The Paladin's Redemption (The Keepers of White Book 3)

by Richard Crofton

  Barbara sipped her coffee. “That doesn’t say much,” she commented. “It’s more likely that while putting her under, you exposed too much of your own feelings when trying to connect with hers. It can easily happen, especially if you’re a novice at tampering with someone’s mind.” He gave her a slightly insulted look. “Or,” she added, reading his expression, “if you’re out of practice.”

  “I don’t have foresight like you, Babs,” Michael explained, “but I get hunches now and then.”

  “Intuition is one of the first abilities acquired from meditating,” she noted. “I take it you’ve been back at it for some time.”

  “Yeah,” he admitted. “But anyway, I just felt in my gut that I should leave the password.”

  “Okay,” she conceded. “It’s a moot point now anyway. Let’s get back to the matter at hand. You’re starting to get some of your gifts back and you think you can stop the Dark Year before the Cycle is completed. And you plan to do it in a manner extremely unconventional with the Code of the White. Even if I was on board with that, which I’m not, how will healing and mind spells be of any help?”

  “You know what else I can do,” he assured her.

  “Never lost that, did you?”

  “No,” he answered. “Not sure why, but I haven’t. Not even a bit rust…”

  Without warning, Barbara swung her right hand in one, lightning-fast strike against the salt shaker on the table, sending it flying towards Michael’s face in the time it takes one’s eyes to blink. Before it even came close to impact with his nose, he caught it with his left hand, then gently placed it back on the table. Loki didn’t even stir from where he napped on his shoulders.

  Michael didn’t protest her mock attack against him. In fact, it made him more hopeful that her little test meant that she might actually be considering his request for her help.

  “Fine,” she said, satisfied with his reflexes. “Say you succeed. What then? What about the children? Can you live with yourself if more of your loved ones suffer from your actions?”

  “I can keep them safe,” he protested.

  “You don’t know that,” she countered. “Where are they now?”

  “With Moonie.”

  Barbara’s mouth opened with surprise. “Oh, Michael! You got Moonie involved?”

  Michael raised a defensive hand. “He was more than willing to jump on board. As a matter of fact, he sought me out.”

  “And he put this idea in your head? I could kill him!”

  “It was more of a joint effort,” he admitted sheepishly.

  Barbara could only shake her head. “Some things never change. The shit that happens whenever the two of you idiots get together.”

  Michael sighed. “Babs, I understand there are risks, but you know the risks are far greater if we allow them to complete the Dark Year. Regardless of what my reasons are for doing this, it doesn’t change what will happen if we do nothing.”

  “We don’t know what will happen,” she argued.

  “Whatever it is, we know it will be bad. Always is.”

  “But never the end of the world.”

  “Tell that to the thousands, maybe millions who will suffer. It will be the end of their world.”

  Barbara’s eyes blinked from doubt for a moment, then quickly returned to the resolve they’ve had to repel his stare-down. “Ethan is my world, Michael. And I don’t want to lose that, not for anything… or anyone else.”

  Michael met her eyes with both disappointment and desperation. “What’s happened to you?”

  She lowered her voice. “I thought I already explained that. I’m reminded of what’s happened every time I look at my son’s hand.”

  He looked away, both from frustration and understanding. And he wondered if he would have made the same choice were he in her shoes. “You would sit by and do nothing. Living in fear.”

  “It’s still living,” she answered.

  “All of our friends: Pops, Gump, Shelly, and the rest. All of our loved ones. Lost. And for nothing then. Because of the fear of more loss. That’s not living, Babs.”

  “You think I don’t know that already?” she said in a shaky voice. “You think I don’t want to right things? I do. But righting those wrongs is impossible, Michael. They have too much of a hold on the world. We can’t make a difference. Not anymore”

  He turned to her with a strange look in his piercing eyes, those gleaming sapphires that had always captivated her. “You don’t really believe that,” he said to her with an unlikely confidence. “Otherwise you wouldn’t have invited me inside.”

  “I invited you inside for coffee,” she replied stubbornly, “and because I’ve missed you.”

  “And because you still have hope,” he claimed. “Deny that all you want, but I know you do. How else could I have found you?”

  “What are you talking…”

  “You’re right, Babs. I’m not as strong with my gifts as I used to be. I never was that strong to begin with. But I still found you. That should’ve been impossible. It was difficult, and it took me awhile, but I still found a way in.”

  “We’ve always had a strong connection, you and I,” she tried to reason.

  “Even so,” he went on, “Keepers, especially those as powerful as you, can shield themselves from the psychic connection they share with each other. The way we’re drawn to one another; you can block that.”

  “And I did,” she assured him.

  “You did,” he agreed. “So no Keeper, no matter how strong, should have found you. Not unless you wanted to be found, even if you didn’t realize it.”

  Her widened eyes betrayed her.

  “Maybe,” he continued, “just maybe you left a tiny little window open, one that only I could detect if I dug deep enough. Maybe you did it subconsciously, because there’s a part of you that you’re unaware of that feels incomplete from all the wrongdoings. It’s a flicker of hope, a part that’s not as strong as your fear, but it’s still there.”

