Colin MacGregor

Colin walked into the employee lounge and found Sean and Ryan lazing on the couch and watching Trading Spaces. Hildi was busily ruining another homeowner's walls, this time with feathers, and the two agents were laughing uproariously at the neighbors' reactions to the idea.

The ghost shook his head. Ne'er did understand the appeal. O' course, I'm also nay a gay man. He grinned at his two friends backs, glad to see that the troubles of the past couple of weeks seemed to have subsided.

Suppose if the worst thing bothering me now is the fac' tha' England took the Webb-Ellis Cup, things are getting back tae normal. He grinned to himself and dropped down into one of the easy chairs against the side wall where he could keep an eye on the room.

Luckily, the Journal-Constitution had bought the story that the Chamber investigation had been a joint venture between the Atlanta police department and Orpheus' consultants and ran a piece praising the corporate citizenship of upper management. Kate, of course, had quickly reminded them that the DEA's pigment task force was using the incident as a wedge to repoen their own investigation of Orpheus' ties to the drug, lest the positive spin get to the crucible agents' heads.

As quickly as the thoughts of the last mission ran through his head, they were gone, however, replaced by a for more satisfying set. Today the crucible was off probation, released to leave the campus, and they were all agreed. It was time to pay back Mitchell Jones for his rape and murder of Regina White.

CJ strode into the lounge and poured herslef a cup of coffee from the brand new Starbucks branded carafe with a smile. She nodded in greeting to the two on the couch, then to Colin who was the only one alert enough to respond. The ghost gave her a grin as she rolled her eyes at Sean's and Ryan's fascination with the television.

She walked over and leaned against the wall next to Colin's chair and took a sip of her coffee, grimacing slightly as the liquid burned her tongue. "How you doing, kiddo?"

"Ready tae ge' ou' o' this building", Colin answered with his grin firmly in place. "Being dead is boring enough wi'ou' being confied tae quarters."

The ex-cop winced and took another sip of coffee to hide it. Colin noticed though, and chuckled. "I' still bothers ye tae hear i' so casually."

It was a staement, not a question, and CJ looked away uncomfortably. "A little, I have to admit."

"Not because ye blame yuirself", Colin said thoughtfully. "Nay directly, anyway. Tis the whole idea o' life after death yuir nay aligned wi'."

CJ shifted her eyes to him and narrowed them in suspicion. "Skinriders are mindreaders, too?"

The ghost laughed. "Only while actually possessing a host. Nay, jus' good a' reading people. I'll drop i' if ye like, bu' ye need tae ge' o'er i' sometime."

CJ frowned and took another silent sip of coffee. The aroma drifted past Colin's nose, and he wrinkled it in disgust.

"Kind of like you needing to get over your fixation on me and my coffee", CJ ribbed. "I've heard your comments about my coffee face, and I'm telling you, I don't make one."

"O' course nay, lass", Colin replied smartly. "Would ne'er suggest such a thing."

CJ snorted. "Well, moving back on topic, this particular trip away from Orpheus is one I've been looking forward to for weeks. Ever since I got the word that Jones managed to slip away before the cops could get him."

"Aye, I'll agree with tha'." Colin's tone was flat, and anger flashed in his eyes. I'll take any chance I ge' tae pu' another murderer ou' o' e'eryone's misery. "I think we could all use summat for the win column."

"Exactly." She narrowed her eyes as she looked around. "Where are the other two, anyway?"

The ghost shrugged. "They'll be here. Liz is looking forward tae this, too, and I dinnae think e'en Scooter will wan' tae miss ou' on i'."

"Nope." A cheerful voice emerged from the wall behind them, quickly followed by Scooters short form. He veritably bounced over to the arm of the couch, made a face at the television show, and waggled his fingers at it.

Ryan and Sean both protested as the channel toggled up just as the room reveal for the feathered monstrosity was about to begin. The young poltergeist giggled and dodged the cushion Sean hurled his way.

"Dammit, watch it!" CJ cursed as she spilled coffee in her haste to avoid the badly aimed projectile.

CJ interrupted his protests with a snicker she couldn't suppress, and he let off his tirade with a grin as Liz walked into the room.

"Ah, well", Sean remarked as he flipped the channel back. "They liked it anyway. Those are never as fun."

Liz looked at the wisp, but his attention was firmly back on the show, and she shrugged. "Nothing important, I guess."

