Redemptio Animae

by Sydney Gibson

  Halston grinned at me, lifting her other hand to press the barrel of a black .45 Smith & Wesson to the side of Claire's head. "You and I both know, I might not be as fast as you, but I am fast enough to at least fire four rounds through your love's head before you lay one finger on you. Bourne did leave me with a few gifts I am oh so thankful for." She tapped the barrel lightly against Claire's temple. "So I suggest you sit back for a moment and let me wake her up for you."

  I weighed out the facts Halston presented to me, fighting the blinding rage to assess what was before me.

  If I did lunge at her like I was about to, I wouldn't be fast enough to stop at least one shot. Halston had me there, I knew the approximate speed of the Smith & Wesson in her hand and that she had a custom trigger assembly that had a two second trigger pull. I rapidly compared that to my own speed times from the last few trials I had done with Claire. The gun had a two and a half second advantage over me. I would not make it in time to prevent Halston from firing the gun pressed against the woman I loved.

  I began weighing out other options as I stared at Halston who was laughing, spinning Claire's torso to face her as she kept the gun tightly pressed against her temple. That's when I started to take in that Halston was wearing some of my old clothes, old ones I had left at the townhouse in D.C. She was also wearing the one old coat Claire had set aside for me as a work coat when the Virginia snow piled up around us. The strong smell of my perfume filtering off of them like steam rolling out of a hot iron.

  I could feel my anger rise and fill every muscle in my body, fighting me to let my mind let the body go and pummel this woman into a lifeless pulp like I so desperately wanted to, needed to, the longer I looked at Claire hanging helpless and broken.

  I clenched my jaw, "I will kill you, Halston. For everything you've done."

  Halston rolled her eyes, "I have heard that a time or two, means absolutely nothing to me." She slashed quickly across Claire's side with the gut hook, waking Claire up with the pain, making the blonde scream out and struggle against the rope and hooks holding her up, twisting her broken arm with every small motion she made. Her side twisting and squeezing out more blood from the large, but not life threatening gash. Halston grinned at Claire's screams, her scarred face looking like a melted child's plastic Halloween mask, "Ah, she's awake. Perfect."

  Halston turned back to me, "I was going to kill you first, but after meeting Donny boy in his new state, I realized that it will be harder for me to kill you." She stepped closer to Claire who was now staring at me with droopy, red pain ridden eyes, blinking slowly to try and fight through the pain and stay awake. "So I think I will just kill Claire."

  I kept my eyes locked on Claire, trying my best to communicate that I would get her out of this, I only had to figure out how to do it without risking those two seconds that could cost her life. I continued to half listen to Halston, knowing that being the madwoman she was, she would want to talk and explain her reasons like she had in the Criterion Centre. I would allow her. It would give me time to figure out an alternate plan or wait for her to drop the gun away from Claire long enough that those two seconds would not be a factor. It killed me, staring at Claire. Tears running down her face as she whispered my name through a hoarse voice. The blood running slowly over her stomach from the cuts, taking more and more of her energy and life with every minute I played into this woman's madness.

  I grit my teeth, "What do you want Halston?" I never negotiated, but it would stall Halston.

  Halston looked at me with bright dead blue eyes. That was when I got a first full look at the mangled woman’s face. Her burn scars carried all the way up through her forehead. Leaving only small patches of what looked to once be blonde hair, but was now patchy and matted down. Her hands were covered in the puckered waxy like skin of all burn victims who never got the right skin grafts. She looked exactly like the monster she was.

  Halston sighed, running the flat of the gut hook over Claire's bare skin, "There are so many things I want, and yet I know I can't have them. I don't even want to be fixed like Claire fixed Benson and you. I like the person, the thing, I am now. It's served me well." She glared at me, "So don't waste your time negotiating with me, Kit. I came here to finish what I started. Hopefully I can at least collect on you when I finally deliver your head and collect the rest of my money."