  Barbara looked down with guilt. If she had turned on a faint, psychic beacon for him, she hadn’t known, but there was no other explanation. “How is it your hope outweighs your fear?

  He remained silent for a moment. A sudden change took over his expression. One that lacked emotion. “It’s not hope,” he said in a low voice as he placed his hand in hers again. She accepted it, and without thinking, closed her eyes.

  She could feel the anguish mixed with rage pulsing from his veins, electrifying in her fingertips, and shooting up her arm to her spinal cord. In his mind, she witnessed the horrifying scene he was once forced to watch, in a video-attached email message similar to the one she had received, but far more traumatizing. The contents of that video were enough to break the composure of the most battle-hardened war general, and as the scene played out, she could feel panic growing inside, escalating with each second, until the video ended with its disturbing conclusion in which an innocent fell victim to a monster of a man who fed on suffering.

  “My God,” she whispered. “The things that man did…”

  Michael said nothing. He was well aware of the expression in her face. He guessed he had worn a similar look on the day he had first seen the video himself.

  She fast-forwarded to further sources of his pain, to other tragic days that had soon followed, to a later day when he had collapsed to his knees on a cold surfaced floor, unable to stand for the onslaught of injustices wrought upon him. The day when his proverbial camel’s back had snapped. Tears welled inside Barbara’s closed eyes. She couldn’t stop the hyperventilating as it intensified the frantic pounding of her heart. Unable to bear the burden of the psychic transfer any longer, she opened her eyes, now bloodshot as if she had been crying for hours.

  “I’m sorry.” Then, to his surprise, she began weeping in front of him.

  He squeezed her hand until she quieted. “I’m not asking you to get involved,” he said. “All I’m asking for is a little direction.” She began to breathe deeply, un
able to fully shake the effects of what she saw in his mind. “Babs, look at me,” he directed with a gentle voice.

  Barbara wiped her puddled brown eyes and raised them to meet his.

  “They were my world, Babs,” he said softly. “I don’t mean to make light of your own hardship; I know you miss your husband, but while your fear returns every time you have to look at your son’s hand, mine is doused every time I think of how I’ll never get to hold theirs again. Every time I think of how I’ll never know…” He stopped himself from continuing.

  She was amazed to no end as she studied him, sitting before her, still steady and stoic, as if the same scene she had just witnessed replayed in his mind in a continuous loop, numbing him from its effects. Though she knew now, that he had only mastered the appearance of being emotionless. The agony inside him was as fresh as it had been on the first day it entered his core. But the defiant, blue fire that seemed to ignite in his eyes revealed one, cold truth: if the ones who caused him this pain could sense from him what she now sensed, she knew it would be they who might know fear. For once. And they would have every right to fear him.

  “Please, Babs.” His voice was no less powerless though it had dwindled to a whisper now. “Help me right this wrong.”

  She turned away again, deep in thought. Slowly, she rose from the table and moved silently to a long, folding door in the corner of the kitchen that, as she opened it, revealed a pantry stocked with many dry goods found in any grocery store. She knelt down to the bottom shelf, used her arms to push several items away as if reaching for something in the very back, and pulled out a large, brown paper bag.

  “Would you mind putting Loki back in his cage?” she said as she returned to the table, dumping thin, white, waxy contents from the bag onto the table. “Then help me set up the candles.”

  When the séance had ended, Michael had the direction he needed. The two friends spent the rest of their time, sitting quietly in the kitchen, sipping coffee and making small talk every now and then, having so much to say to each other, but neither knowing where to begin. Finally, the unwelcomed moment came when Barbara informed him that she would need to get Ethan up from his nap.

  He reached the front door as she followed him, then turned to her. “Thank you,” he said sincerely.

  “You realize,” she warned, “that establishing a mental connection with a non-Keeper is well above your level. Even if you get your hands on a personal belonging.”

  “I’ll manage,” he assured her doubtfully. “Or at least I hope I can. Before it’s too late.”

  She smiled at him sadly.

  “You’re sure you won’t come with me? It might be safer for you both. Stay at Moonie’s while I take care of this.”

  Barbara shook her head. “It’s better that I don’t. It’ll be too tempting to get back into that life, and I don’t want that for Ethan.”

  Michael nodded that he understood. “I find it interesting, you know,” he remarked with a smirk. “All these years, all the… struggle, and you don’t seem like you’ve aged a day. You’re as beautiful as the day I last saw you.”

  “I find it interesting,” she said in return, “that you’re primary skill was in healing. If I’m not mistaken, I’d say it’s now persuasion and charm. I had always found it adorable the way you could never speak in complete sentences around me. Now, you know just what to say. More sure of yourself than the boy I once knew.”

  “I guess some things do change,” he replied, “and some don’t.” He placed a gentle hand on soft, fair skin of her cheek. “Goodbye Babs. I hope I see you again someday.”

  She didn’t have the heart to tell him that wouldn’t happen, but as he turned to leave, she grabbed his arm. “Michael?”

  He turned to her again, and she leaned forward and kissed him woefully, but not without passion. A small taste of comfort grew feebly within them, a little familiarity of a happier time in the middle of the present chaos. She released him too soon and said with a heavy heart, “I’m so sorry. Sorry for what happened to you.”