Ryan nodded. "Right you are, Liz. I'm ready to go now, how about the rest of you? We may as well get this wrapped up as quickly as possible."

"Optimistic taeday", Colin grinned at the banshee. "Had a vision o' success, ha'e ye?"

"Nay a whit", Colin shot back. "Jus' wanted tae be prepared for the worst if ye had."

Colin hopped off of the back of CJ's Harley as she pulled it to a stop down the street from Mitchell's apartment. The skimmer racked her helmet as she stood and looked around.

"Looks quiet", Colin commented. The street was deserted of other people, despite the crowded nature of the intown neighborhood. Dozens of small bungalow style houses lined either side of the street of what had once been a trendy area. The peeling paint, occasional broken window, and four cars on blocks in assorted front yards spoke of a decline in recent years, however. Weeds cracked the road, which was little more than a layer of pebbles loosely held together by a few bits of remaining asphalt.

The ghost grinned at her. "Aye, prob'ly right. The perfect place for our quarry." He looked over at number 523, a faded blue single story home. The driveway was empty, marked only by a large black oil spot where the concrete ended on the left side of the house. "Tha's the one. I imagine he's nay been back for awhile."

Sean emerged around the corner on the opposite end of the street, a single quick leading a procession of spooks. Liz, Ryan, and Scooter trailed after him, all looking around warily. The wisp spotted Colin and CJ and headed over to meet them in front of Jones' house.

Colin nodded and motioned for Ryan and Scooter to follow. The three ghosts hurried over to the house and took a quick look around. Satisfied that there were no nasty surprises lurking, Ryan and Scooter phased through the front door while Colin went around the side and through the fence to investigate the backyard. He heard the squeak of a rusty hinge as CJ opened the mailbox behind him before focusing on the house.

A chain with a D-ring hook lay on the ground, one end tethered to a spike thrust into the dead, brown grass. Several spots of churned earth and a couple of large plastic dishes were evidence that a dog had been tied up there fairly often. There was no food, not even stale or rained on pieces in the dish and the water bowl was empty, so it seemed likely that the dog had been gone for some time.

The only other thing in the back was a rusted out charcoal grill, and Colin sniffed in disdain. After being raised by a master chef, it still bugged him to see any kind of cooking gear so badly mistreated. The ashes in what remained of the bowl of the grill were a solid clump, obviously rained on several times.

The ghost took one last look around before he stepped through the back door and into the small house's kitchen. His inner chef, already irritated, positively rebelled at the pots left standing in the sink, their soak water long since evaporated. Rust and moldy remains warred with each other to claim the steel and cast iron and for a change, Colin was glad for his deadened sense of smell. The odor was detectable, but more as a phantom memory than the truly horrid stench it must have been for the living.

Scooter poked his head through the open doorway between the two rooms. "Yes and no", he replied with a grin. "Nothing here, but Ryan's visioning again."

"Aye, ye will, o'erwise I'll ge' Liz tae inhabit the telly and keep i' from showing Trading Spaces." Colin folded his arms across his chest with a superior smile.

"I would, and she's been getting intae rugby since I started explaining i' tae her. We do ge' BBC-Sport on the satelite feed, after all."

Ryan gave a mocking look of horror, then burst into laughter, which Colin and Scooter joined in. "Ok", the banshee spluttered. "I give, I give.

"Right", Ryan continued. "He hasn't been back since, but he made a couple of phone calls, something about twenty-five grand. Then he pulled a briefcase out, and pulled a bunch of money stacks out of the safe in the bedroom down the hall.

"Stuck several in the briefcase, stuffed the rest into a duffel bag, then took off." The banshee shrugged. "That's all."

"I didn't see..." Ryan's recounting was interrupted by an explosion outside. "What the hell was that?!"

Colin no longer had the nervous system to spur his movements on with a burst of adrenaline when faced with danger, but what he did have was far better. The barest flicker of a thought sent vitality coursing through his gauze and juggernaut flared to life. Far from the uncontrolled raw strength it had been when he first discovered it, now it served his desires, fueling his need for haste, and so the ghost burst out through the front wall before the other two had even completed their turn to the window.

Outside, CJ and Sean were diving to the ground as CJ's motorcycle rained flaming debris across the street. Three newcomers - all spooks, Colin realized instantly - were standing nearby with expressions of exasperation, bemusement, and surprise.

