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Author's Note: David Streeter thought he was tough, but there is always someone tougher and meaner. Finding that out wasn't a huge suprise, but discovering what can happen once one dies turned out to be the biggest one of his life --err death...
 

I was a dead man even though I was still breathing. You know the worst part of that one? Not that I was dying, coughing up blood every time I tried taking a breath, but that I could have avoided this.

I didn’t need to die.

I could have let the cops know what was going on and let them handle the thing, then gone home, had a drink, watched a ball game on the tube and congratulated myself for being a good citizen.

But did I do that? Oh, no not a chance. Not the tough, street wise private security specialist all the rich guys paid really good money to so they didn’t have to deal with annoyances like someone wanting to kill them. I could handle anything that came my way, or so I thought.

The nutcase grinning down at me as I coughed and bled my life out was more than a simple annoyance for rich folks, though.

“You should have stayed out of this one, Streeter.” Iggy, short for Ignace and maybe that was why he was such a bastard — I know I’d have been a long time forgiving my parents for hanging a name like that on me — Forester stared at me and shrugged. “Your client owed me, I came to collect. It was business, that’s all. Then you just had to get in the way.”

Yeah, I got in the way, and took a bullet that wasn’t meant for me. But my client was way to pretty to get one in the face like my killer had planned. Plus I had entertained the idiot fantasy that Iggy really wasn’t going to hurt her.

Right. Ignace Forester was a nasty piece of work. Really nasty. Prostitution? He was into it whether the girls he used wanted to do it or not. Drugs? He was the player all the big dealers in town got their stuff from. Blackmail? No one could outdo Iggy on that one. The slime had something on just about everyone in town and used it with an unholy glee.

Then there was the fact that my client, and lover, Erica Stanfield, one of the more prominent and upscale whores he made use of was dead anyway. I’d failed her and myself in more ways than I could even start to count. That hurt more than dying.

If rage could keep someone alive, I’d have been assured of walking out of that penthouse the next morning. If hate could keep someone with his lungs punctured by nine millimeter rounds was something that would keep him from leaving the scene in a body bag while bloody froth of bubbling blood and air escaped his mouth I would have been home free.

But that wasn't enough, not near enough.

And the one thing I hadn’t counted on in all this was the grief.

Grief over what you ask? Not my own death. I was one of those people who had always known I was expendable just from the job I did. Goes with the territory, get over it, things like that.

But losing poor sweet Erica. That was more than I could bear.

And I hadn’t even told her once that I loved her.

Oh, she would probably have laughed in my face at that admission, but the point is, I hadn’t told her. And I couldn’t keep her from dying. So now, I’d never be able to tell her. Unless we ran into each other in the afterlife.

Things were going gray, then dark. The last thing I really recall from that time was fixing Iggy’s grinning face in my mind and wishing to god, the devil, or anything watching that I had the chance to wipe that damned grin off the shithead’s countenance for good.

Then it was over. I died.

Really died, as in the whole funeral and coffin thing, mourners and all. Though I hadn’t really left anyone behind who cared enough to mourn me. On reflection, as things faded into black, I thought that really sucked even if it was my own fault.

“David Streeter.” The voice, almost a monotone but filled with a thrumming power that no voice in existence should have interrupted my segue into hell.

“What?” I questioned while noticing that I could see nothing around me. No light, no dark, no fog, just nothing. I’d faced off with some really nasty sorts before Iggy got me, been in the military special forces and seen, done things, that would have driven most people insane, but this was more than I was ready to handle or was able to take. “What the Hell is going on here?”

“Not Hell, David, but close.” The voice answered with a hint of malicious amusement that I couldn’t miss. “You failed.”

“And now I’m dead.” I shot back. “Yeah, yeah, I know that. So why are you tormenting me with that? Send me on and let the demons or whatever have their fun with me.”

“I could do that.” The voice chuckled. “But if I did I couldn’t make you this offer.”

“Offer?” I was starting to pay closer attention now. “What kind of offer are we talking about here? If you want my soul, check the pawn shop on 35th. I sold that a long time ago.”

“Do you wish to leave things as there were when you left mortality?” The voice questioned. “Wouldn’t you prefer to get retribution for your death, and for Erica’s?”

“Yeah, who wouldn’t?” I shot back then shrugged even though I didn’t seem to have a body to do that with. “What? Are you offering to send me back so I can take care of unfinished business?”

“Something like that, David.”

“Are you going to heal my very dead body and breathe life back into it?” I questioned and laughed. “Sure, that happens all the time. I’m no holy man to deserve resurrection and sure don’t want to be some lurching zombie. Or are you going to put me in some other body?”

“Agree to do what I ask and you’ll find out.” Voice said without a hint of humor or anger at my tirade.

“If it keeps me out of Hell, I’ll go with it.” I answered.

“You may wish to listen to my proposition before agreeing.”

“Fine, tell me what you want. Then I’ll agree.” I told who, or whatever was talking to me. “I’m not ready to be dead yet.”

“I require an agent… An avenger.” I was told. “One who will punish people who need it.”

“Can I get some of my own back while I’m doing that?”

“Of course, David.”

Thinking of Iggy Forester’s ugly grinning face as he watched me die I nodded. “Let’s do it then.”

“You freely give yourself to me?” Voice questioned. “Give this some thought, David. I am a harsh taskmaster.”

“Whatever you want.” I answered. “Just so long as I can go back and pay some people off.”

“So be it.”

Then things really went wonky.

I could feel my body again. Only it felt wrong. Really wrong.

I wasn’t complaining though, I was alive. At least I was breathing.

Slowly, not really believing what I’d just gone through, I opened my eyes.

To see the interior of a dingy, run down motel room that couldn’t even claim to be third rate.

It was the kind of place infamous for sticky sheets, and hourly rates. And there wasn’t even a television.

“What the Hell?” I asked nothing in particular then grabbed my throat. My voice sounded different, a lot different.

No adam’s apple on my neck, I noticed while my poor overworked brain started cataloguing other differences as I sat up.

Weight on my chest that shifted with every breath I took. Soft yielding weight. Something soft and heavy tickling my ears, neck shoulders and back. A definite feel of something missing between my legs.

My balance was off, too. When I stood up I felt like my center of gravity had shifted from the chest level sense I’d always known. Now that was all concentrated at my hips and let me tell you it felt really weird.

“Oh, no.” I whispered in that strange, musical voice I now had. “Oh, HELL NO!”

Perotesting didn’t work, trying not to believe this was real didn’t either.

I was a girl.

No ifs ands or buts about it. I was a genuine, card carrying female. I didn’t need to feel myself up anywhere to know that much. There was just this internal sense that flatly told me what was and what wasn’t.

And what I wasn’t was a guy.

Fade to black. Again.

Awake again, and staring into the cracked, foggy mirror the sorry excuse for a room I had found myself had to offer.

I did NOT like what I was seeing. Nope, not at all.

The girl staring into the wavy, cloudy glass of the mirror looked like a ghost. Pale, no make that chalk white skin gleamed in the light, and there was one hell of a lot of skin showing too.

She would have been sexy if she didn’t look so terrified.

Great figure. Nice full breasts that showed no sag at all, probably a C cup at least I figured, narrow waist that followed body curves designed to make a man drool all over himself into a pair of hips that made promises no good girl would make to a stranger, and legs that just went on and on.

Heart shaped face, nice cheekbones, pouty lips that glistened with a soft red health the rest of her complexion lacked, small nose with just that hint of an uptilt that guys liked so much, and large, almond shaped eyes. She would have been a real beauty except for one thing. Those eyes. They were red. Glowing red.

“And what’s with all this hair?” I asked, still in shock at what I was seeing in the mirror while lifting some of that off one slim shoulder. It was thick, soft, and a flame red so bright it almost glowed. And went down to the sweet butt that I still didn’t want to examine too closely.

“No way.” I shook my head and plopped that very nice, if ghostly derriere onto the bed so I could work at gathering thoughts that weren’t cooperating at all.

And went straight through the bed to plant myself on the floor.

“Ack!!!”

Not something cool or smart in the way of responses, but you try and see how together you are looking at your reflection with only the top half of your body poking out of a bed or any other piece of furniture.

I won’t repeat the things I said after that one. But I could almost have sworn that I did see the air around me tinge to blue for a bit.

“Dammit!” I made myself breathe while staring into the mirror again. The image it gave back just wouldn’t go away.

The girl in the mirror grabbed a tit — okay, since it seemed to be mine — breast and squeezed. Which pulled out a gasp and wince from me. Note to self on that one. Gently next time.

I’d already explored the familiar, but unfamiliar landscape between my legs. And still didn’t believe it.

Me, David Streeter, the hard, tough guy people counted on to do the bad stuff when things got nasty, was a hot goth chick with glowing red eyes. At least I didn’t have fangs, I’d checked that right off the bat. So I knew I wasn’t a vampire. Or hoped I wasn’t anyway.

“This can’t be happening.” I told myself for at least the hundredth time since I first woke up. But whatever passed for reality at the moment insisted that it not only was happening, it went on to make it very clear that I couldn’t make this nightmare go away.

“Finsished yet?” A horribly familiar voice intruded on my — umm — growing panic.

“What did you do to me?!!”

“Remade you, Diana.” Voice answered and I could have sworn I heard amusement in it. “I created my avenger on Earth.”

“Diana?” I stopped my rant before it got started, that startled me so much.

“Well, you have to admit that David just doesn’t fit you any longer, does it?”

Staring at the pasty skinned thing in the mirror I couldn’t argue with that one. Not even if I’d wanted to do it.

“Damn you.”

“Ahh, but my dear Diana, you accepted damnation without a qualm earlier, why curse me now when it is done?”

“Take me back.” I whispered. “Let me die and go to Hell.”

“Ahh, but there is the rub, as one of your bards said.” The voice answered. “You are in Hell, Diana. And you have work to do.”

I cried, really cried, like a baby, or — like a girl, once I heard that. And my tears were as blood red as my eyes. “But why as a girl?”

“There are still lessons to be learned, Diana.” Voice told me with something that nearly sounded like compassion. “Lessons that you wouldn’t have learned as a returned David Streeter. Hell is more than simple punishment, it is designed to point the wayward towards eventual redemption.”

Redemption. I didn’t even know what that meant just then.

I got over that after awhile. I’d never been one to fight things I couldn’t do anything about no matter how messed up they were.

At least I was dressed now. Sort of.

I had on a skimpy little bra, yes, bra, of shiny green material that held the still unfamiliar weights on my chest firmly enough even if it still showed off more female flesh than most hookers displayed. A matching bikini bottom covered territory I still wasn’t quite willing to admit I had. Then there were the boots. Knee length, pointy toes, and sporting a four inch heel. In a lady’s size five, by the way.

“I’m going to break my neck and kill myself with these things you know.” I groused while lifting first one boot encased foot then the other.

“You’re already dead.” Voice answered imperturbably. “You’ll get used to them soon enough.”

“And what’s with this cape?” I almost shouted while holding up the gleaming green silk garment. Self respecting ten dollar whores wouldn’t be caught dead in something like this!”

“It’s a cloak.” Voice replied. “With a hood and some special properties. Put it on, and you’re already…”

“Dead, I know, I know.” I grumbled while getting the thing over my shoulders and making sure my hair wasn’t caught in it then pulling the hood over my head. Which really made me look like a red eyed ghost. “Now what?”

“Now, Ms Spectre.” Voice told me. “As I said, you have work to do.”

“Yeah, yeah.” I sighed, knowing that cussing, screaming, or even —god forbid — crying wasn’t going to end this nightmare. “Point the way, and let’s get this show on the road.”

“That’s my girl.” Voice said with evident satisfaction. “But remember this. You’re just getting started, my dear Diana. You and I are going to going to be ‘seeing’ a lot of each other from now on. For a very long time.”

I didn’t like the sound of that at all. Not even a little.

At least I was out of that dingy, two-bit motel room. But I really wondered if where I was could be considered an improvement.

I was floating, not flying, not falling, not much of anything other than floating, above the city as a breeze caused my cloak to flap against my still unaccustomed anatomy. Which, I might add was almost as distracting as finding myself hundreds of feet above the tallest building in town.

