexually abusing his daughter had just caught up with him. And on this night he’d finally got what he’d deserved.
Chapter 2.3
After the trip to the Legionnaires Club, the three vigilantes had a few other minor revenge assignments to see to. A journalist for the Harbour Gazette needed his car spray-painted a vivid pink after insulting someone in one of his articles. A footballer needed to have Jake’s fist planted in his face after cheating on his girlfriend with her sister. They then swooped on the town centre to see old Bloated Bluey, the town drunk, who was always found by the river wearing his navy raincoat, a bottle of whisky in hand. It was nothing severe. He’d been harassing some people again in the street the other day so Vladimir wanted a quiet little word.
By two o’clock in the morning they’d done everything they needed to. As they wandered back through the town, Vladimir was not surprised to hear Jake suggest that they all visit a nightclub called Ice Breakers so that they could unwind. Whilst it wasn’t an atmosphere that Vladimir naturally fitted in with, he agreed to go there all the same. Jake and Clint would no doubt sit in a corner drinking themselves into a hazy state while Vladimir would retain his senses and people-watch. It was one of his favourite pastimes, and it was necessary to keep his finger on humanity’s thinning pulse.
‘Vladimir? Can I get you anything?’ Jake asked him as he stood at the bar in the nightclub.
‘Just a Coke,’ Vladimir shouted back above the thumping music.
‘Of course.’
‘Always got to keep your focus…’
‘Whatever. You should let your hair down every now and again,’ Jake shouted back to him.
Vladimir ignored him. They were two completely different people and whilst Vladimir could easily comprehend that fact, he did not expect Jake to. Besides, he wasn’t about to get into a deep and meaningful conversation about it right now.
The young vigilante understood a lot about people in this town. He knew what made them tick, what they liked to do, and why they liked to do it. He could fathom why, at this very moment, Jake felt like losing himself in drink, that there were deep feelings inside that he wanted to numb, and that alcohol was the only resource he knew of to do that. But just because Vladimir understood people, it didn’t mean that he was like other people. He knew that he was of a completely different sort to everyone. No one had the same perceptions that Vladimir had. Of that, he was certain.
Looking around himself at the other nightclubbers dancing and drinking in the dazzling disco lights, he could perceive more than what they could. He could see within that kaleidoscope of rainbow lights and observe how they were trying to escape themselves, the oppressive feelings of self-doubt that were hidden by smiles, and bravado, or by the embrace of another that gave them the affirmations they could not give themselves. All around him were broken people and he could see all their lesions, and that, for the most part, they had no idea how to heal themselves.
Floating away in these thoughts, Vladimir’s eyes sank solemnly to his feet. A familiar inner voice was kicking in and he did not like where it was leading him. He had to remind himself that broken people only existed because others had hurt them in the first place. People do people harm. He could see that plainly wherever he went. The ever-multiplying degenerates in this world had to understand their crimes and Vladimir knew there was only one way of ensuring that.
‘We’re gonna go sit over there,’ Jake said as he handed him a drink. They made their way over to a shadowy spot beneath a staircase.
Jake and Clint were probably going to get so drunk that they wouldn’t even know what they were doing. No doubt Vladimir would be arranging a taxi for them later. He didn’t mind. It was all part of his role, looking over people. And besides, as an Angel of Karma he had to protect the other servants who worked within that same field.
They all knew the fatal dangers of working in the Fires, having had a sudden reminder only six months ago. Quade had been an exuberant terrier, not quite as brutal as his fellow Powers Jake and Clint, and with not quite as strong an alcohol tolerance either. But he was spirited, a die-hard soldier always with that What do we do next, boss? look on his face.
Since Quade’s curiosity had led to his untimely death, Jake and Clint had managed to cope with the extra workload. Even so, promoting someone from the lower ranks to become a Power was something that had been on Vladimir’s mind recently. It would be desirable having three of them again.
It wasn’t like they would put an advert in the local paper for any old jobseeker to answer. All members of the Halo of Fires organisation were specially selected and took years to climb the ranks. They had to truly devote themselves to the purpose.
Vladimir swallowed a mouthful of Coke and he could feel the bubbles sparkling in his stomach. He was sure that the universe would bring along new candidates when the time was right. He knew all about the meaningful path-crossing that souls made.
Part 3: Searching
Chapter 3.1
‘Predictable,’ was the word Devlan muttered to Captain Harp when asked how he felt the search for the Tatterdemalion was going.
It was the evening of the twelfth day of their project and the two of them stood at the back of their vessel waiting for the three divers to remove their scuba gear. The sparkling carpet of sea stretched out before them, seemingly forever, its mysteries hidden beneath in the glop of sediment on the seabed.
Devlan had made some logical deductions going by the general tale of the Tatterdemalion. If the vessel had run aground then one had to conclude that it would have occurred close to the shoreline. Having agreed with Floyd on the length of coast in which they were to scour, the first task was to make an initial sweep up the coast, before then working themselves down again. And then going up again, and then down, slowly working their way further and further out to sea.
The three divers were Archaeological Oceanography students fresh out of a university in Rhode Island. One of them was a native Harbourian whom Harp knew, so he snapped him up, along with his two friends who were both Americans. They were all very geeky and generally kept themselves to themselves, or rather away from Devlan, as none of them knew what to make of the strange, hooded man who directed everything.
The divers brought a wealth of fledgling expertise along with all their computers and contraptions that seemed ill-fitting in the rusting Alchemist. Their multibeam bathymetry system fanned out sonar beams towards the seabed. The swath of signals returning to the computers produced maps from which the young mariners worked out possible shipwreck sites. So far they’d made only a handful of dives, and today’s efforts were once again fruitless.
‘It’s a wide playing field, but if they can find themselves that there Titanic, I’m sure we can find ourselves our old missus,’ replied the old salt dog Captain Harp. He’d spent more time on these waters than anyone else in Dark Harbour, which was exactly why Devlan had hired him. That and the fact that he was one of the few friends that Devlan had. In his early sixties, Harp had found a new lease of life taking on this job for himself and his faithful companion, the Alchemist, a well-used powerboat trawler with flaking blue paint.
‘Remind me to dig out my fishing rod, will you?’ Devlan said as he gazed thoughtfully across the waves.
Captain Harp suddenly roared with laughter, or more like exploded with it. He was always brimming with enthusiasm like a barrel of frothing beer. ‘Ha! If we can’t find our booty, there’s plenty more fish in the sea, eh Devlan?’
Harp started climbing the cabin to go to the helm. The three divers had now removed their diving equipment and the crew was ready to go home for the night and put their feet up before having another full day tomorrow.
Captain Harp switched on the engines but they stuttered and choked out thick black smoke.
‘Come on, my dear,’ he pleaded. Perhaps the Alchemist wasn’t used to being taken out so much, for today she’d been acting stubbornly. Harp gave the key another forceful twist, and then finally she agreed to come to life. ‘Homeward bound we go!’ cried Harp as he pointed the boat to the harbour.