Crown of Vengeance fie-1 Read online

  His early morning to late afternoon period had been entirely devoured by programming endeavors, as he worked feverishly on his latest digital magic. Piling up caffeinated beverages and hours alike, Logan finally found himself at the edge of exhaustion. His eyes were about to cross from constantly being chained to his monitors, poring over every element of code and pixel.

  The three separate projects that he was currently laboring on were still not remotely close to the finish line. A consummate perfectionist, Logan had actually raised the ire of some clients by incurring a few short delays to bring projects in at a level that exceeded their original requests.

  More often than not, though, he had endured a litany of revisions. Some clients requested things to be taken out that they themselves had demanded in the beginning. Others added things that they had at first declared that they absolutely did not want.

  There were many moments where he just needed to walk away from it all, and this late afternoon jaunt was one such time.

  His stomach needing some sustenance, he had first gone to the little Chinese restaurant perched on the edge of the university campus. He had always admired the sheer drive of the restaurant’s owner, who labored with a kindred orientation upon his craft of Chinese cuisine and restaurant management.

  After downing a quart-sized plate of pork-fried rice and a ginger ale, Logan had decided to extend his break and go for a walk on the outskirts of the campus.

  The campus itself, on which he had attended four semesters of classes before transferring to another college to finish his degree, was just across the road.

  The street that bordered the western edge of the campus, near the block that held the Chinese restaurant, led straight downtown.

  There was often an eclectic mix of individuals wandering about the collection of unique little shops adjacent to the campus area.

  It was the sort of environment where nobody really stood out, where one could decide to sink into the background or shout out their presence proudly on a street corner. Logan was far more inclined towards the former, though he was sometimes amused when he witnessed the latter.

  Glancing up the street, he could see a few garishly-dressed young individuals heading into a specialty bookstore. Just passing them, a scruffy man in a long overcoat was walking down his side of the street.

  He was a tall man, with a mop of lengthy, tangled hair, and a long, unkempt beard, both whitened with advanced age. Logan surmised that he was one of the many homeless individuals that often lingered in the area.

  While Logan did not have a lot of money on him, he opted to browse in a few of the music shops and art galleries.

  Briskly, Logan walked up the street, passing a popular eatery that was open all hours and served as a hangout for many of the university students. Already, it held a substantial crowd inside.

  Looking ahead, Logan saw that his path was about to directly cross with the homeless individual.

  At a closer vantage, the man appeared to move a little easier than Logan would have guessed by the years that the man’s appearance suggested. Logan attributed his overestimation of the man’s age to his very weathered skin, making him look much older than he truly was.

  His thick beard covered his mouth, and his uneven hair splayed over his shoulders, cascading down his back and chest. He looked to be almost six and a half feet tall, a full six inches taller than Logan.

  The man had one particularly striking feature that caused Logan to nearly stop in his tracks. The man’s eyes were like nothing that Logan had ever seen before.

  They were a deep, rich blue that seemed to exude a tranquility and ease that Logan had never seen on the pained, troubled expressions on most of the homeless in the area.

  “Can you help me get something to eat?” the man asked him in a calm, gentle voice.

  The question caught Logan off guard, and he found himself staring into the man’s striking eyes.

  Recomposing himself, he replied, “No problem, let me check… see what I have… just a second.”

  Digging into his pockets, he found a few bills and a little change. Without counting it, knowing that it was not that much to begin with, he gave it all over to the older man.

  The man accepted the money, folding his long fingers over it. He nodded slowly towards Logan, with an approving look.

  “Thank you,” the old man said in the gentle voice. “I have seen far fewer generous people these days. I do desire to repay you.”

  “It’s no problem at all,” Logan replied. “Call it a gift. No need for any repayment. We all need a break once in a while. I’ve had days I’ve been short too.”

  A slight grin came to the man’s face, barely perceptible through his thick mass of facial hair.

  “Thank you again, and have a nice day,” the man replied, nodding again to Logan as he headed onward, right in the direction of the all-hours eatery.

  Abruptly, as if he had forgotten to mention something important, the man paused and turned back towards Logan. He looked directly into Logan’s eyes, with an unwavering gaze.

  “Then my gift to you is this. Perceptions of the rightness of something can often be in error. Perceptions of the wrongfulness of something can also often be in error. It is always wisdom to look again closely. The true victory is in the correct judgment, and one can always change a judgement if one is still breathing. Things are often not as they appear. This is true on many levels, and in many ways. Bless you, for your kindness to a stranger, and remember this.”

  Turning back again, without waiting for a reply, the man resumed his path.

  Logan watched the old man walk off. He did not have the first idea as to what to make of the old man’s parting words.

  Part of him wanted to brush the man off as merely another bizarre component of the colorful tapestry of a downtown and campus environment. Another part of him was not so hasty. The old man had spoken succinctly and intelligently, and Logan wondered what his story really was. Logan saw no real way to find out the truth, even as intriguing as the old man was. Letting off a little sigh, he finally shrugged and continued into the front door of the popular campus music store.