At least I hadn’t screamed when I just appeared in that spot without any kind of transition from the motel room. Not that I wouldn’t have, but my breath all left in one huge gasp and that took a little time to get under control. By then it occurred to me that if I was going to fall I’d already be tasting pavement, so I did what I’d been doing since I died. Went with the flow and hoped nothing even weirder happened.

As the saying goes, dream on.

I was not only floating high in the air, I was drifting. Against the wind, I might add.

“There.” Voice managed to show me one building in particular without actually physically pointing. “That is your destination tonight. Go to the penthouse.”

I recognized the place as I somehow started moving towards it. Not that I really wanted to go near the place. It was where I had died.

“What am I supposed to do there?” I questioned.

“Whatever is required, my avenger.”

“That’s a lot of help.” I groused as the building grew closer, and I could have sworn that I actually heard faint gunshots coming from in there.

Then I was there. Just there. No sense of moving through walls, roof, or whatever. I was in the room and looking at my own dying body and Erica’s corpse. With Ignace Forester and his goons watching me, the old me die.

“What the...!” I started to ask only to be silenced by a feeling that it wasn’t up to me to question things at the moment. I was here to exact some punishment, not dawdle around trying to puzzle out time related conundrums.

I listened to Iggy tell the dying me the last thing I’d heard on earth. Again. This was seriously weird. Watching myself die from the perspective I had now was pretty unsettling as well, and filled me with something like righteous anger. But nothing about me was even close to righteous. Not now, not then, probably not ever.

My cloak flapped in a sudden wind and all of a sudden every living person in the room was gawking at me in open mouthed disbelief. Couldn’t much blame them, since I was having a hard time believing what was happening myself.

“Who the Hell, what the Hell, are you?” Iggy questioned as I moved to face him.

“Retribution.” I answered without thinking. And it was right, so right, to say that just then.

His two goons pulled their pieces and opened fire. It hurt, and I could see blood on my alabaster flesh, but it did nothing at all to even slow me down. The bullet holes in my chest and back shrank, then faded into pristine flesh as I watched in as much amazement as the goons and Iggy were showing.

"You can’t kill something that’s already dead.” I told them and took one of the goon’s pieces from him. Along with the hand that held it. I tossed the hand back to the guy almost negligently then just shot him in the face. And I killed the other one with even less emotion on my part.

“It’s time to pay for the things you’ve done, Ignace Forester.” I couldn’t believe how hollow my voice sounded, like it was echoing in a large, cold, dank tomb or something. Which did seem kind of appropriate just then. “You’ve harmed the last person you ever will in this life. I hope you enjoy Hell.”

And I shot him. Just like that. No extra theatrics, no sense of revenge fulfilled, no satisfaction other than knowing I’d done the thing I was meant to do.

“Goodbye, Iggy.” I whispered then gave the two bodies I actually cared anything at all about in that room a last look. “I love you, Erica. David, I’m going to miss you.”

I was done there.

The surroundings went smoky and vague then I found myself somewhere else.

 

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Author's Note:David is no more, and the person carrying his memories isn’t at all comfortable with the person he became.
 

Could life, or in my case — unlife — get any weirder? Just yesterday, at least I think it was yesterday, I’d been a tough, self assured guy named David Streeter who specialized in personal security for people who needed guarding. And I was good at the job.

But not, clearly, good enough when things really got down to it. I’d died, something that would completely ruin anyone’s day, believe me. Worse, my client, a woman I’d actually cared for, was killed, too. Me being dead was now a minor inconvenience. Erica being dead was something that broke my heart. Or broke what I had left of one.

Oh, the guys who had killed both of us were dead. I’d seen to that in a really weird time loop kind of thing that is the reason I wasn’t all that sure as to whether those things had happened yesterday or some other time. Nuts, I didn’t even know who, or what I was any more.

But I sure wasn’t David Streeter any longer.

“Diana.” The Voice, the reason I was still wandering around on Earth interrupted my thoughts. “You need to go home. The rent on this room will be up in less than an hour.”

“I don’t have a home to go to.” I pointed out. “David’s old place isn’t somewhere I’d even be allowed to look at much less walk into now.”

“The closet, Diana.” I was told.

Muttering about deals with the devil, or whatever the Voice really was I gingerly pulled open a battered door that had to be the closet. The bathroom, a really nasty one, by the way, didn’t even have a door. Figures.

On deals with the devil. I’d been dead. Really dead and floating — somewhere with no idea about where it was or why I was there when that now horribly familiar voice had offered me a chance to come back. A chance I’d foolishly grabbed.

Only there were a few catches. First, I was now a woman and no amount of arguing or even outright begging was going to change that thing’s mind regarding that. Second, I was that Voice’s physical presence on Earth. It’s avenger. Doomed, it seemed, to be hunting down people who needed a particular kind of punishment. As in dying. At my now delicate appearing hands.

I’d already killed since I’d come back. Three times, in fact. I should have felt something over that. Remorse, elation, something. But I didn’t feel anything other than a sense of one job done.

And I knew there would be others. Probably a lot of others given what the Voice had been telling me.

Now wasn’t that something to look forward to?

“You have got to be kidding me!” I gave the clothing I’d pulled out of the closet a distasteful looking over and shook my head. “I can’t wear that stuff out in public, more to the point, I won’t wear it.”

I was looking at a fine example of hooker haute couture. Short, tight baby blue leather looking skirt that I was sure wasn’t even close to the real thing. A lacy black garter belt with smokey, seamed stockings, an off white, silky looking shell — a sleeveless top, that wouldn’t reach my navel and was cut deeply enough at the neckline to make whoever was wearing it appear next to naked up top. Finish that off with a pair of cheap strappy sandals sporting four inch stiletto heels — in an offwhite that matched the shell, and a tiny purse with a thin shoulder strap.

Then there was the obviously cheap, brassy jewelry.

“This stuff is a disguise, right?” I asked hopefully.

“No, Diana, these are your clothes, now stop arguing and put them on. Your costume would attract attention I’m sure you wouldn’t desire at the moment.”

“Like this — stuff won’t?” I questioned incredulously.

“It will blend nicely with this neighborhood. Your neighborhood, Diana.”

“You’ve made me into a cheap whore.” I accused with anger starting to boil to the surface. “You made me into a FRIGGING WHORE!”

“Only if you choose to be so.” Voice told me. “In this guise you will be able to mingle with the kind of people you need to know to enable you to serve your purpose for me. When there is need, you will have other identities.”

“I’m a damned whore!” I muttered while struggling into the cheap and cheap looking outfit.

“Hell takes many forms, Diana Spectre.”

I didn’t bother to say anything back. It would have been useless, and besides, I had to concentrate on getting those idiot seams on my stockings straight. Not to mention figuring out those stupid garters.

“I look like Lady Death in cheap schlock.” I complained as I checked out my appearance in the not so good mirror. If I pulled the top down to where it was even close to my navel, my breasts tried to fall out of it. My stocking tops showed because the itty bitty skirt, tight enough to leave almost nothing to the imagination in someone without one, was so short it didn’t even try covering them. The big, cheap and brassy looking hoops hanging from my ears were the most annoying part of the whole thing. They swung, banged against my neck when I did things like just breathe, and were generally just something I would much rather have done without. The gold toned choker of big beads, and the clunky bracelets were just icing on that horrible cake.

Oh, yeah, I was still dead, fish belly white on top of all that. And still had those glowing red eyes. “This isn’t going to work.”

“Think of looking human.” Came the advice I’d been expecting.

With a sigh I did. And it was no surprise when it worked. I was still pale, but redhead pale instead of dead pale. And my eyes were a brilliant green instead of red. And I looked young. Too young for a girl to be out on her own in the world, especially in the kind of neighborhood this one was.

The drivers license in the frayed wallet I’d found in the little vinyl purse told me I was Deena Elaine Dawson, age 19, 5 feet three inches tall, and that I weighed in at a whopping 110 pounds. I noted what those initials spelled and wondered for a minute or so about that. Nah, the Voice had NO sense of humor that I’d seen a trace of yet. The alias had to be, just had to be, a coincidence.

There was assorted makeup, a hairbrush, and about a hundred dollars and change in there too. And that was all. Must have been a good night, for little Deena. With a shrug that still did things to the feelings I received from this body that I didn’t much care for, I used the hairbrush on the still flame red mane I now had and gave myself a careful looking over.

Pretty, no check that one. The girl I had become was gorgeous even in the cheap clothes and jewelry and overly done makeup. Oh yeah, makeup. It hadn’t obligingly appeared when I decided to look human. Oh no that would have been waaay to easy. I had to put the stuff on myself. But the body seemed to know how to do it and after I’d almost lost an eye to a mascara brush I let it go on auto-pilot to finish.

Putting on the vinyl bolero jacket matching the skirt and slinging the little purse over one shoulder so the strap angled crossways from one hip to the opposite shoulder, I gave my pretty butt a little shake to make sure everything was settled just right and sashayed out the door as if I’d been shaking and shimmying like that all my life. I only got propositioned four times on my way ‘home’. That was a relief but somehow disappointing all at the same time.

Deena’s, okay my, apartment was better than the motel room had been. Marginally.

Okay, to be fair it was actually a decent little studio type place with carefully chosen furniture showing signs of loving care even if it had obviously come from second hand dealers and thrift shops. The walls had been painted in soothing pastels mixed with neutral tones, mostly light blues, greens, and a light tan, while strategically placed pictures and posters covered the cracks in the plaster that couldn’t be hidden with the paint.

Giving the cheap reproductions of pastoral scenes, and posters of boy bands and male actors a roll of my eyes, I noted a rack of music CD’s beside a fairly impressive boom box, a small but reasonably new television with a DVD player beside it, and then got out of my hooker gear.

There were books on a couple of sagging plastic shelving units, mostly paperbacks and not sappy romances to my surprise. Oh there were a few fantasy novels I thought might qualify for sappy, but most of the books were on subjects ranging from basic budgeting, economics and business and on into marketing. The girl, me, obviously had interests that precluded being a hooker for the rest of her life, much to my relief.

“Yes, Deena had many good things going for her.” The Voice had returned as I was staring at textbooks set on a small scratched desk. “And was working to get out of the life she had been in.”

“Secretarial School?” I questioned while giving the books a looking over.

“Business school.” Came the counter. “One has to start somewhere, after all, to improve do you not agree?”

“Well, I did complain about being a cheap whore.” I sighed.

“Diana,” Voice chided, “the girl you are now was never cheap, simply disadvantaged and quite determined to do better for herself.”

“So this Deena used to be alive, and real before I came along?”

“Yes, Diana, she was. Killed by a mugger the night your old self died. I simply fixed things enough that her body didn’t die so you could occupy it.”

All of sudden I felt bad about all the complaining I’d been doing regarding my new status and surroundings. I had a fleeting thought that not only had I stepped, even if unwillingly, into someone else’s interrupted life, but that the fact gave the girl I now was some kind of chance to be better. Maybe better than I’d ever managed myself. It was kind of like getting a second chance for both of us in a backhanded way.

Looking at the cheery little apartment with eyes that now saw it a different way, I promised myself, and the original Deena, that I’d do my best for both of us.

“You begin to learn already, Diana.” Voice told me with something I was sure was satisfaction in its tones.

Stepping into someone else’s life wasn’t easy even with the remaining memory cues the girl body I now had to help. At least I got about a week to ‘settle in’ before much else happened.

The news had been full of things regarding a multiple homicide that had occurred in an uptown penthouse, but the consensus — even from the police — was that Ignace Forester had finally run up against an enemy that had gotten back for what the slime had done to someone. They were right, just not in the way they thought. Quite.

But still new sensation, metahumans as they were called still remained on the top of the news even after the length of time the first one, Jade, had appeared. I’d kept track of the known ones and briefly wondered what most of them would think of me in my other guise. And decided that would be something best left until I had no choice. I didn’t think Jade and company would be all that pleased with my vigilante actions considering the results I was sure they had already shown and would keep producing. The good guys generally took a really dim view of someone leaving a pile of dead bodies behind them, even if those bodies had been bad guys. But the bad ones like Superia were just the kind that my alter ego was set to get rid of.

That Cat Woman — maybe, but I wasn’t anxious to find out in any case.

I was in a used book store perusing Science Fiction and Fantasy novels, along with other business related subjects when the call came.

“You are needed, Ms. Spectre.”