  He offered a calm smile. “Not your fault,” he replied, then left through the front door.

  She watched him go with regret forcing new tears in her eyes. “Yes it is,” she said after she had closed the door behind him.

  Chapter V

  “Let me get this straight,” Megan pressed after Michael gave a rather vague and brief summary of his reunion with Barbara. “Your… friend… used a spell that let you know I was the next target? And how to find me?”

  Michael kept one hand on the steering wheel while sipping his coffee with the other. Without taking his eyes off the road, he easily set the Styrofoam cup back in the plastic holder fixed to the lower middle of the console. “She has the gift of foresight,” he explained. “She doesn’t get a clear image of future events, since the future isn’t set, but she can pinpoint her focus to certain aspects of importance. In this case, the next Virgin Select in the Cycle of the Dark Year.”

  “And she what? Copied the image into your mind?”

  “No. She held your image in her own mind and did this for me.” He used his non-steering hand and pulled a sheet of scrap paper from his pocket, handing it to her.

  Megan opened the folded sheet and soon found herself unable to take her eyes off it for several minutes, staring dumbfounded at a very detailed sketch of herself. The drawing had been done merely in pencil, but it had the quality of a master artist. “This is incredible!”

  “And she did it with her eyes closed,” Michael bragged of his friend. “She was also able to dig deep enough to give me enough information to find you.”

  “Information about me?” Megan couldn’t shake the creepy feeling that ran up her spine. She’s heard of the high likelihood of pretty women like herself being stalked on social media these days, but being stalked by psychics seemed more discomforting.

  “Not personal information,” he said as her tone of voice betrayed her thoughts. “It’s not like she gave me your social or bank account number. Other kinds of details. Like how you attend the 10:30 service every Sunday at St. Elizabeth’s, as well as your involvement with the Bible Study meetings. I’ll tell you, I was more than surprised to hear you were a parishioner at the same church I grew up in… well, the orphanage run by it anyway. Part of me was looking forward to going back, but then I saw how much everything had changed…”

  Megan could tell he might drift into the past by the distant look in his eyes. And perhaps there may still have been some residual connection between them, as she entertained the idea that he was starting to feel a sense of regret for something in that past. She decided to redirect his thoughts before the atmosphere in the confined space of the Silverado grew melancholy. “So, there’s light magic and dark magic, right?”

  “Pretty much,” he confirmed, his blue eyes blinking away sad memories. “In a way, it really is kind of like the Force. But you wouldn’t know about that, would you.” He smirked at her.

  “I guess not,” she smirked back, relieved that his playful mood hadn’t been completely ruined by whatever had begun to haunt his thoughts. “Are the two sides of it really different?”

  He shrugged. “Some of our abilities are similar. But our purposes for using them are completely different. They gain power through dark incantations fueled from the sacrificial rituals they partake in. We, on the other hand, develop our powers through constant meditation and knowledge that’s passed down. They use their gifts for personal gain, with the intent to gain more power. Not just in magic, but also power over others. Influence and manipulation. We use the Alpha Magic to aid in the service of others, to protect the innocent and the natural world. And our spells are designed to help others, not harm them.”

  “But you can manipulate others too,” she noted. “Like what you did with the cop just now.”

  “Only out of necessity. I didn’t do anything that would change the course of his life, or bring him any harm or hardship. As I’m bound to my code, my spell over
him wouldn’t have worked if my intents weren’t for the greater good. The purpose behind the whole thing was to protect you.”

  “It was a neat trick,” she admitted. “It was amazing, actually. You said you weren’t all that powerful, but how can that be, after everything I’ve seen you do?”

  Michael shrugged again. “There are different levels. I can trick people’s minds to some extent, but to control them completely? Well beyond my level.”

  “Are there others who are at that level?”

  “Yep. There are… or… were… many Keepers, who were much more attuned to the Alpha Magic than I am. And there are many Agents of Shadow who are on different levels as well.”

  Megan shook her head. “This is so hard to take in. I’ve seen some of what they could do. They did it to me. But I saw what you did too.”

  “You were held captive by some of the most powerful of their kind,” Michael explained. “Controlling your actions, paralyzing you with fear. Those are strong spells. And there are stronger ones.”

  “Like when Father Paul made himself transparent?”

  “That’s one example, yes.”

  “So if they were some of the most powerful agents, and you’re at a lower level, how did you beat them last night?” she challenged, irked that he was possibly doubting himself. “How did you move so fast and hit your targets so easily?”

  “Ah,” he remarked as a math teacher about to reveal a special formula to his students, that only he knew about. “That’s an interesting phenomenon actually.”

  “I’m all ears,” she cued him when he paused too long for her impatient ears to wait.

  “The learning of the Alpha Magic comes differently for each Keeper. We meditate for hours, focusing on the invisible energies around us, until we get a feel for its access point, so to speak. It’s like the way people find some things easy and others difficult. When you go to school, you might quickly get a knack for reading and writing but find chemistry highly confusing. You can still learn chemistry, but you have to work at it, and even then you might easily forget it if you don’t go over your notes every day.