  Halston dropped the knife, pressing the gun deeper against the side of Claire's head. "You know over the last week while I sat in the woods, watching the happy couple, tracking your patterns and movements. I thought about how I wanted to kill you and Claire. First I thought, maybe by fire in memory of Bourne. She loved burning us since it made our skin so thick and receptive to pain. Then I thought maybe explosions, but done that, so gauche to repeat it in my opinion." Halston grinned suddenly, "I fell back to my old days. Breaking bones and cutting, like the CIA trained me when I was a fresh faced patriot. Ready to serve. Since Donny broke my left arm." Halston reached up and squeezed hard on Claire's broken humerus, "I thought Claire would enjoy that as well. Although it will take her months to a few years to fully recover from the breaks, instead of the two days it took for mine to come back to normal."

  She grinned wider when Claire shrieked again, looking back at me, "You see, Donny told me a lot inadvertently, well his body did when I stabbed him. The way he told me I stunk as he broke my arm. It all gave me an upper hand on how to sneak into this southern fortress you thought would protect you from me."

  Halston dropped the hand with the gut hook down, "All I had to do was sit and watch while you chased the poor meth addict I paid to take a bus trip to the motor city. Thinking it was me. Drug addicts will do anything for an endless supply of money and high quality drugs. That bum gave me the opportunity to monitor how easily you two fell back into a happy normal life, falling asleep at the same time every night cuddled up like baby kittens. Thinking I had disappeared in the wind to cry away my failures."

  Halston waved her knife hand around, "I do appreciate you talking Claire into taking that day trip into town last Wednesday, it gave me plenty of time to sneak in and steal this disgusting perfume you love and soak myself and the clothes I borrowed in the tepid liquid for the last few days. Cover up my own scent and cover my tracks, thinking you had just broken the old bottle of perfume when you haphazardly knocked a box over moving." She shook her head at how silly it all was for her, how easy it was for her to infiltrate our lives and home once again. "I could go on for days how I will always be a thousand steps ahead of you. One does not plan for fifteen years without learning how to be utterly flawless and undetectable."

  Halston cocked her head to look at me, "Anyways, back to the reason of my visit today, I wanted to save Claire for last so I could torture the blue serum out of her, but now I don't need her when I have you. The perfect walking specimen of her blue serum. I can kill you both and just harvest a few drops of your blood and take it to the highest bidder. In the end, I just really want the both of you to die."

  Halston drifted off, sighing dramatically, lifting the gut hook one more time. "Shall we get this over with? Davey will be here shortly and I want to see his face when he sees his two girls gutted on the floor." She winked at me, "Then I will spread his guts all over the walls of this carriage house. Giving it a fresh coat of red paint." She chuckled morbidly to herself, moving the knife closer to Claire.

  I curled my hands into tight fists, my eyes falling to the Halston's gun hand. I just needed her to drop that hand. I looked up at Claire, her eyes closing slowly as she was slowly resigning to the pain telling her body it was time to give in. I scanned the carriage house, looking for anything that I could use to distract Halston long enough when she began to draw the gut hook over her

  I looked up in Claire's eyes, swallowing hard as I spoke, "I will be right there, Claire. Just give me a minute."

  Claire nodded slowly, "Just a minute, Kit. It's all I have." Her voice came out in a painful weak whisper, telling me that even if she didn't w
ant to give up, her body was for her. Claire tried to move her head to look at Halston, but the barrel of the gun was holding her still. More tears rolled down her face as she looked in my eyes one more time, "I love you, Kit."

  Halston groaned and gagged, "Enough." She dug the tip of the gut hook deep into Claire's skin, pulling out an earth shattering scream that made us both flinch. Claire kicked out her legs with the scream, swinging her body ever so slightly away from Halston

  Halston flinched as well, dropping the gun from Claire's temple to push Claire's body back so she could reinsert the gut hook.

  It was enough. It gave me the two seconds plus a few I had been waiting for.

  I barreled into Halston, spearing her with my body at the chest and taking her hard to the floor of the carriage house with all of my weight on top of her. Both of our bodies landing with a grunt and shattering the wooden boards underneath us.