“Oh, great.” I sighed, running my hands over the snug jeans and plain cotton top I was wearing. “And me with my costume at the cleaners right now.”

It wasn’t really at the cleaners, but stashed in my apartment, a good twenty minutes away by bus, which was all I could afford for transportation other than walking. I put my selections back on the shelves and walked out of the store, looking for somewhere I could do the change without half the city seeing it.

I had found that I could ‘call’ the skimpy outfit I called my costume to me at need through experimentation, trial and error and sheer cussedness. I’d be damned if was going to physically change clothes every time my alter ego showed up.

“Haste is required, Diana.”

“Yeah, yeah.” I answered irritably. It was that time of the month for me, and memories that came with this body notwithstanding, it was my first. So I was a bit grouchy. “You want the whole town to know I’m two people? Give me a sec here.”

A convenient alley offered the best chance and I inanely wondered if I’d have been using phone booths if any of those were still in use, as I entered it.

“Well hello babe.” A smooth, if bit growly voice interrupted me once I’d reached the midpoint of the alley between streets and was preparing to change. Mental note number fifty-six here. Check dark, dingy alleys before entering in future.

There were two of them. Some kind of gang related thugs who thought they were tough, and willing to prove that to anyone stupid enough to argue. I shook my head and gave them an annoyed look. “What are a couple of stupid white boys like you doing in this neighborhood?”

“Seen you strutting that fine ass at night, baby.” The one who had spoken added. “I want some of it.”

His companion, nodded with a yellow, toothy grin.

“If you’ve seen me, and haven’t asked.” I glared at them. “You can’t afford me. Go away. I’m not in the mood for this right now.”

“Who needs to pay, sweet cheeks?” The second one grinned wider and showed me a knife.

That was it, not the knife, not the wanting to rape me on the spot. Nooo, what really pissed me off was being called sweet cheeks. “I so don’t have time for this right now, guys, and you really don’t want to try this. Trust me.”

Pretty little Deena knew martial arts. Go figure.

The fact that I was a lot stronger than I looked probably helped out, too.

Let’s just say that those two idiots wouldn’t be in any shape to threaten another girl for awhile and leave things at that, okay? I SAID I was grouchy, didn’t I?

I was floating in midair. Again. At least I’d been practicing so wasn’t scared out of my wits by then. I'd had several runs with middling bad guys, in the shadows and without witnesses during the past week so had the mechanics regarding some things I could do figured out.

What I was looking at was a hostage situation, a nasty one. Police vehicles, swat teams, one bank full of employees and customers, six masked men carrying shotguns and stubby little submachine guns. It looked like someone was going to end up dead over this one for sure without a little intervention. Some innocents had already been shot or beaten and I felt a halfway familiar purpose begin to surface from deep within me.

“Kind of public isn’t it?” I questioned while checking the newest addition to my costume. A belt slung low on my hips to carry the holstered Taurus nine millimeter I’d taken from Iggy’s goon that first night. Okay, I was fast, really tough, could go insubstantial if I had to. But getting shot, or beaten on in a close up physical fight hurts. Even if I did heal almost as fast as I got injured.

Besides, old habits die hard and I felt naked going into trouble without a firearm even though I suspected that I really didn’t need one. As for the naked comment — don’t even think about going there. I just had to figure out a better costume for myself. Later.

“No matter.” Voice told me. “Those six are going to kill everyone in that bank lobby without direct intervention stopping it. The police won’t be able to stop it happening when they do move. Plus it is time the world knows that my avenger is among them.”

“Right.” Sighing, I did another thing I hadn’t realized I could that first night. Willed myself inside the place.

Only to discover that I couldn’t even annoy the bad guys in my insubstantial, invisible form.

“So much for that idea.” I grumbled after a flat of the hand strike passed through one of the robbers’ head without so much as a flinch out of the guy. “This is going to get messy.”

With a flap of sound that was almost like a thunderclap in that echoing lobby from my cloak, I went substantial. One of these days I had to work out a way to do that without the cheesy announcement.

Oh, I broke the one guy’s neck before he even had time to turn. Then had my pistol out and had dropped two more in the time it took him to fall enough to give me a clear shot.

As those bodies were still deciding to hit the floor I transferred my attention to one of the bad guys holding a terrified teller with a gun to her head. I was on him before I’d even finished the thought and another one was down for the good. The poor girl he’d been threatening backed away wearing a look of sheer terror on her pretty face. It dawned on me that I was the one she was afraid of just then and that hurt more than the bullets that slammed into my back at that moment.

I turned, staggering a little under the hail of fire from the two remaining bad guys, but didn’t lose either my footing or my purpose. “You can’t kill the dead, fools.”

And finished the thing with two precise shots. Just like that.

People were still screaming, and giving me a lot of space. It saddened me that they were as frightened of me as they had been of the robbers. I shook my head and replaced the pistol in its holster. “The innocent have no reason to fear me.”

“But let all others know that Retribution is HERE!” I finished, and yes, I’d actually capitalized that one word, much to my internal embarrassment. Then pulled my vanishing trick just before the cops stormed the place.

“Yes, in the alley between Twentieth and Twenty-first off Logan Avenue.” I repeated to the 911 operator. “Two of them, pretty beat up.”

After shutting off my phone I returned to the bookstore to finish my shopping. Ambulance and police sirens were getting close as I entered the store. Hey, I wasn’t completely heartless.

“Holy shit!” Someone loudly said and I glanced up at the live news coverage of what was going on at the bank I’d helped out a few minutes earlier. I caught just a glimpse of the security cameras’ views of my alter ego and shuddered.

Whoa! I was one really scary looking bitch with those ember like red eyes and face shadowed by the hood of my cloak. Pretty hot looking, too. Yeah, I really had to change that costume.

 

---

 
Author's Note:Diana Spectre was beginning to settle into her new existence, both in the new life she lived as Deena, and as her now hunted alter ego known as Spectre.

It isn't a comfortable existence, and Diana is about to discover that it is far less comfortable than she'd once feared.
 

I came out of the bathroom, still as nasty as it had been the first time I’d landed in this room, but had cleaned myslef up by dint of effort, the soap, washcloths and towels I now habitually brought with me, and carefully NOT touching the Toilet or sink with bare skin. Using the rusty shower was entirely out as far as I was concerned.

“This isn’t a charity, sweety.” I looked over at the kid still spread across the poor excuse for a bed while stepping into my panties. “We have to be out of here in fifteen minutes. Leo adds to the charges by the minute if I go over the usual hour.”

“How come you do this kind of thing for a living?” The boy, hardly older than I appeared to be now questioned naively. “I mean you’re so pretty, you could do something else to make money, couldn’t you?”

“None of your business, kid.” I answered then relented a little. “Girl’s got to eat, and pay the rent and utilities, you know. I do lots better at this money-wise than I would wiggling my sweet ass for tips in some restaurant, anyway.”

“Sorry.” He actually lowered his eyes and blushed. How cute. But it still didn’t change the realities I had to deal with on a day to day — or in this case, night to night basis just to make ends meet. And the night was young, with pleasant weather, and most of the guys out looking for some had just been paid.

“Be sorry all you want later.” I grimaced at him while getting back into my bra. “But right now get your butt off that mattress and get dressed. Playtime’s over, honey.”

The boy nodded and started getting dressed while still watching me do the same thing. Once I had myself put back together, I waited for him to finish, gave his cheek a little pat and invited. “Come back any time. Just ask for Deena, everyone around here knows me.”

Repeat business never hurts, after all. I didn’t even glance back as I strutted away from the seedy, sagging, so-called motel in search of more income for the evening. Rent was due at the end of the week, and I’d just paid my tuition for school so needed the money.

A month or so ago I’d have gone ballistic, literally, if anyone had dared suggest I earn a living with what I’d just done. But four failed interviews for lousy waitressing jobs convinced me that the job market in good old River City was down the toilet for sure. And I did need to eat, had the experience — by proxy at first — but it was there, to make at least some decent money doing something the body I now had enjoyed. So I ended up doing what I could. Don't like it? Me neither, really, but like I said. A girl has to eat.

Then again, a month or so ago I hadn’t been a sexy, nicely put together, sassy little redhead with bright green eyes. I hadn’t even been female.

Life can sure go to crap when you die.

I should know. Because it happened to me and I made the mistake of accepting someone’s, or something’s, offer at a chance to return to the land of the living without checking out the fine print of the agreement. Silly me.

So, instead of being returned to my own, admittedly bullet riddled body, I ended up in some 19 year old hottie of a redhead who was killed about the same time I was and who just happened to make a decent living at one of the world’s oldest professions. To say I was pissed off over that would be kind of an understatement. But that wasn’t the worst of it. Oh, no, not even close.

I had an alter ego that could float in the air, move to different places and right through walls just by willing it so, and who — just incidentally, mind you — had every cop and half the supers in town looking for me. Nuts, being a pretty little prostitute was the easy part of the deal.

I got visions, imaginary of course, of that being who’d recruited me laughing its metaphysical ass off over the whole thing.

When it didn’t have me killing people, that is.

Oh, they weren’t good people and every one of my victims had deserved to die, richly deserved it I thought. It’s just that I wasn’t given a choice. The Voice called, and I had to answer. That was the deal we’d made.

Life is shit then you die, the saying goes. Well I got news for you on that one. Life after death isn’t all that rosy either. At least mine isn’t.

“Hey Deena!” A too familiar, but happily human voice interrupted my stroll down to the corner of memory, regret, and failed expectations and I looked up, then up some more then up a little on top of that. Man, being five foot three is a bitch at times, to see Ritchie Morrow looking down at me with his usual enticing grin from the now daunting altitude of six feet six inches. I didn’t even bother to wonder any longer why guys looked enticing, or — heaven help me — sexy, it just kind of went with the territory.

“Heya, Ritchie.” I responded without much enthusiasm. “Time is money here, you know, and I have way too little of both right now.”

Ritchie was one of the local pimps. Not one of the worst, by a long shot, and he was generally a good guy who took care of his girls, didn’t get them strung out on dope or let them get that way, and allowed them to quit when they wanted. Kind of weird for one of those types, but it worked. His stable was never close to empty and his girls all loved him one way or another. The only problem I had with him was that he was always trying to talk me into joining his business.

“This’ll only take a minute.” He promised and I could see something in his brown eyes that didn’t settle all that well. Worry. Ritchie seldom allowed himself to worry about things, if something bothered him, he took care of it, problem or otherwise. “Just wondered if you’d seen Lainie or Sue tonight is all.”

“Nope.” I shook my head and shrugged. “Maybe they got some uptown work tonight?”

“Not without letting me know about it, they wouldn’t have.” The big man really did look worried. Lainie was a cute Latina with a bod to give a Marilyn Monroe wannabe jealous fits, and Sue was a slender, elegant looking blonde with a tongue sharper than a razor if you got her started. “I haven’t seen either one of them since yesterday, either.”

“I can keep a lookout for them.” I told him, seeing where his concern was coming from and it wasn’t the loss of his cut from their work. “And I’ll ask around, see if I can find anything out, too.”

That was me for sure. At least it was now. Sweet, friendly, approachable little Deena Elaine Dawson who had done so many favors for people that she had lots of friends in the neighborhood. Lots of friends. Not that I had a heart of gold or anything so altruistic and neither had the original Deena. But enlightened self interest can often be taken that way. Especially when the girl using it was drop dead gorgeous like I was.

“Thanks, Dee.” He turned to get on with his own business but turned to give me another of those worried looks. “You be careful out here tonight. Lainie and Sue aren’t the only girls gone missing lately.”

That was true enough. But the others that had disappeared were the kind you’d expect that from for one reason or another. Ritchie’s two girls weren’t. They were working their way through school just like I was and so what if our choice of employment wasn’t your usual part time job? And like I’d mentioned before, they adored the guy.

“You know me, Ritchie.” I gave him a grin. “I’m always the careful one.”

“Yeah, right.” He snorted. “Like you were careful when you busted Little Charlie’s nose.”

I’d done more than break the guy’s nose. Little Charlie wasn’t little at all. At least not physically he wasn’t. The guy was a pimp, too, and one of the bad ones who roughed up his girls without the slightest provocation and had tried to strong arm me into his stable one night about three weeks ago. I’d given him the flat of my hand to his nose then broken the hand he had around my arm. Then made sure to kick him hard enough to make sure his privates wouldn’t be interested in anything but getting the pain to stop for awhile. I know martial arts, Tai Kwan Do to be exact, and am a bunch stronger than I look.