  For the next thirty minutes or so, he browsed the music racks. If he had some money to spare, he knew that he could have easily spent it. As it was, he had to file away notes in his mind, at least until he had a little more discretionary income.

  Without making any purchase, he walked out of the store and turned to head back. A few blocks away was his house, situated within an older neighborhood. It was well past the time that he needed to be returning to his work.

  Looking ahead, he saw the homeless man that he had given money to. The old man was crossing the street about a block down from where he was.

  Coming down towards the street from the opposite side was a person that Logan recognized, accompanied by two others that he did not. Logan paused to watch the inevitable crossing of paths, curious to witness the result.

  The trio of neatly dressed, clean-shaven young men neared the old man as he stepped up onto the sidewalk. Logan recognized the young man in the middle as being from an immense church in town that Logan had done some work for on a few occasions.

  Softball fields, classroom complexes, basketball gyms, auditoriums that could seat over five thousand individuals, and more occupied the monstrous church complex. Logan was well aware that many people moving to Lexington seeking to advance in the community joined the prominent, influential church.

  Logan was sure that the three young men were probably doing a little better than himself in a financial sense, and surely were capable of helping the old man. He watched the developing encounter with a little interest.

  The old man turned to them as they approached, and from his gestures Logan knew that the old man was soliciting some help from the three young men.

  Logan watched with amusement as the three young men stiffened up a little as they neared the strange homeless man. Their body language was clear enough. They were well aware
of the old man’s overture and presence.

  Two of the men soldiered onward, trying to act as if they did not even notice the old man. The third was shaking his head in the negative, at least giving the old man a response, though he barely broke stride to do so.

  The homeless man did not exhibit any change in posture, as they passed, simply nodding to them and continuing on up the street. One of the two young men that had supposedly not taken account of the old man chanced a glance back at him, as the trio neared the side of the street that Logan was on.

  Logan had not been surprised in the least by their rejection of the old man. Their response was exactly as he had predicted, though for the old man’s sake he wished that he had not been accurate.

  He almost broke into a laugh at the worried expression upon the face of the one looking back towards the old man, as if the fellow was deeply concerned that the old man might be following them to accost them.

  Shaking his head, Logan chuckled to himself as he walked onward. He knew that the three had religion, but was not so sure that they had faith. Watching their encounter with the homeless man prompted him to muse for a few moments on the subject of religion, and how it was not necessarily the same thing as faith. It was an interest of his, at least on an intellectual level, even if he did not practice any particular form of it.

  The concepts of free will, gods, devils, and destinies intrigued Logan well enough. He had absorbed quite enough about those topics over the years, at a parochial grade school and through regular independent reading that had given him a solid grasp of the world’s various faiths.

  There were some obvious conclusions that he had come to.

  History marched onward as the dust of self-proclaimed prophets, predicting the world’s end, had long since blown away in the winds of time. That same history also held a litany of figures who had shamed the faiths that they were public leaders of, while some of the most pious and reverent persons of history had been persecuted, defamed, and killed as heretics.

  Logan had come to see religion as a creature that differed very little from the basic forces that ruled mankind. Adherence and affiliation to religion, in the proper context for a given culture, was used across the world to bring power, wealth, and influence in a manner that had little to do with the tenets of the various faiths themselves.

  The inability of the public to recognize this reality had long angered Logan, and turned him away from any positive connotations when it came to matters of spirit. It had become difficult for him to separate the concepts of religion and faith.

  The world was filled with many groups that were irrevocably convinced that they had full dominion on truth. At best, only one of them could be right. At worst, none of them were right. Looking at it from a detached perspective, it was a confounding situation.

  Logan had plenty of reason to doubt that any of the ones that he was aware of had full dominion, based upon the fruits of their histories and efforts. He also had never personally experienced a miracle, had never seen a spirit, and nor had anyone else that he knew.

  There was also the troubling notion that the things that his religiously oriented parents, and similar friends of theirs, prayed for fervently never seemed to come to pass, some becoming far worse in many cases. In contrast, the things desired by many non-religious individuals that Logan knew had come to fruition, often with ease and abundance.

  Logan was certainly not the person to ask regarding his opinions on the power of prayer.

  Over time, he had seen more than enough evidence to convince him that mankind was very astute at intricate fabrications and deceptions.

  With all of his heart, just for once, he wanted to see and experience something absolutely undeniable with his own eyes. No third party accounts, not even eyewitness accounts, would be acceptable substitutes for his desired experience.

  Then, and only then, he might find something to put his faith into. If that day ever happened, he knew that he could finally let loose of many inhibitions and misgivings, and pour his heart and soul into a faith, and gladly leave his dissatisfying agnosticism far behind.

  Maybe someday it would happen.

  Maybe it would not.

  He was not going to hold his breath while waiting.