Exasperation, a woman, turned to bemusement and snapped something at him, but Colin couldn't make it out through the roar in his ears. He simply reached out with his senses, seeking the threads and tethers that bound even a projector in an insubstantial form. The surprised one was a wisp, of that Colin was sure, which explained how the trio had shown up so quickly. That was the one the ghost charged as he tore across the lawn, and the look on the spook's face turned from surprise to fear.

Three shots rang out as Colin closed with the hostile spooks, and the one holding the shotgun that had apparently been amused by the destruction he'd wrought staggered as two of the ghostshot rounds found their mark.

Nice shooting, CJ. Colin couldn't see the skimmer from his angle, but he knew she must be fuming about the bike.

"Let's just give it to them and get us out of here!", the female assailant called. She was reaching into her coat, probably for a weapon, but to Colin she was moving in slow motion and he tackled the wisp with every ounce of juggernaut induced strength he could spare.

The two hurtled backwards, tumbling into a heap, and the wisp snarled as he struggled to throw the smaller ghost off of him. Colin returned with a growl of his own, then channeled all of the anger and frustration that had been building for the past few weeks into wresting the man's vitality away.

The wisp howled as Colin's draining attack struck home, and the skinrider felt the flow of essence strengthen his own efforts even as his enemy weakened. It was not without a price, however, as his temper, fueled by spite, roared in satisfaction. His shadow seemed to laugh with a life of its own as the ghost continued draining his victim; the wisp's aura began flickering rapidly and fading as the attack continued.

Another shot behind him wasn't enough to tear Colin's thieving attention's from the unfortunate spook, nor was the hiss and clatter of something hitting the pavement.

Jus' a little more, he thought to himself with a fierce satisfaction, and he will nay be a threat tae anyone again.

The energy Colin drained swirled within him and the power filled him with a hunger for more, but a small part of him screamed in warning. To do this would be to give in to the side of himself that demanded revenge, not justice. That wanted destruction for its own sake, that cared nothing for the focus of the rage and anger so long as the end result was the same. He understood all this, felt the swelling spite within him, even saw the black, sharpening lines along his hands as a new stain tried to form.

He ignored it. He gathered his will for the final strike that would drain the wisp to nothing, leaving behind only a dead, cold piece of meat somewhere but that hesitation proved too long.

The essence pulsed, and Colin sensed the flow of energy from the woman into his victim, enough to stave off the final destruction of the man's spirit.

"Now! Get us out now!", the woman yelled, and the wisp, terrified by his close call, obeyed. Tendrils of gauze whipped out from his re-energized aura, wrapped around the other two assailants, and the three vanished with a clap of thunder and flash of purple light.

Colin howled in frustration and slammed his hand into the now deserted street, sending a three foot crack through the ancient pavement. Small, black coils of energy curled off of his gauze as his anger lashed out for another target, and he spun at the sound of a foot hitting the pavement behind him.

The impulse to focus his rage on the newly presented target was nearly overwhelming, and his swollen fists actually began to reach out for the skimmer of their own accord before Colin brought himself crashing back into control. He released the energy he'd summoned for juggernaut and the world returned to its normal speed, as evidenced by Sean tripping backwards over the curb and landing flat on his arse.

The skinrider squeezed shut his eyes and tried to focus, He reigned in the overwhelming anger and forced it back under his control. The chains were weakened, though, he could tell. Tiny fissures of black, coiling tendrils seeped through, and the spite laughed at him, promising that one day the chains would break.

But that day was not today. Slowly, Colin re-opened his eyes and relaxed the fists that had remained clenched sinc ehe burst out of the house. Sean was watching him warily, still sprawled on the brown, dying grass of Mitchell's lawn.

CJ approached slowly, her gun pointed at the ground but still ready for use, if needed.

The skinrider nodded to both of them, and the shadowy shards that had begun appearing on the gauze of his hands faded into almost nothing. "Tis all righ'", he said harshly. "Or will be, soon."

"What happened to you?" Sean asked slowly. The wisp got to his feet, still watching the ghost cutiously.

Colin scowled. "Remember wha' I said abou' living for vengeance, Sean", he said sullenly. "I' consumes ye if yuir nay careful."