Which had made things a little dicey around the old neighborhood for a bit. Little Charlie isn’t exactly the forgiving kind if you know what I mean. So some of my ‘friends’ paid the guy a visit and more or less sort of gently ‘explained’ what would happen to him if anything happened to me. Huh! Sometimes the power I had over things and people with this tiny, weak looking body was intoxicating. Other times it was just scary.

Speaking of scary… “Diana Spectre, I need you.”

Closing my eyes I shook my head in useless denial. When The Voice called, I had to go. Whether I wanted to or not. I just answered, “Five minutes, okay? I’m working.”

Three minutes and twenty seconds later I was in a very dark secluded spot and called my alter ego and costume to me. You know, the one that was now on wanted posters in every post office and cop shop in town?

Well, I was taller, even without the heels. Even with dead white skin, and the red eyes that really did glow, I was still sexy — some things just don’t change - there is no such thing as justice in the world — in a freaky, gothy way. Okay, so the skimpy green silk bikini and knee boots on those four inch stiletto heels helped that along some. I sooo had to get this idiot costume changed into something a little more — umm, modest. One of these days.

The hooded cloak was still a pain, but at least it covered some of the huge amount of skin the rest of the outfit so gleefully showed off. I checked to make sure my nine millimeter Taurus was safely in its holster at the belt slung low on my generous hips and nodded. Then took a brief look at myself in a dirty window close by. The dark didn’t keep me from seeing at all, which was kind of a kick, but also a way to let me see the form my own personal Hell had taken.

I was The Spectre. At least what the newsies were calling me these days. Hunted, hated, feared, and still so gorgeous it hurt. Not to mention that I was a known violent criminal type of vigilante. It didn’t matter that my violence was committed on people who were trying to do the same thing to innocent people, and had done it before. Oh, no. That didn't matter, or help my public image at all. Sure, I got the bad guys and the ones I got stayed that way. As in the way being very dead had of making sure of things like that. Which had the cops and do gooders in an uproar.

I looked at this way, though. If a bad guy was dead, he wouldn’t be getting out of jail to do bad things again.

Hey, I never claimed to be a nice person, did I?

I was doing my usual floating over the city thing and kind of doing what I could to watch over what I was fast starting to consider as my neighborhood when I was interrupted again.

“There.” The Voice pointed towards the warehouse district with an invisible finger. “Go there, Diana.”

“There.” I answered, and was. Hovering above some of the more run down storage buildings in the city and maybe on the planet. As for that invisible finger pointing thing? Don’t ask. I don’t know how I can ‘see’ an unseeable being using an invisible finger while invisibly pointing at some place it wanted me to go. Just trying to figure that one out gives me a headache.

“Now what?” I searched for the distinctive ‘taste’ of my preferred victims, but suddenly found myself even more disoriented than I had been when I first woke up to find myself as I was just then.

I was suddenly in a much different place. With people in odd costumes wandering through stalls filled with other things just as weird until it dawned on me that I was at some kind of convention dedicated to comics.

“What the…”

“Remain quiet and watch, Diana Spectre.” The Voice commanded and I of, course, obeyed. Even if it was with a little — okay maybe a bunch of — mental bitching over it. “It is not yet time for you to intervene.”

It was about then I noticed the people in the area were running away and screaming in real terror. And it wasn’t from me for a change. That at least was refreshing.

Until I saw what everyone was running from. And it was me. Kind of.

Only the figure was male and not wearing the skimpy bikini top I did and he had on real shorts instead of the brief little bottoms yours truly was currently stuck with. And he was HUGE.

Not to mention in a mindless rage of need for something I could vaguely sense to be — vengeance? Is that how I was when I went on a tear?

“NO, you are not like that, Diana Spectre.” The Voice assured me. “Be ready it is nearly time.”

All that rage, all that need, was directed towards an inoffensive looking blond guy seated at a table and frozen in place with fear. I could feel the man’s guilt over something, even the gist of what it was over, but was confused by one thing. The male Spectre form was wrong. This guy wasn’t deserving of the kind of payment I gave out.

“Not yet.” The Voice stopped me from moving between the two just as a green clad streak did just that. At first I thought it was that superhero Jade, but then realized it was the Jade Clone who was being called Green Lantern Zwei by most people. The power within her wasn’t something I was prepared for at all. It swelled till she was filled and then kept growing around her like a living, breathing thing that just happened to be part of her. Worse, that power recognized me, and I recognized something in it.

“Star Heart.” The Voice calmly informed me. “It won’t harm you or try doing so. Not this time.”

“Oh, now that’s comforting.” I shot back with a grimace. Whatever this Star Heart was, it was powerful. Really powerful.

The girl shouted something I didn’t catch, and a green ‘something’ emerged from her extended hand to slam the other Spectre back and forced it to go insubstantial. But it was still there, and gathering strength for another try at the man still seated at the table.

“Now.”

I moved, and discovered that the male version of me could see me. Well all the better. I gave it a long look and felt… Pity. Is that how others look at me when they can see what I really am, I wondered for a moment?

“That one is not for you.” I told him and quite firmly remained between the two no matter what the male me, the empty me attempted. “He has committed no crime. The guilt he knows is not from willfully causing another person harm.”

“Mine.” It insisted.

“No.” I answered gently. “No he isn’t. Go.”

Well, it wasn’t - quite that easy. When is it ever for me?

The creature I had finally understood wasn’t me at all, flailed, struck out with hands, fists, and blasts of energy that filled the nothing space we were in. But I held my ground, and kept it from reaching its intended target. Finally, exhausted, it just blinked out of existence. Not gone somewhere else, just plain gone.

“That was — intense.” I breathed once it was finished.

Then moved to take a look at the blond guy this had all been about. To discover that he could see me. No one else seemed able to do that, thankfully, and there were some people buzzing with a power I instinctively recognized as magic trying to do just that. I guess the fight with the male not-me had stirred up more than I’d thought.

But the man’s blue eyes widened and he was staring.

So what did I do?

Kissed him. Yeah, just leaned forward and kissed him. Then gave him a grin and a wink while holding a finger to my lips in a shushing gesture. “Whatever your guilt is, Kyle, her death wasn’t your fault. You don't deserve to become one of my prey. Life is good, go enjoy it again.”

Kyle. Now how did I know his name? Didn’t matter. The magic types were starting to get a bead on me and I gave him one more grin and did my vanishing act.

“What the Hell was that?!!” I demanded when I found myself again hovering above those warehouses back in friendly River City.

“That was a version of the spirit you accepted when you took my offer.” Voice informed me. “But it was flawed. Without a host it was nothing but undirected need and all encompassing vengeance without thought or direction, save for slaking its need. It would have caused untold destruction and needless death had you not intervened.”

“Why him though?” I questioned. “Why Kyle?”

“He was the intended host.” Voice answered. “But the spirit was blind with its own need and not possessed of the wit to understand. Seeing only the guilt the man felt and taking that wrongly as a target for its purpose. It would have killed the man then gone on to do as I just told you. And no magic on this world could have stopped it had you not done so.”

“Right.” I let out a heavy shuddering sigh, suddenly feeling very tired and underwhelmed. “So I saved the world this time around, right? Good for me.”

“I took you there as an object lesson, Diana Spectre. I could have stopped the spirit without you, but you needed to see for yourself what an unbridled need for vengeance is capable of when it is used without thought and compassion for innocents nearby.”

I was starting to get a really bad feeling about where this conversation was heading. “And you showed me that, are telling me this… why?”

“In days to come you will feel that very rage, the need to commit undirected vengeance against something anything in your path.” Voice answered softly. “You must not give in to that, no matter how you might wish to do so.”

“Why are you telling me this now?”

“Because I have no wish to see you become the monster part of your being fears you already have.”

That was more than I was prepared to listen to. Even from The Voice.

“Okay, I got that.” Glowering at the general area, I found that I was shaking. “Is that all you want for now?”

“Yes, Diana.”

“Good. I’m tired so I’m going home now.”

 

---

 
Author's Note:Diana Spectre, was making discoveries about herself that were more than a bit contradictory and confusing. Those caused her to question her very existence, but once again duty calls to interrupt that.

And she finds an enemy she can't simply kill.

The kid was actually on his knees with his hands folded like he was praying. But those prayers were to me, and I was a most unforgiving deity. I was Fury incarnate, Vengeance personified, Retribution in your face. Forgiveness wasn’t one of my strong suits.

But I didn’t kill him.

“Please!” He was begging and it was pathetic, but real. “I didn’t know they were going to do this. I didn’t KNOW!”

He was telling the truth, too.

The three thugs he’d come into the store with were dead, their brains and guts decorating the inside of the little mom and pop store they’d come in to rob. And to prove a point.

If the kid had come in intending to help kill the old couple who owned and ran the store he would have been dead with the others. I knew that, but he was still guilty. And I had my own rules about that. No probation, no second chances. You killed an innocent, planned to do that, or even participated in something resulting in same, you paid for it with your own life. Pass Go? Fuck that. Go to jail? What did I just say? This ain’t monopoly people. You screw up on my watch, you die. Simple as that.

“I needed the money.” He pleaded. “They didn’t say anything about the rough stuff. I tried to stop them!”

He had. And was showing the bruises and blood to back that up. His cohorts hadn’t been sympathetic when he stopped what they’d planned as an example for others who refused to pay the ‘insurance’ fees their gang imposed on local merchants. The old couple was alive because of that, too.

But still, he had been in on the plan, and I had my own drives, some of which I had very little control over.

But I knew this kid.

Not just as some street tough headed for a bad end.

He was my alter ego’s neighbor. A good kid, overall, who was always helpful and considerate of others, even the cheap little whore who lived next door to the apartment he shared with his mother and little sisters.

“Mama’s sick and can’t work.” He went on, not begging, just telling me. I could tell the difference. “They’re going to kick us out of the apartment. We needed the money to pay the rent, and the doctors for Mama.”

For the first time since I’d come back from the dead I did something human. I considered being merciful.

Shaking my head I strode up to him and grabbed his chin in a bone white hand to pull his eyes up so they would look directly into my own blood red and glowing orbs. “Danny Estevez, that’s no excuse for what you were helping to happen.”

“No, no it isn’t.” He answered with a tremor in his voice. “If I have to die for the mistake, then I’ll die. Just do something for Mama and the girls when I’m gone. Please.”

“Go home, Danny.” I gave his face a light slap and turned away from him. “Just go home and remember this. Next time I won’t be so — gentle. If you get involved in something like this again, your life, and your soul are mine.”

“Si, si, si! Gracias mi diosa.”

“I’m no damned god.” I answered roughly. “Just go home and remember what I said here. If there’s another time, you’ll die.”

“You aren’t the bad thing Las Autoridades say you are.” He softly told me and I tried to ignore him, still keeping my back to him.

“No, not this time.” I whispered then gave my voice the sepulchral force it could project when I was this thing, this Specter, this terrible and unforgiving avenger. “Now get out of here before I change my mind.”

He left and I waited a few moments before I left the scene to make sure the Chu’s were going to survive their injuries long enough for emergency services to reach and save them. But his last words were still almost reverent. “I will make you proud mi Diosa. I promise you.”

Once he was gone I shook myself then left, wiping the wetness from my cheeks and refusing to admit they were tears. But for the first time in my new existence, I’d exercised something I’d started to think I was incapable of. Mercy.

I looked at the envelope in my hand then at the door I’d quietly walked to from my own little apartment. The nameplate under the apartment number said Estevez and I thought about what I was doing for about the fiftieth time in the last hour.

Mama Estevez, Julia, had never judged anyone, just shared her love, her generosity, and herself with anyone needing it. Even with a little two bit whore who happened to live next door. And now she was sick and needed help that no one was offering.

“Get it over with, Deena.” I told myself and shoved the envelope under the door. “Easy come, easy go and I can earn it back in a couple of good nights. She never needs to know where it came from.”

I returned to my own little apartment and didn’t once worry about the money I’d left under my neighbor’s door. It would pay a couple of months rent for them, buy a few groceries, and there was a typed note with the address of a clinic not far away that would get the medicine Julia needed to get better for free.