  I didn't waste time, fighting through the raging adrenaline, the sounds of Claire's screams, the overpowering smell of my perfume and the underlying bleachy chemical smell of Halston that was now heavier been inches from her. I laid a hard right hook across her face, feeling and hearing the cheek bones shatter. I followed the right hook with a left hook, eliciting the same satisfying crunch sound from the left side of Halston's face. I struck over and over until Halston's maniacal laughing fell to a nothing. Her face bloodied and unrecognizable, I could no longer hear her heart beating. I let out a huge breath and closed my eyes, trying to calm myself down when I heard Claire moan.

  Shaking my hands and flinging the blood off my knuckles, I snatched the gut hook from her one hand and the .45 from the other.

  I rushed to the small work bench, jumped on top of it and grabbed the gambrel; dragging it closer to me I sliced through the rope. Catching all of Claire's weight on the hooks and lowered her slowly to the floor. She crumpled in a ball on the floor, whimpering. I moved quicker to cut her wrists free. I could feel the tears building in my eyes, looking over how bruised and battered Claire was.

  I set the .45 down next to Claire's head and went to lift her up and carry her back in the house, when the shot rang out and the feeling of a hot bee sting blew through my thigh.

  It stumbled back, spinning my head around to see Halston getting to her feet. A P99 in her right hand with smoke curling out of the barrel, her blood covered mouth curling up into a grin she began to move towards me. I glanced at my thigh, the massive hole already closing up, I lifted my head and charged after Halston screaming at her. She met me halfway, firing once more through my arm but doing little to stop me or my advance healing powers.

  I grabbed her upper arms, throwing a knee up into her chest. Her ribs shattering upon impact did very little to slow her down. Halston struck the left side of my face with the butt of the gun and tried to push me back to fire the P99 again, this time at my head.

  I caught her wrist, twisting it till it snapped and grabbed her, pulling me closer into my body so I could take her to the ground. Halston chuckled against my ear, "You might heal faster than I do, but it's going to take a lot more to kill me than a few punches to the face."

  I growled, lifting Halston up to tackle her to the ground as another gunshot suddenly filled the carriage house, coming from behind me. One that was louder than the P99. I went to turn to look over my shoulder, when I felt another hot, searing bee sting push through my chest underneath my right collarbone. I heard a grunt and felt warm liquid rush all down the front of me. Halston's body became like a sack of lead, dragging me to the floor with her. I was caught by surprise and shock, unable to stop myself from falling with Halston. Panicking that I had been shot and my body wasn't healing fast enough.

  I fell on top of her, scrambling to push back and up to my feet, I looked down. On the left side of Halston's chest, a large dark pool of blood formed. Staining the faded purple shirt she wore under the heavy coat, like it was spilled ink on paper. I ripped the stained fabric to see a perfect dead center shot to Halston's heart. An entry wound followed by a large gaping exit wound out of her back, when I rolled her to her side. Halston coughed hard, spewing blood out of her mouth; I could hear her heart struggle, the blood pushing out of a torn aorta. The blood pooling up in her chest, filling up her mouth and windpipe as the last few beats of her heart was drowning Halston in her own blood. Her lesser healing powers not even making an attempt to fight the inevitable. The shot was a perfect kill shot.

  I stared at Halston as her life finally ended in one last struggled beat of a dying heart, when I heard Claire whisper, "Is she dead?"

  I turned to see Claire standing up, barely. The smoking .45 hanging down by her side, her eyes locked on the dead limp, lifeless Halston. I stood up, rushing to Claire and pulling the gun from her hand and tossing it the workbench to the side. I grabbed her as she fell forward into my arms, her body having been fully pushed to its limits. I held her as my heart raced, realizing that Claire had fired the perfect kill shot. Killing Halston.

  I nodded against her, "Yes. She is."

  Claire let out a breath and slumped into my arms. Forcing me to grab onto her bare side, grab at spots that were still bleeding and bruised. I cringed at the way Claire's skin felt cold, knowing I had to get her into the house and to a serum of any kind. Her own heartbeat fading with every beat.

  I scooped Claire up and went to race out of the carriage house, "Stay with me, Claire." I whispered the plea, "It's finally done."