  Looking down at his watch, he saw that he still had almost an hour to go before night arrived. Time would soon become a blur again as he hurled himself into his projects and submitted the visionary to the mundane as best as he could.

  As always, it was clients before creativity.

  It was not a pleasant course of action, but it did bring in an income.

  RYAN

  Ryan and Antoine jogged across the main street, heading towards the heart of the city as the shifting hues of sunset crossed into the uniformity of night.

  Artificial light and sprawling shadows settled across the reawakening streets. The lull between the rush hour and the nightlife was over, and traffic was just starting to pick up again.

  It would still be a few more hours before the city curfew took effect, nothing but a minor nuisance to the two street-honed teenagers.

  Ryan had recently set his affections towards a young lady of his age named Pamela, who lived a couple of blocks over from his small, crowded home. To his view, the relationship was proceeding nicely, though he hoped that she would shake off some other guys that she was seeing and commit fully to him.

  Relationships with attractive females were not the only matters occupying his mind.

  Ryan was becoming more than a little nervous about Antoine during the course of recent weeks. Antoine had been acquiring some additional revenue through some drug trafficking on the streets. At first, he had started dealing in order to keep himself supplied with his favorite pills. The money and pills had brought him more attention from women in their peer group, and several that were older. Antoine was increasingly becoming absorbed in the attention that he was receiving. Ryan feared that Antoine was beginning to get overconfident and careless.

  Ryan knew well enough that Antoine was not on the higher levels of the business that enjoyed both friendship and economic influence with elements of law enforcement. Antoine was on the low level, a group whose members were readily expendable. From their number came the overwhelming bulk of the periodic drug busts and accompanying roundups that were portrayed so vividly in the media.

  Ryan feared for his friend’s growing recklessness, knowing that he was well within the target range of one of those kinds of roundups. Yet he could not dissuade him from his newfound lifestyle.

  “So, what’s up with you and Pamela?” Antoine remarked, as they turned off the main street and started down towards the north side of town.

  “Not long, Antoine… not much longer,” Ryan retorted, a mischievous glint reflecting in his eyes. “She’s getting close to being with me twenty-four-seven.”

  “I wouldn’t let a girl even look like she was playin’ around with me. But I don’t blame you with her. She looks so fine,” Antoine complimented, smiling broadly.

  “She sure does,” Ryan replied, exhibiting his boyish grin.

  His friendly face and relatively lanky build had prevented him from ever developing an aura of intimidation.

  Several unfortunate youths had, over the course of his life, found out intimately that his seemingly benign image did not represent the underlying substance. A scrappy youth with a penchant for mixed martial arts, he had a nearly fatalistic aptitude to take on any challengers.

  The disposition had gotten him into a lot of trouble, when he had rendered his mother’s live-in boyfriend unconscious after the man had started a drunken spree of violence upon her one night. Instead of being branded a hero, Ryan had been promptly placed into the juvenile detention center. His mother had been lukewarm to him, pulled between his intervention and the strange dependency that she had developed with her abusive boyfriend.

  Ryan’s pattern had not changed during his period of incarceration. There, he had gotten into several scrapes with some o
f the others being held there, and had even assaulted one of the security guards.

  It had all started a downward spiral.

  Soon he was disrupting his classes at school, which had gotten him placed in the city’s special education facility. There, his continued unwillingness to back down from challenges had garnered him many more opportunities for trouble, and not all of them had been resounding victories.

  Ryan had a social worker to report to, and had been forced to attend some different counseling programs. He strongly resented both conditions but over the past year had grudgingly been cooperating, largely because of his friend, a restaurant owner near downtown named Lee Chen. It was Lee that had helped him from falling headlong into an abyss.

  Lee had taken an acute interest in Ryan, often commenting that he saw in him a stout heart and keen intelligence. Taking him under his wing, as a mentor of sorts, Lee had let Ryan help out at his restaurant.

  The experience had been positive, settling Ryan down enough so that he cooperated with his legal requirements. He had to admit that it had gotten him out of the worst of the cyclical quagmire that had served as his day to day life.

  Those who saw Ryan with Lee at the restaurant were treated to a different side of the youth. None would have guessed at his tendency for fighting and causing disturbances. Instead, they saw an energetic, if not fully articulate, young man who had an offbeat sense of humor.

  Lee preferred to see Ryan stay in that world, and the two had started to argue more and more as Ryan had begun to spend an increasing amount of time with Antoine. Ironically, Ryan was trying harder to gain influence with Antoine before his friend got caught in the snares of law enforcement.

  Yet Ryan did not dispute Lee’s claim that the demeanor and outlook of the youth quickly reversed when he was on the street.

  Lee’s assessment was about to be put to the test again, as Ryan took note of some familiar faces after he and Antoine had traveled another two blocks off the main street. With easy strides, they continued to close the distance to where three other teenaged guys were loitering about a dim parking lot.