Yup, little Deena strikes again. I still swear that I am NOT the whore with a heart of gold, I’m too cynical for that, but I still ended up giving my neighbors my rent money for the next three months because they needed it and I had it.

Dammit. Life had gotten so damned confusing since I’d died.

I was floating above things again, thinking and just — well being — without much of anything definite in mind for the moment other than working to figure myself out. Which was not something I really wanted to look at all that closely as of yet.

“You are troubled, Diana Spectre.” The voice interrupted my non-thoughts.

“Yeah, you could say that.” I answered almost absently while looking over the area of the city I now called home. “I don’t know who, or what I am any longer, and I’m not just talking about the turning into a girl thing or being your presence on Earth for vengeance.”

“As I told you earlier, and have shown you,” the voice answered. “Vengeance without compassion is simple murder. Compassion without strength is powerless. Strength with no direction is nothing more than useless pride. But without pride in what you do, nothing else has meaning. You have done good things since I claimed you Diana Spectre. Be proud of those and accept the bad things as part of who and what you are. Until you do that, there will be no peace for you.”

“Peace?” I gave a halfway bitter laugh. “And when I attain this ‘nirvana’ you’re talking about, this peace, will I be finished? Will I move on to wherever I was headed when you conned me into taking your offer?”

“No, Diana Spectre, you are what you are and will remain so.” Voice answered gently. “Yet once you find that quality you will be more than that. Much more.”

“And just what, exactly, will that be?”

“What you were intended to be all along, my child. Balance.”

I didn’t know what that was supposed to mean, but didn’t argue the point just then. I didn’t have the heart or mental energy for it.

Introspection aside, there were other things I still needed to do, so I shook off as much of that mood as I could and got started.

More girls had gone missing since I’d had that short conversation with Ritchie and nothing had turned up yet on his two missing girls Lainie and Sue. In my Deena form I’d been asking around but either no one knew a thing or the ones who did weren’t talking. As Diana I searched through the city for any trace of the missing girls and had come up with a big blank with that so far.

“This is frustrating.” I muttered while looking into a dank, dark riverside warehouse just to see if there was the slightest hint of anything regarding that or just something that would give me something to do when my own senses told me I was needed.

That kind of thing had been happening more often than not recently, and The Voice didn’t have to call me if I was already in my Spectre form anyway, I just felt the need and followed it when the compulsion hit.

“Uh oh, this is sooo not good.” I whispered once I’d appeared where the trouble was. I definitely felt the tingly, invasive sense of what I now recognized to be magic, and it was flooding the street I found myself in as if some metaphysical dam had broken.

It was all coming from a darkly clad figure in the center of the street. I could see downed police, civilians and more importantly, a terrified young woman in the creature’s grasp.

“Ahhh, at last.” The bad guy, and yes it was a male even though his face was shrouded and his form was hidden in swirling shadows that I had difficulty seeing through, looked right at me. “The so terrible and fearsome Spectre. I have been waiting for you.”

“So here I am.” I answered with more calm than I felt. “You could have, you know, just given me a call.”

“That is what this is, my dear.” He answered with a shrug. “I am The Necromancer, so you and I have things in common, I use the dead, you are one of the dead. Bow to me.”

“You’re kidding, right?” I questioned as some force worked its way into my mind and tried to force me into doing what the nutcase had commanded. I slapped it away and was gratified to see the guy flinch.

“You dare REFUSE me?!!” He roared. Okay the guy was more than a simple nutcase, but I was still working out ways to stop him from doing any more harm to the innocents who were still caught in the street. “I COMMAND YOU, UNDEAD SPIRIT!”

Something pulled at my soul, or what was left of it, and slammed me into the pavement. “Ooof! Now that’s a first. But dream on tall dark and ugly. I’m not yours to order around.”

I regained my feet and had my weapon out instinctively snapping off several rapid shots at him. Which did nothing at all. To him at least. The girl at his feet writhed as in agony with each shot I’d fired.

“You can’t harm me, spirit.” He gloated while gesturing to the poor girl, who was now screaming. “The pain you try giving me goes to this one.”

That stopped me for a second while I worked out a few things. I could see a nebulous something that extended from the goon to his hostage and see the dark, pestilential pulsing as it both took things from her and sent other things in return. Neither of which was good at all. This guy was seriously bent and bad news all around. “Let her go.”

“This girl is nothing.” He sneered and reached down to pull something that twisted and screamed in his hand and negligently tossed it away. “She is no better than the others I have taken, fed on, and used. You, though, I have a use for. Come to me or I will take more, and more, until you do. I will empty this city of life if it takes that. But you WILL come to me willingly, undead creature.”

I moved then, to end up face to face with him and smelled rot, decay like nothing I’d ever experienced before, and a sense of his own lack of anything resembling a soul. And reached a hand out to rip that penumbra surrounding him apart.

To find myself on my back twenty feet away feeling as if I’d stuck my hand into the biggest light socket on Earth. But he was staggered too, and snarled. “This is far from over, Spectre. You and I will see one another again.”

Then he vanished in a swirl of darkness that I could neither stop or follow.

I could only scream my anguish, my rage at what he’d done. But I did manage to get that under control and checked my surroundings. The girl was dead, and looked as if she had been for some time even though I knew that wasn’t the case. Worse, what was left of her body showed a pair of bullet wounds that I knew I’d caused.

I’d killed her. One of the innocents I was supposed to defend and it was my doing that caused her death. It was almost more than I could take.

Others were starting to get up, all moving away from the horrid tableau I was part of, but I had no time to be concerned about them. They, at least, were still alive.

“Necromancer!” I screamed to the heavens, to Hell, to anywhere my voice would reach as my rage ignited something I had never felt before with such intensity. Unreasoning, pure, and terribly frightening need to kill, to kill anything, anyone at all just to release the anguish I was feeling. “I AM VENGEANCE INCARNATE. I’M COMING FOR YOU!!!”

Then I faded into that no-space I used where I raged, cursed everything in creation and then some until I ran out of energy for that.

Then I wept until there was nothing left to come out.

 

---

 
Diana Spectre is searching for something she lost, her humanity, Her alter ego Deena has found it but is not comfortable with the idea. Questions asked, some answered, and Diana finds a potential friend.
 

I don’t know how long I screamed, railed at existence in general, or cried in that one place I could go without being disturbed. All I do know is that it felt like forever.

In my old life, I’d never accepted injuries to innocents, and had given more than a few people more grief than anyone needed when the ones in my employ had caused that. Now though, it was different. A lot different. I’d killed that girl. The rounds from my pistol had done the thing, not the Necromancer.

“I should never have fired those shots.” I told myself for about the hundredth time, and still couldn’t reconcile the idea that this new villain had killed the poor girl already. All I could see for awhile was the two very visible bullet wounds in the body.

“You didn’t kill her.” Voice interrupted my bout of self castigation with the calm, reasonable tones I should have been used to by then. “This Necromancer had already killed her. That was her soul he was waving in your face when you fired those shots. All you did was put an end to a body he could have used to harm others.”

“That might be true.” I shot back, still feeling the hot tracks of bitter tears on my cheeks while my eyes still burned with those that hadn’t been shed yet. “But he did it, all of it, to get to me. That girl died because of me!”

“All of which should tell you one important thing, Diana Spectre.” Voice responded. “You did not kill her. She was another victim that you could not help. Now stop this useless self flagellation and start thinking things through.”

I had to stop and think about that for a few minutes. It gets down to things like solipsism. If something you are, or stand for, causes a death without you being there, does that make it your fault? Can you be at fault for something that happens out of your purview? Should you blame yourself for things that happen to good, or at least innocent, people just because they were done to hurt you?

My self — loathing started to fade as I gave that some serious thought.

My rage, the incandescent anger that threatened to take me over didn’t even try to do that, though.

I was, after all, vengeance incarnate. And this Necromancer demanded my personal attention in a way that nothing, no one, ever had even when I was still human.

With a lot of willpower, I managed to get myself back into a mindset that would allow rational thought.

“Okay, so I’m not personally responsible for every death some asshole causes ‘because of me’ no matter how guilty I might feel.” I admitted. “But I can’t let something like this stand. If I do every super powered villain and some who aren’t super powered are going to try using that against me.”

“Now you begin to understand, Diana Spectre.” Voice held approval in its tone. “Now you begin to understand that no matter what you do, no matter how good your intentions, people are going to suffer and it is no fault of your own. You cannot save everyone, my child. Worrying about that will only drive you insane and we will lose the reason I made you.”

“So what does that leave me?” I questioned. “What can I do now?”

“As you have been doing, child.” The answer came without anything resembling censure, or disappointment. “Seek out the miscreants and do your best to make certain they will harm no one again.”

“Easier said than done, you know.” I grumbled.

“If this task was easy, I would have chosen someone else to do it.”

“Sometimes I think your faith in me is nothing more than wishful thinking.” I quietly answered.

“Everything in creation must put its faith into something, Diana Spectre. I have put mine in you.”

Crap. Make me feel like a slacking complainer why don’t you? What could I, or anyone, say to refute something like that?

Danny Esteves gave me a tight hug and kiss to the cheek when we passed in the hallway of the dingy apartment building we called home.

“What was that for?” I automatically returned the hug, but pulled back from reciprocating the kiss.

“I saw who pushed that envelope under our door, hermana.” He answered simply. “Thank you. Mi Diosa has helped us through you.”

“No one was supposed to see that.” I countered and found myself blushing much to my embarrassment. I didn’t blush over what some guy said to me, I made guys blush.

“You weren’t as sneaky as you thought.” He grinned. “I was in the stairwell when you did it. Gracias, mil Gracias, mi amiga.”

“You’re welcome, Danny.” I answered with a little sigh. “I had it, you guys needed it. Just give it back to someone else who needs it sometime. I can make that all back in a good night. Just don’t tell your mama where it came from, okay?”

“She already knows, chica.” He grinned but there were tears in his eyes. “I told her.”

“Blabbermouth.” I had to chuckle as I said that. “Just ask her not to ruin my reputation around here, will you? Two bit whores don’t do things like that, you know.”

“Hermana, I will not betray you.” He promised. That he called me sister was something I chose not to dwell on just then. “You do many good things around here that you have no wish for people to know of. I have been watching.”

Damn. No wonder the Necromancer had been able to hit me as hard as he did. If a street kid, even one as close to me as Danny was, could see that…

“Then don’t give it away, hermano.” I answered without worrying that I’d just called him brother. “Let me do what I can without everyone in the world knowing I do it. I don’t want gratitude, just to see that people who deserve help getting it. If I can give it, I do.”

“You are a good person, Deena.” He told me with a little smile. “Even if you don’t wish for everyone to know that.”

“Got a rep in the hood to uphold.” I grimaced. “I’m supposed to be a hard assed whore, if anyone else really finds out that I’m such a soft touch, I’m screwed. And not in the way my job would show people.”

“Si, Hermosa.” He nodded hard enough to qualify for entrance into the ‘bobble bird’ part of humanity. “Your secret is safe with me and mama. But Muchas Gracias!”

“I will always be here for you, and your family, hermano.” I whispered while giving him a hug that would have most males beyond the age of ten entertaining fantasies that I played out for a living. “Just remember that. You need, ask. If I have it, you have it. You, your sisters and mama have never given what I do for a living as an excuse to condemn me. I love you all more than I can say.”

“Our family, hermana.” He answered.

I found no argument to refute that one.

So I nodded, kissed his cheek, and walked away.

I passed a store that sold games and comic books as I was wandering, thinking things through, and just doing my best to avoid any confrontation at all. What I saw prominently displayed in the big window stopped me in my tracks.

And there on the cover was a really good representation of me. Bone white skin, glowing red eyes, skimpy clothing, all covering but not hiding anything, cloak with a billowing hood. If someone had taken a picture with a phone or a camera, they wouldn’t have caught the me that was so scary any better.

“Oh, shit.” I breathed before I just had to go into that store and buy the comic.

I read the introduction once I’d bought the thing. It was something I wasn’t at all prepared for.

This sounded serious, so I told him sure, come on by, we'll have lunch. Well True Believers, when he did come by, I was astounded. In a very short time, Kyle had done the storyboards for a brand-new comic: The Spectre!