CJ relaxed her grip on the beretta, but still didn't holster it. "Fine, if you say so", she said curtly. "What was it they threw at us before they popped out?"

Liz emerged from the gun, her gauze quickly resuming her normal features. She spared a curious, but sympathetic look at Colin before turning her attention to the piece of equipment. "It's a camcorder", she answered as knelt next to it. "Looks physical, too. How did they manage that?"

"What?" Sean hurried forward to examine it. He reached out a finger and gave the device a tentative nudge.

"If they wanted tae hur' us, why dinnae the brute wi' the shotgun jus' start laying waste, though?" Colin asked. Although it still retained an edge of anger, his voice was almost back to its normal tone.

"That was my thought", Liz said. "Well, should be easy enough to find out." With an inrush of gauze, she once more disappeared, and the streams of silvery fog surrounded and seeped into the camera.

CJ backed away slightly, just in case. "Um, I'm going to grab the license plate from my bike. Over there."

Colin smirked as the detective hurried away, just as Ryan and Scooter made it to the scene.

As if in answer, the viewscreen popped out and powered into life. Instead of the view from the lens, however, which would have showed little but the curb and Sean's scuffed black combat boots, Liz's face appeared, smiling.

"It's clean", the haunter's tinny voice reported. "Seems to be a message from Mr. Jones. He's none too happy with us at the moment."

"Shouldn't we get out of here before the cops show?" Scooter asked. "Someone did just blow up a motorcycle."

"Good point", Sean said. He picked up the camera and waved fro CJ. "Come on, leave it!" The wisp turned and started jogging back for his car, followed by the three ghosts.

CJ ran to catch up. "I pocketed the VIN and license plates. With any luck, it won't be traced back to me." The ex-cop had a snarl on her face. "Those bastards will pay for this."

"Maybe you can get Orpheus to pay for it", Scooter offered. "Since you can't really file an insurance claim without mentioning that it was yours..."

They piled into the car, the three ghosts taking the back while the two quick hopped into the front seats of the silver Acura. As Sean started the car, he tossed the camera into CJ's lap.

Liz was still looking out at them from the viewscreen. "This is kind of neat, really."

Colin glanced over at the camera from the backseat behind Sean and frowned. "Can ye show us the damn message and play around later?"

Liz's eyes shifted to the skinrider with a look of disapproval. "What's gotten into you?"

"Vengeance", he replied flatly. A shadow twisted it's way across his gauze for the briefest moment. "This guy is after pissing me off."

Ryan and Scooter exchanged a glance as CJ turned to look at Colin. "You sure you're all right?" she asked him.

"Soon, I hope", Liz muttered, but her image disappeared to be replaced by another.

A man in a rumpled white t-shirt looked into the camera, and hatred practically rolled of of him in waves. "You refused my invitation to discuss this rationally, so now I give you a final warning. You're still alive, in one sense or another. This is because I choose it." The man's voice was ragged, rage filled, and his fists clenched ever more tightly as he spoke. "You will withdraw your testimony. You will find a way to stop the investigation of me."

The death merchants, Colin realized. He mus' ha'e sen' them after us. Tha's wha' he needed the money for.

"Or else you will all be destroyed." The man's image dissolved into static and Liz's face reappeared.

"That's all on the tape. Nothing else unusual or useful about the camera I can find."

The crucible rode in silence as Sean turned the RSX out onto Ponce de Leon Road and headed for the Connector.

Sean laughed at the other skimmer's sense of timing, but obligingly pulled into a Starbucks near the interstate. He maneuvered the Acura around the bend of the drive through and handed the venti mocha over to CJ.

She smiled her thanks and set it in the cupholder for a moment as she examined the camera again.

"I heard", CJ replied, "I just can't shake the feeling that there's something else."

'Grea', another one wi' vague premonitions", Colin sneered. "Jus' wha' we needed."

"Hush you", CJ growled as she turned to look at him. "Enough with the snide remarks."

CJ snorted. "Yeah, well, I don't take kindly to threats. They put me in a bad mood." She picked up the coffee and lifted it to her lips.

"It's not you, it's the coffee." CJ's voice was quiet and a note of fear had crept into it. She passed the cup over to Sean. "Smell that. It's been poisoned."

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Last Updated: January 5, 2004 by Blake Sorensen

Journal - Pursuing Mitchell Jones

30 November, 2003