  I ran through the yard as fast as I could without hurting Claire anymore. Listening to her heart, praying that it would keep beating for a few more seconds when it was clearly done struggling against the pain and the amount of blood she had lost.

  I raced straight to Claire's office. Gingerly setting the half conscious woman on the couch, I threw the old Steelers blanket I had left down here last night over her body. Jumping over the desk I kicked the chair out of the way. Forgoing the stupid security system Ivan had set up and the hidden keypad right underneath her desk, I slammed my fist into the wooden floor boards. Pulling them up in fistfuls until the black safe stared back up at me from its brand new concrete home in the floor.

  Throwing my fist into the top, I found some resistance from the heavy steel box. Three hard, angry punches later, I was able to penetrate it. Revealing twenty four perfectly organized vials of pink serum. I let out a breath to calm down as I reached into to carefully pull out one vial and the injection gun.

  With the loaded injection gun, I jumped back over the desk and leather couch to land right in front of Claire. She was now grey, sweaty and forcing out ragged breaths. I didn't have to be a doctor to know that she would not make it much longer. I pulled the corner of the blanket back and jammed the injection gun into her right arm. Watching the pink serum empty out of the vial and flood into her bloodstream.

  It only took twenty seconds before Claire sat up screaming as her broken bones reset themselves painfully, her large lacerations closing up like someone was taking an eraser to them. I grabbed her and held her as she screamed and screamed, her body healing painfully but quickly. I had to clench my jaw a few times when I wanted to break down and cry, her nails digging into my back and through the large holes of my sweatshirt.

  The screams lasted fifteen minutes, before Claire passed out in my arms. Her skin a healthy pink, her body free of any signs that a knife had been near her or a mad woman had her strung up by her wrists like a deer waiting to be skinned.

  Laying her back down on the couch and covering her up with the blanket, I stood up and walked out of the office. Closing the door behind me, I leaned against the wall. Sliding down as the sobs and tears rushed forth. Consuming my breaths. I gripped at my heart, feeling it pound and threatened to break out of my chest. I gave in, covering my head in my hands as I sobbed.

  "Kit? Claire? You two better not be defiling the guest room." Davey's voice rang through the hallway from the front door.

  I looked up, choking on sobs, trying to call out for him but failing.


  He came around the corner, looking at his phone with a disgusted look, "I swear I am buying you guys scotch guard as a housewarming present." I sniffled, forcing out a harsh, "Davey..."

  His eyes flicked up from the phone and to my red, puffy ones. He rushed towards me, "Kit!? What's wrong?" He scanned over my bloodstained and torn pants and shirt. "Claire?! Is Claire okay?" He held my face trying to get me to focus, "Kit! Talk to me!"

  I grabbed his hands, pressing them harder against my face, "Halston."

  He went to stand up, dropping his hands to reach for his gun when I caught his wrist again, shaking my head. "It's done. She's in the carriage house, dead." I closed my eyes.

  Davey knelt down in front of me again, squeezing my hand, "Kit, I need you to tell me what happened to Claire." His voice was even toned but tinged with fear of what I was going to say next.

  I looked in his copper eyes, motioning to the office door behind me, "She's in there." I swallowed, "She killed Halston." I gripped tightly to his wrist, pulling myself up I dragged him after me. Suddenly wanting to be out away from the office and from the sounds of Claire murmuring in her sleep. Replaying the events of the carriage house, I held tightly onto Davey's hand, "I'll show you."

  I sucked in deep breaths of the cold air, trying to bring myself back into the reality of what had happened, and what had finally ended. It was all far too surreal for me to digest and I wanted nothing more than to collapse to the ground until I woke up from the nightmare. But when I felt Davey's hand squeeze mine, him calling out my name, I realized it was not a bad nightmare. It was real. All of it, painfully real and I needed him to see it to convince me otherwise.

  ______________________

  I stood behind Davey as he crouched over Halston's body, poking it with a gloved finger. "She is dead. No doubt about it." He glanced at me, "I will make a call to Jane, and have her collect the body." He stood up, looking around the carriage house and the disaster of broken floorboards and the gambrel with bloody ropes. "What the hell happened in here?"