Not the giant that appeared at the Comic Con, but the female Spectre, who is currently wanted for questioning for suspected involvement in a string of vigilante crimes. It's not unheard of for comics to be based on real events and people. But this was pretty controversial, no matter how you look at it.

Of course, as you know, I've never been one to stray from controversy; my early collaborations with Jackie King in the late 60's and early 70's is testament to that. So I gave Kyle a chance; to be honest, the quality was the best I'd seen out of him to date.

And I read his story, and was floored. This was no mere comic, friends. This was catharsis in illustrated form. I'd never had the privilege to meet Alexandra DeWitt, but by all accounts, she'd been a very special young woman, whose life tragically ended in a hit-and-run accident. Kyle had loved her very much, and even admitted to me that she died wearing his engagement ring on her finger.

“Lee, back in Vegas, I saw her. The girl Spectre. I don't think she was Alex, but she reminded me of her so much. The strength of purpose, the desire to somehow balance the scales...too often in this world, good people suffer and evil people elude justice. I saw her, and I saw the same kind of drive and compassion that I had seen in Alex. And I knew what I had to do. I wrestled with it, I had other commitments, but I couldn't stop thinking about it. I have to do this, Lee, I have to.”

What could I say? I've been young and in love before, and I too, have known loss. It was eating away at Kyle from the inside. So the book you're holding in your hands now, is Kyle's farewell to the woman he loved. But it's also a dark, gripping tale, of supernatural, even divine vengeance. Just like the real Spectre, there are a lot of questions.

Is she good? Evil? An angel or a demon? A villain or a hero? In the end, each of us must decide, using our own hearts to guide us, whether we feel vigilante justice is right or wrong. Personally? I hope that the real Spectre is something like the young woman in this comic book. I hope that her passion for vengeance is tempered by mercy, and compassion.

Because sometimes, we have to walk in dark places to do what is right.

I had to go into an alley and cry once I’d read that much of the thing.

Damn, this girl thing could be hard at times.

It was close, so damned close, to the reality. Once I stopped crying, I read the rest of the comic while inanely thinking that I owned the number one issue of something that would be a collector’s item soon.

But it was wrong.

Probably just as well.

People who read comic books don’t really want to know the underside of what the characters in them go through. My underside was a doozy, too.

But I wasn’t angry. I noted the author’s name and recalled a very frightened young man sitting at a table in a Las Vegas convention center booth, who hadn’t flinched when he saw me. And I’d kissed him. I still don’t know what got into me to do that other than to use it as a distraction since there were people who could have found me searching just then and he could have been the focus they used to do that. Whether those people would have tried to hurt me, take me to the police, or whatever, didn’t matter at all.

I’d felt a connection with this man. Kyle Raynor.

And now, he’d started a comic book with me as the heroine.

And had he had rendered his drawings so well that I could have been looking into a mirror in my Spectre guise as I looked at the artwork in the comic book.

Now what could I do?

What could I do? Simple. I had a connection to him, after all. So I went to where he was.

Kyle was hunched over a table like architects worked on, with every light in the room aimed at the surface of the table. He was working on another issue of The Spectre, I noticed, and still had to admire how well he caught me in his artwork.

“You remember me.” I told him while still at the back of his studio. “A girl likes being remembered.”

He almost hit the ceiling and just about messed up the fine artwork he was doing. When he finally got his fright under control he looked around the room, and asked. “Who are you?”

“You should know.” I told him with a little chuckle. “You’re drawing me right now.”

“Spectre?” He questioned with real fear in his response.

“Yes, Kyle.” I very gently answered while becoming visible to him. “And I want another kiss.”

I don’t have clue one about why I said that, but it was true. I did want another kiss from him, and more. But those were things that Deena was better at than I would ever be.

“What did I do to you?” He asked.

“You started to show me how to be human again.” I told him. “Now show me, don’t tell, as the good writers say.”

“What do you want me to do?” He asked.

“I don’t really know.” I honestly told him. “Just talk for now, I think would be enough, if you can do that. I just need someone to talk to, Kyle. That’s all.”

He nodded, obviously at a loss but gamely trying to get something out that didn’t sound ridiculous. “Why me?”

“I saw the first comic you did of me.” I answered with a shrug. “You don’t have it quite right, and that’s just as well. There are things that normal people shouldn’t have to see, or even know about, and what I really am is one of those things. There are lots of times I wished I didn’t know them.”

“So why the visit then, if you don’t think people should really know about you?” He questioned.

“You’ve touched on the truth, you know.” I waved to the artwork on his table. “I mean the gist of it. I’m like a force of nature now, and it’s scary as Hell, let me tell you.”

“Well when it gets down to it, you are a pretty scary lady, you know.” He answered quietly. “It’s probably a good thing that I don’t have everything right in my story about you. But I do have to ask one thing about that if you wouldn’t mind?”

“I can’t promise an answer, or one that would make sense, but fire away.”

“Are you one of the good guys? Or...”

“Am I just a murderer hiding behind doing backhanded public services by killing low lifes who deserve to be dead?” I questioned with a little smile playing with the corners of my mouth like a kitten with a ball of yarn it was just deciding to unravel. “I don’t know, Kyle. I just don’t know.

I’m one of the good guys in the sense that I really do believe in justice, but my kind of justice is kind of old testament and isn’t exactly what the present powers that be think of as such.” I let out a little sigh as I formulated an answer to questions I’d been asking myself since I was resurrected. “I don’t really think I’m either good or bad when it comes down to the real gritty part of things. I do what needs doing, when it needs done, and if that happens to be illegal right now, that’s not my problem. I have to act. That’s all.”

“Then I take it you didn’t come to ‘punish’ me.” He grinned, actually grinned at me in a way that showed that his early fear was letting go of his hind brain and thought processes.

“If I had, you’d already know it.” I smiled back, a genuine, good feeling smile and the first I’d ever shown in this form. “No, I’m here because I think you actually have started to understand me, what I am, what I do, and some of the why about what I do. And that gives me a little hope that maybe I won’t have to spend eternity alone, with no one daring to approach me as anything but some terrible modern day Erinys, or fury. I was human once, you know, and I don’t want to lose that part of me.”

“For what it’s worth,” he gave me a long, careful look, “You haven’t, and I don’t think you ever will from what I’m seeing here. You ask too many questions to be anything but human.”

I laughed at that one. I actually laughed in pure amusement and pleasure. Oh, this man was good for me, if I could trust him not to betray me. “Thank you for that. I need to hear things like that once in awhile just to remind me of where I came from.”

“Happy to help.” He chuckled and I was pleasantly surprised at his attitude about this admittedly weird meeting. He was still a little afraid of me, I could feel that quite clearly, but he was insanely curious, too. Not to mention intrigued and wanting to know more. Ahh, humanity. Find something that puzzles or scares you and you just have to worry at it until either an answer comes or it kills you. Cats have nothing on humans when it comes to curiosity, or poking into places they shouldn’t be.

“My name is Diana.” I told him for some reason once that epiphany had finished with me.

“Diana.” He slowly spoke the name, let it roll around in his mind and nodded. “The Huntress. It fits you.”

You know, that one had never occurred to me?

“So what now, huntress?” He questioned with a little grin.

“No idea.” I returned and grinned back. “Except that I need a friend and I hope I’ve found one.”

“Maybe.” He answered honestly. “I may use some of what you tell me in my books if that won’t violate some law I don’t know about.”

“Use what you can.” I shrugged. “Somehow I think you’ll have enough sense to keep the darker, stranger things out of it. And if you hang out with me for long you’re going to not only hear about things like that, you’re probably going to see some. I can’t lie to you about that. Things, bad things, just show up on my doorstep, so to speak, and I have to clean them up when they do. It’s like taking out the trash or shoving things down the garbage disposal. You just get rid of the stuff that stinks up your home.”

“How do you do that?” He asked with wonder in his eyes. “I mean just compare what you do to such mundane things like taking out the trash?”

“When things get right down to basics,” I shrugged, “that’s exactly what I’m doing.”

“Good point.” He acknowledged. “I never really thought of it in those terms.”

After that we just talked. For hours. About nothing in particular, just talked.

I hadn’t known how badly my Diana form needed some human contact until then.

---

 

---

 
Author's Note: Diana and Deena begin to work out that they need to come together. Meanwhile there is an overdue meeting for Diana and more of her nemesis is revealed.
 

My visit with Kyle had helped. A lot. I still wasn’t all that sure that I could be human, or even come close to that, but at least I knew the possibility was there now. If I could simply sit in someone’s living room, or studio as that case was, and talk with someone on a one to one basis maybe I hadn’t lost as much as I feared.

Okay, so that person was the artist and writer who was doing those Specter comics. What do you want me to say here? I’d made a connection with humanity with him. One I was hesitant to think about but that made me feel good regardless.

I actually allowed myself to just bask in that glow for awhile. I hadn’t realized how starved I was for real human contact until I’d visited Kyle. And knew I couldn’t do without it in the future without losing the tattered bits of humanity I still possessed.

“One needs to remember where they came from.” The Voice interrupted my thoughts without a care for how violated that made me feel. “It is good that you are doing that. But it is time to move on, Diana Spectre. You are not human any longer and have a purpose.”

“But if I lose that connection to being human how can I know if I’m doing the right thing, the wrong thing, or just something that no one can understand?” I shot back without thinking about it. “Moving on is one thing, but forgetting what I was seems to be a liability there.”

“You may well be right, Diana.” Voice answered. “This is something I must consider. Yet it still doesn’t change what you are, or your purpose.”

“No.” I answered with a mental shrug. “It wouldn’t. But I’m not some mindless instrument of yours. I’ll do what is needed, you know that. I know that. But I won’t just bow down and tell you that you’re right all the time. I can’t do that.”

“I know that, Diana.” The Voice answered. “That is one of the reasons I chose you.”

That one set me back a little.

“You want me to argue with you?”

“If that is what it takes, Diana.” The Voice answered with what nearly seemed to be a sigh. “I don’t need a mindless instrument, but one who thinks for herself. If you choose to argue, then that is how this relationship will work. I actually welcome different ideas, so do continue to argue. It is good for both of us.”

How, exactly, do you describe ‘gobsmacked’?

I set the text book I’d been studying aside with a little sigh. As Deena I was actively working to improve my situation, the position in society I held. I connected with people and really did care about them even if I was reluctant to let that show or even admit it to myself.

As Diana, I craved that kind of connection, the caring, and had no real clue about how to go about finding it, other than my visit with Kyle Raynor. Weird. We were the same person weren’t we? Just with different aspects. But we were still one person, one being, one thing. Yet we weren’t and I didn’t know how to even start fixing that one.

It was clear enough that the root of the problem was the division of selves. I considered that and almost felt the walls built up between Deena and Diana as if they were real, physical constructs. Was it just a means of protection for each of my new personalities, or was it a manner of denial that was so messed up I couldn’t see all of it?

This was serious shrink territory. But again, given my situation, I couldn’t let anyone else know what I was going through. That would give me, both of me, away and leave my dual personas vulnerable to things neither one wished to confront.

Oh, the answer was clear enough. I needed to integrate both sides of who I now was into one personality. But there were problems with that. Big problems.

The me that was Deena was genuinely afraid of the me that was Diana. What kind of human being wouldn’t be? Diana Spectre was like a ghost, a screaming, vengeful ghost and was capable of doing things that made the gentler self that was Deena shudder just thinking about them.

But the Diana part of me was equally frightened of Deena. How could the unforgiving, violent and terrible avenger that The Spectre was even contemplate actually caring about people? Wouldn’t that dull her razor sharp edge? Wouldn’t it make her weak when she was about nothing but implacable strength of purpose? Couldn’t something like that make her less effective, more vulnerable?

One thing the seemingly disparate parts of my personality agreed on was that neither wished to appear vulnerable. Not to anyone. Especially not to themselves.

I was sitting atop the Gateway Arch just watching things, traffic, city lights, the river, when I felt her approaching. I’d been expecting something of the sort for awhile, but had started to think I’d managed to avoid this coming confrontation. So much for dreams better left in the smoke of a pipe filled with something other than tobacco.

“I was wondering when you’d show up.” I greeted the newcomer.

“You haven’t been easy to locate.” Jade, hovering in front of me and in a defensive mode, answered simply. “I’ve tried several times and you just seemed to drop completely off the face of the Earth.”

“One of my many dubious talents.” I shrugged. “I suppose this is where you try to arrest me now?”

“I don’t arrest people.” Shaking her head she watched me for any sign of hostility. Something I was very careful not to show even if there had been any in me towards her. “I do round some up and hand them over to the authorities, though.”

“And is that what is this going to be?” I questioned almost idly.

“Could I hold you if I tried?” She asked while listening to something I couldn’t hear and nodding. “You don’t seem to obey some of the basic laws of nature you know.”

“That might be because I’m dead.” I told her with a halfway bitter laugh. “Things don’t operate for me like they would with normal people, you know. As for being able to hold me, I couldn’t tell you. Probably not, but I don’t know enough about your powers to say that with any certainty.”

“What you’re doing, what you’ve been doing is against the law.” Jade tilted her head and gave me a long, searching look but didn’t seem all that surprised by my claim of being dead. “It isn’t legal to just kill bad guys even if they do deserve it. That isn’t our call to make, you know.”

“It seems to be mine.” Standing I let the breeze flap the edges of my cloak and gave another shrug. “Modern legalities and niceties don’t seem to be something that the force driving me pays much attention to. Justice, however, is important to it, and to me.”

“The system in place isn’t perfect.” She told me while moving a bit closer. “But it usually works well enough.”

“No it doesn’t.” I spat out, almost shocked at my own vehemence in the answer. “I was murdered, the woman I loved was too, by a man who should have never been allowed back on the streets after the first time he was jailed. The system let him walk. More than once. There is no justice in that kind of thing. Slaps on the wrist and telling someone they’ve been a bad boy just don’t work with that kind of person. There is no such thing as justice when that type is involved other than what we as individuals mete out. And when it does happen it’s usually too late for some people who didn’t deserve the kind of thing I stop. The innocents suffer thanks to the system and the way it works these days. Not the criminals.”

“That still doesn’t give you the right to do the things you’ve been doing.” She answered simply, firmly.

“A power beyond me, or anything I’ve ever seen gave me that right.” I shot back. “No, it more or less forced it on me. I do what I do because there is no other way for me to do this. Not now. It’s too late for that with me. I don’t have much in the way of choices any longer. I was brought back from the dead to do what I do. I can’t change that.”

“You could refuse.” Jade pointed out. “You still have enough humanity to make that choice.”

“How would you know that?” I questioned acidly. “Can you read my mind? See what’s left of my soul? Give me answers that aren’t there? Can you?”

“No.” With a shrug she raised her hand towards me. “But I can feel your anguish, your pain. Let it go. You’ll never know peace if you don’t.”

“Peace isn’t something I ever knew.” I softly replied, feeling the heat of tears forming behind my eyes and hating that weakness in myself. I had no room for self pity, none. “I don’t even know what that is. I thought I’d find if when I died, but that was denied me, along with other things. Now I just do what I was brought back for. That’s all.”

She nodded and what I saw in her face, her eyes, hurt while raising the familiar rage I had fought before. It wasn’t hate, or fear I was seeing in those deep, intelligent eyes. It was sorrow, and, worse, pity. “I wish I had an answer for you Spectre, but I don’t. I had hoped we could reach some kind of agreement, at least enough that you’d stop all the killing, but I can see that isn’t likely to happen right now.”

“Which leaves us where, exactly?” I questioned while preparing to dodge whatever she planned on throwing at me.

“I’ll have to take you in and then we’ll let the real authorities decide what to do with and about you.” As she said that a green glow surrounded me, forming into a globe that I was pretty sure would be impenetrable to most mortals. But to me?

“I’m sorry you feel that way.” I answered from thirty feet to the side, outside of her prisoning globe thanks to my ability to just appear in other spots without physically moving myself. “But I just can’t let you take me in. Besides, I don’t think a regular jail would hold me, and I know that the force that brought me back from the dead, orders me, wouldn’t allow it. Not for long, anyway.”

To her credit, Jade didn’t gape in stunned amazement once I’d done that. She set blocks around me, at a distance and shook her head. “It would be easier all around if you just came in on your own. I don’t like using force if I don’t really need to.”

I avoided those, too. And the slamming impact of a huge green fist, sidestepped a grasping hand — if you can call what I do sidestepping, floated through a very clever cage that would have contained an insubstantial being if I hadn’t just turned into some kind of smoke or fog then worked my way through the chinks in it, and just did my best to avoid capture without actually fighting her.

“I’m not going to fight you, Jade.” I did manage to tell her between all the dodging around, and noted a couple of news helicopters in the area filming the confrontation. “You aren’t a candidate for my particular talents and I refuse to use those to harm people who don’t deserve it from me.”

“Commendable of you.” She had stopped trying to capture me for at least a few seconds, and gave me an unhappy look. “But what you do is outside the law, and I have to uphold that law.”

“I didn’t expect you to welcome me with open arms.” I quietly said into her ear after appearing right beside her. “But I’m not your enemy, Jade.”

“I know.” She nodded slowly, almost sadly. “But I have to do this.”

“I know that.” I told her. “You’re as bound to what you are as I am to what I’ve become. Goodbye for now. Maybe we can arrange a truce later, I don’t know. I hope so.”

Then I found yet another ability I have. Suddenly we were surrounded in a very thick, but localized fog, though at our altitude I suppose it was more of a cloud, and I just went away.

Back at the apartment, in my Deena form, I morosely watched the footage of my confrontation with Jade on television while trying to reconcile myself to the fact that even the good guys thought I was a menace.

The videos showed me just blinking in and out of space while Jade attempted to corral me, and that saddened me, too. I hadn’t wished to make her appear ineffective, or whatever it was. Though I had to admit that the expression on her face when my fog suddenly cleared and I wasn’t there was priceless.

“What are you, Diana Spectre?” I whispered. “Or more to the point, what am I?”

On the one hand I appeared to be an almost unstoppable force, but one that wanted to care about people and couldn’t quite figure out how to do it. On the other I was an equally determined human girl who was fearful of letting people know she really did care. Such disparity in what was essentially one being even if we did show different aspects to the world. But both personalities were nothing other than different sides of the same coin, so to speak.

All I was sure of just then, really sure of, was that each part of me had to stop distancing herself from the other. Because that path led to true insanity. And the thought of a truely insane Spectre filled me with more dread than I can describe.

Looking at the carnage spread out below me, I had to literally fight down the rage I felt as if was a living thing that clawed, bit, and yowled in my face like a furious beast. Which it was, come to think of it, just not a corporeal one.

The Necromancer had made another appearance. This time in a shopping mall on the outskirts of town. He’d disappeared by the time I arrived, but had left me some tokens of his interest in me.

I sidestepped one of those, a shambling, mindless thing that had been a young man not long before and reached out to cut the connection that kept his corpse animated. The emptiness I encountered inside the poor creature was more horrible than death had been for me, all this thing could do was try and harm the living, which I was putting a stop to when the police arrived.

“Get up, and get away from here.” I quietly told a teen aged girl who had been that one’s target. “You’re safe from them now.”

“Yu — you KILLED him!” She almost screamed at me, and was as terrified of me as she had been of the one time boy at our feet.

“No.” I shook my head. “He was dead before I got here. I just let his body die as it should have earlier. Go on, get away from here now, I won’t harm you.”

She scuttled away like a crab, never once turning away from me until she’d gotten around a corner and could run without me watching. I noticed something white clutched in the hand of the ‘zombie’ I’d just finished off and was reaching down to pull it loose when a loud voice demanded. “Hands on your head, and turn to face the wall. NOW!”

Looking up, I saw a ring of police with weapons drawn and aimed at me. I stood slowly, with the paper wadded in one hand and simply looked at them for a few seconds. “I didn’t cause this.”

“That’s for a judge to decide.” The one who’d ordered me to put my hands on my head replied. “From here it looks like you just killed that poor kid, so do what I told you or we’ll open fire.”

I was angry, not at the police, but at what had happened, the death and destruction caused by a being who cared about life no more than I cared about the criminals I hunted down. But the rage filled me and I wanted to lash out at something, anything just then.

“I can’t do that.” I answered with a shake of my head while fighting that unreasoning need to strike at something down. “The one who really did this is still running around loose and I’m afraid the police won’t be able to do anything about him.”

“Have it your way.”

“If you open fire on me, innocents are liable to be harmed.” I told him. “I’d have to do something to stop that. Something you probably wouldn’t like very much.”

He didn’t listen and started to fire. I was beside him and had him down in less time than it takes to tell about it. With a hand at his throat and the other removing the weapon from his own, I looked into his eyes and shook my head.

“Remember this. I could have killed you, or just hurt you. I don’t harm innocents or people doing their jobs like you are, but I won’t endanger people unnecessarily and if that means I do have to hurt someone to prevent that, I will.” I placed his pistol back in its holster and drew back a bit. “I’m going now, just to make sure I don’t hurt anyone here. The damage, the killing, was done in this place by the time I got here. Check the security tapes if you don’t want to believe me.”

So I vanished from that spot, to find myself back in my private no space. With some kind of note still crumpled in my hand.

What I read on that note would have had me going white if I wasn’t already that shade.

Diana Spectre,

Yes, I know your name, what we are lets me know that about you. I had hoped that you would appreciate my talents for what they are and make use of my little gifts. Since you have chosen not to do that, I will resort to other measures to bring you into my influence.
I will be seeing you, Diana Spectre.
N

The note went up in smoke once I’d read it and I just looked at my empty hand for a few seconds before letting out a held in breath. “Oh, no you don’t, you bastard.”

“This one knows who you are, and what you are, Diana.” The Voice, notably absent up to then, informed me.

“Oh, that’s information I didn’t have.” I shot back. “Thanks so much for sharing it. It would have been nice to know this, oh, you know, yesterday.”

“I understand your anger, Daughter.” Voice told me almost gently. “But you must understand that there are others who work through the dead besides me. Those are not nearly so — beneficent -- as I am. You must guard against your anger with this one, he uses it against you and will continue to do so until you conquer it. It is a weakness this one will exploit if you allow it. Do not let that happen.”

“The police, and regular people think I killed those poor husks.” I barely whispered. “He set me up for that. He’s made me look like a common murderer.”

“Will you become what he has tried portraying you as being?”

“No.” I grimly answered, not only for the Voice, but for myself. “I won’t.”

“Good.” Voice approved. “This Necromancer knows your name, but nothing else. But be aware he will try to call you to him with that. This unreasoning rage you feel is his work in more ways than one, my child. Be patient, be strong, be vigilant.”

“Easy for you to say.” I muttered while returning to my apartment and somewhat less complicated life as Deena.

Life gets very complicated at times, even if you're dead.

I had a LOT of thinking to do.

---

 

---

 
Author's Note:With increasing pressure from both the Good Guys and Necromancer, Diana and Deena have to learn to work together, as the one person they actually are.
 

Wherever I was it was dark. And cold, so cold I couldn’t even shiver. Both were strange things to be hit with since I had been brought back from the dead. Darkness didn’t hinder my vision at all, and I hadn’t felt the cold either.

Which told me that whatever was going on wasn’t at all normal. Or at least the roller coaster ride I now considered to be normal for me lately, anyway.

The darkness began to lift, literally, like a curtain in a theater and I started wishing it had just stayed down and keeping me from seeing the show.

“I told you that you would come to me, Diana Spectre.” A deep, rumbling voice filled with gloating and anticipation interrupted my reluctant look at my surroundings. I turned to see the figure I most hated in the world standing easily and without a care in the world — whichever world we were in, anyway at the end of a long hallway looking down it at me.

“I’d prefer a phone call.” I told the dark cloaked figure. “I have caller ID and could ignore your calls.”

He laughed and shook his head. “That is precisely the reason I’ve called you this way, my dear. I rule the dead, and you are one of them, after all. Why do you persist in denying that to yourself?”

“Because I refuse to allow someone, something like you to make my decisions for me.” I shrugged and moved a bit to the side as something brushed my arm, sending chills into places I’d never known I had. “Besides, I answer to a power greater than you’ll ever manage to be. So if this is a job offer, sorry, not interested, interview is finished, and I’ll be leaving now.”

“Oh, I don’t think so, Diana.” He shrugged. I called you, only I can return you to the world of mortals. You can’t leave until I allow it.”

“Oh, you think so?” I actually managed a grin, if the rictus I felt my mouth moving into could be counted as that. Actually, it was more of a silent snarl. “I can tell that you aren’t dead, Necromancer. As such you qualify for my personal attentions just like any other vicious criminal.”

He did flinch a little as I moved forward to reach him, but there was something very wrong with all this. Alarm bells went off and I pulled back just as something — a vortex of force that threatened to suck me not only into its maw, but right into the evil suckers outstretched hands.

“Not that easy.” I told him while drawing back another bit, watching behind me for more surprises. Good thing, too.

A thick mist that had formed behind me started extruding skeletal arms with wickedly clawed hands reaching for me and they would have had me if I hadn’t been paying attention. As it was those claws ripped at my flesh, and tore it.

I staggered under that assault for a few precious seconds, and felt the freezing pain of those wounds as if they had been out of my soul. Needless to say, I screamed.

Pain is pain, after all. I’d felt it before, even after my resurrection into this pseudo-life I now lived and dealt with it. But this pain was different. It came with the things I was dedicated to fighting. Despair, terror (okay, I used that one too, don’t get picky here), loss, and a darkness so eternal it had texture.

I pulled away from that, shook myself and felt the gaping wounds begin to heal, while my rage, feeling like all the anger I had ever stored up trying to break the dam of civilized behavior I still tried to maintain most times, bubbled and fought to reach the surface.

“That’s right, Diana.” He crooned sibilantly. “Let it out. Feel the true power you possess in your rage. Take your rightful place in things and become the true Angel of Wrath. You are weak without it, missing something important and you know that as well as I do. Give in to it, my dear. Join with it. Become your rage!”

I was on my knees, screaming, but not in agony this time. It was pure fiery ecstasy as that incandescent rage started working its way out of the deep places I kept it and joyfully tried to engulf me in itself.

But a small, quiet voice answered that from just as deep inside of me. “No.”

Deena stood between me and that raging inferno and refused to move from its path. She looked at me with a mix of sorrow, compassion, and the purest love I had ever dreamed of while holding out a small hand to me. “He’s right, you, I, WE are not complete. Take my hand and we can start learning how to reach that without all this.”

It was a struggle. The rage yowled promises, whispered of power beyond my wildest imaginings if I would just let it out to show me the way. I won’t say it was an easy choice to make, much to my shame, but I managed to reach out enough to brush her outstretched fingers with my own.

And the rage went away. Oh, it didn’t die, or vanish. It simply returned to where I had it safely contained with the shuddering promise that it would be back. Shaking my head, I looked for my alter ego and felt a pang of loss when I didn’t see her. Until it dawned on me that she was there all the time, like I was with her. We weren’t separate individuals, or even parts of a whole. We were the whole, we were ME.

As long as that little drama seemed to have taken to play out for me, time hadn’t gone much in the way of forward since it had started. I turned and waved the taloned hands away. “Go! You don’t belong in the world of the living.”

The shapes attached to those limbs writhed, screamed out their own denials and fought to stay where they were. I stared at them for another breath while gathering something I’d just found inside myself and shouted. “Be Gone!”

The wailing, the pervasive chill, the sense of despair just went away once I’d done that. No theatrical pops, puffs of smoke, no crackles, not even a whimper. It was just gone.

“Still think you can control me?” I turned to face the Necromancer again, this time not afraid of him like I now knew I had been. “My turn.”

There were no sparks when I hit him this time. Just a very satisfying feel of striking flesh, real flesh that had blood and bone underneath. Not that he just caved in and died. Like when have I ever had that kind of luck?

He struck back. With magic of some sort. Dark magic, but still magic and I recognized it for what it was this time. So could deflect it away from me. Not, fortunately, back to him. With my general luck that would have just fed the guy and made him stronger.

We traded blows for awhile. Him and his magic, but seeing as I was basically a soul given form, his disembodying trick backfired when he tried using that one on me. All he managed to do was help me get in closer.

And I reached a hand inside of him and yanked his out. What there was of it, and it was one of the nastiest, slimiest, ugliest things I’d ever want to see. Hopefully I won’t need to look at it again.

His body died while I held the squirming, screaming, vicious thing that had passed for a soul in him. Once that was finished, I still held the nasty thing and was wondering what exactly to do with it. Then it dawned on me. Exactly what it didn’t expect.

“You know.” Releasing the thing and watching it flow around the dead flesh it had inhabited I could only shake my head. “If this wasn’t so pathetic right now, I’d laugh. You don’t belong here any longer, if you ever did. Go.

I said, go.” I told it with a tone of voice a lot more gentle than I’d expected. “I imagine there’s a place that can either mend you, or render you down into something useful. But you need to leave this place, this realm, and never come back. If you do, I’ll be waiting. If you try, I’ll know it. So just go. Maybe even something like you can be healed in time, I don’t know. But I’m giving you that chance.”

Then blinked at the shambles surrounding me. I’d just fought the hardest, most important battle of my life — or whatever you could call it — in my own bedroom.

Worse, people were pounding at the door demanding to know if I was okay.

“So much for a little peace and quiet and savoring the afterglow of victoy.” I muttered while heading to the door so I could let them know I wasn’t dead or otherwise mauled.

“You have started to learn, daughter.” The Voice told me while I was taking a real break by floating above the city and just watching the Mississippi River. “I am proud of you.”

“Thanks.” I answered with a grimace. “But if you’re so, you know, powerful and stuff, would it have been too much trouble to drop me a few hints when the shit hit the fan? I almost lost myself in there, you know.”

“Hints?” The Voice sounded amused and insulted at the same time. “Why should a being I have entrusted with Justice itself require hints on how to mete it out? If you aren’t smart enough to figure things out without constant supervision, I made the wrong choice.”

“God, you sound like my mother here.”

“Close enough.” Voice responded with affection, the first I’d heard or felt from that source ever.

“Which one?” I questioned.

“That would be telling, now.” It, Him, She answered.

“I think I need to go talk with someone who makes sense.” I grumbled.

“Do that, daughter.”

So I did.

“I’m not her, Kyle.” I had to make sure he understood that I wasn’t his lost Alexandra in his gut as well as his mind. “I never was either.”

“I know that.” He nodded while looking straight at me, which was a gift all in itself since not many normals could bear to do that without flinching. “I only said you remind me of her, not that you are, or were her.”

Lifting one hand I gave the bone white, slim fingered, feminine thing a look and shook my head. “Truthfully, I don’t who I am any longer. Or even what I am when it comes right down to things that matter.”

“Oh, I think you do.” Kyle kept looking right at me, and shook his head. “Whether you’re willing to admit who and what that is to yourself is something else though. Let me tell you what I see when I look at you, and have since that first time in Las Vegas. Maybe that will help, maybe it won’t, but it can’t hurt can it?”

“All right, I’m listening.” I let out a sigh and settled into a chair I really didn’t need given that I could just float in the air but he was more comfortable when I did things that humans would. And since Kyle Raynor was about the closest thing I could call a friend in the world since I’d been brought back from the dead, that gesture was important to me.

“I look at you and I see a great sense of purpose, Diana.” He told me. “You have the strength to hold to that purpose even when it gets hard to even imagine seeing it through. That kind of determination isn’t common, but you have something else that you don’t show much of at all.”

“What would that be?” I had to work to keep my voice level and not allow the bitter taste of things never done or never to be done color the question.

“Compassion.” He told me. “You care, Diana Spectre. Whether you want to show that or not you do, and deeply, very deeply. Oh, not just for your ‘mission’, or for seeing that justice is done no matter how bad that may look to others at times. You do it because you care for others with a passion that borders on frightening in its intensity. And it enrages you to see innocents ground down by evil. So you came back to do something about that in the only way you could. As The Spectre.”

“Don’t set me up on some pedestal.” I quietly said while thinking about what he had just said and tied that to recent events. “I was never what anyone would have called a good person, I did more than my share of bad things when I was alive. I’m not, and wasn’t all that proud of those things, but they can’t be swept under some metaphorical rug like they hadn’t happened. I was far from being an innocent, Kyle.”

“An innocent couldn’t have come back to do the things you’re doing.” He answered simply. “An innocent wouldn’t have been able to handle the things that drive you now, or make use of the gifts you’ve been given.”

“Gifts?” I almost choked on that one. “I have a human identity for when I’m not out hunting down criminals to get rid of, and do know what I do for a living when I’m her? I’m a whore, Kyle. Is that a gift?”

“Depends.” He gave me a shrug and actually grinned. “Are you an addict? Do you steal from the people you — umm — take care of? Do you hurt people? Are you forced to do it?”

“None of the above.” I admitted and was a little flustered when he made me think of things that way. “I help out when I can, and there are people around there who are a lot worse off than I am. I don’t exactly have a heart of gold, but I don’t turn my back on people who genuinely need something I can give them either.”

“So in a way, you’re giving several times over.” He gave me a look that plainly said he’d scored points in something I still hadn’t completely caught. “Obviously you like what you’re alter ego does even if you won’t admit it because it is a kind of giving of yourself even if you do take money for it, it’s a job, people have to eat, and I don’t imagine the girl you are is any different from anyone else in that respect. Is she?”

“No.” I had to admit and felt a twinge of guilt when I realized that I actually did like doing that kind of thing as Deena.

“And you don’t waste the money you make either, do you?” He gave a penetrating look with that one and I just shook my head. “Didn’t think so.”

“I never gave much of anything to anyone, before I — died.” I thoughtfully nodded. “Not that having what money and stuff I had did me a lot of good, especially at the end.”

“But now you actually try to help people around you with what you have.” He grinned, scoring another point in whatever the game was. “Which is more than you did in your — uhh, former life?”

“Yes.” I answered quietly. “It is, but I still don’t like for people to know I’m doing that. I’m no angel.”

“You might be surprised about that one. Angels aren’t all sweetness and light according to the old stories. Not even close in most cases.”

“Well, I’d qualify for it then, I suppose.” Shaking my head I gave him an exasperated look. “But all this talk isn’t getting much of anything accomplished is it? I have things that need doing.”

“Before you leave…” He gave me an odd, almost longing look. “Can I meet her, your other self?”

“Why?”

“Just call it curiosity, if you want. But she is part of you, and a piece of the puzzle that you’ve become isn’t she?”

That would involve a level of trust I hadn’t been able to give anyone, even in my former life. To show him my human self would make me vulnerable in ways I didn’t even wish to consider. But you have to start somewhere, I suppose. I nodded and Deena was sitting in his apartment the next second.

I gave him a nervous look, not at all the self confident girl I generally showed myself as being and to make it worse he just stared for a few moments.

“Well, this was a mistake.” I whispered and rose to leave.

“Wait.” Kyle stood and walked towards me with an odd expression on his face. “You’re beautiful, you know that, in both guises you’re beautiful. But I think there is one thing you need to do before you can start being whole, a complete person in both of your personas.”

“What would that be?” I asked, nervous under his regard and losing my usually flippant attitude.

“You give, and you give, and then you give more.” He told me, standing right in front of me so I had to look up to see his face. “Don’t argue, you do that, but you also have to learn how to take things that are offered once in awhile. You don’t want to do that, take anything someone is willing to share, and that is your biggest weakness, Diana, or whatever your name is right now.”

“Take what?” I questioned then grinned in spite of my roiling stomach and emotions. “And it’s Deena.”

“Deena.” Nodding he reached out a tentative hand and touched my arm. “Pretty name, but I’m going to offer you something here, something you need to accept. I don’t know how, but I do know that’s important for you, and for others.”

“What?” I didn’t back away, but wasn’t all that happy about what I thought he was going to give me.

“My trust.” His face didn’t show much emotion, but I could sense it just below the surface in him. “I haven’t given this kind of trust to a woman or anyone for a long time, Deena, not since Alex died and it’s precious to me. But I’m giving it to you like you gave yours to me just now. Vulnerabilities can become strengths if they’re shared with the right people. I think you need to understand that before you can become what you were really meant to be.”

“And what would that be?”

“An angel.” He answered softly. “A real, gloriously beautiful, terrible, powerful angel. But also one who is compassionate and loving. It’s in you, Diana — Deena, you just have to allow it to awaken is all.”

What happened after that is none of your damned business.

But I will say I finally got that kiss from him.