The rooftops of the city were Abel's territory now, or at least, they would be once Jessica and Kilgrave stopped moving faster than he could think.
Abel cast Levicorpus on himself as he ran, a modified version that kept him aloft without the wandless magic burning through his reserves quite so viciously. It worked—mostly. He ascended in clumsy bounds, each leap taking him higher, but the trajectory was sloppy, the control imprecise. Without a wand, wandless magic was always a compromise between theory and execution.
Below, Jessica was carrying Kilgrave across the rooftops like a parent might carry a child. She moved with the casual impossibility of the superhuman, her feet barely touching the surfaces as she propelled them both forward. Kilgrave was gasping, one arm around her neck, still issuing commands that seemed to vibrate through the very air.
"Faster! Faster!"
Jessica moved faster.
Abel had to give her credit—the woman was efficient. She didn't waste energy on doubt or hesitation. Kilgrave commanded; she obeyed. It was simple, brutal, and completely effective. The only problem was that Abel couldn't match her speed on the ground.
But he could use the terrain.
Abel spotted it as they approached: a construction site, half-finished, with a tall-boned crane sitting between two buildings. Steel beams hung in the air, suspended from cables. The structure was still under operation—there would be a crane operator somewhere, probably in a cabin, completely unaware of the superhuman chase happening in the city's vertical spaces.
Abel made his decision.
As Jessica and Kilgrave leapt the gap between buildings, bounding with superhuman grace, Abel raised his hand toward the crane operator's cabin. The gesture was more ritual than requirement—wandless magic needed some kind of anchor, some kind of focus. Without the physical wand to direct power, his body had to compensate.
"Wingardium Leviosa," he gasped.
The words came out strained. His head was throbbing now, a steady, relentless ache that made it hard to think. Sweat had soaked through his shirt. He could taste blood at the back of his throat—not from injury, but from the sheer effort of maintaining two simultaneous magical effects while under the cognitive assault of Kilgrave's pheromones.
The steel beam moved.
It wasn't graceful. It wasn't controlled. But it was effective. The industrial-grade steel, massive and terrible, rotated upward just as Jessica and Kilgrave reached their apex. Jessica's eyes went wide—the first real expression of alarm Abel had seen from her.
She tried to dodge.
There was nowhere to dodge. The beam caught her across the torso with the force of a truck collision. Kilgrave went flying, his fragile human body unable to match her resilience. He tumbled through the air, landing hard on the rooftop of the building below, screaming as he fell.
Jessica, by contrast, hit the beam and was driven downward by sheer physics. Her fingers scrabbled for purchase, but there was nothing to grip. Momentum won. She crashed onto the rooftop, and the impact created a crater in the concrete.
For a moment, there was silence.
Abel descended carefully, every muscle in his body trembling with exhaustion. The Occlumency was becoming harder to maintain—he could feel the pheromones pushing against his mental walls with increased insistence, as if Kilgrave's panic was giving them more force. The headache had evolved into something worse: a nauseating sensation of wrongness, like his brain was being squeezed.
He landed beside the crater where Jessica lay.
She was already moving—pushing herself up on her elbows, shaking her head to clear it. Superhuman durability was a hell of a thing. Under normal circumstances, that impact would have killed anyone.
"Stay still," Abel said quietly, raising his hand. The words came with the weight of magic—not quite a command, but close. "Petrificus Totalus."
Jessica's body went rigid mid-push. She froze, muscles locked, eyes still conscious but body completely immobilized. It wasn't comfortable, Abel knew. It never was. But it was effective.
"I'm sorry," he said, and he meant it. She was a victim, just as much as Theresa had been. "But I need you to be still for this."
He turned and ran toward the rooftop edge where Kilgrave had landed.
The man was struggling to his feet, one leg clearly broken, his expensive suit torn and bloodied. He saw Abel approaching and his face twisted with something between fury and desperation.
"You freak," Kilgrave spat. "You have no idea what I can do. I can make you—"
"My mind is closed to you," Abel said. He was breathing hard now, and the words came out clipped, precise. "Your pheromones can't touch what's locked behind my walls."
Kilgrave's eyes narrowed. He began to back away, still on his broken leg, looking around for an escape route. There was a window nearby—he was calculating, Abel could see it in his face. Kilgrave had survived this long by being ruthless and adaptable.
"You think you're special," Kilgrave rasped. "You think you're better than me. But you're not. In a month, when your resolve weakens, when your will falters—you'll be just like them. Just like her. Just like every other person I've owned."
"No," Abel said. He was walking slowly toward Kilgrave now, his voice quiet. "I won't. And you won't be around to see it."
Kilgrave lunged—a desperate, final attempt to grab the knife from Abel's back. But he was broken, bleeding, and operating on panic. Abel sidestepped without effort. As Kilgrave stumbled past, Abel raised his hand one final time.
The words came out steady, despite the pain that was now a constant roar in his skull: "Wingardium Leviosa."
Kilgrave's body lifted.
He thrashed, screaming, but the spell held firm. Abel raised him higher—ten feet, twenty feet, higher still. The man's screams echoed across the rooftop, desperate and broken.
He snapped his fingers.
The levitation spell shattered like glass. Kilgrave dropped—and this time, there was no Jessica to cushion the fall, no superhuman strength to mitigate the impact. He fell from a height of thirty feet, his body slamming onto the concrete roof with a sound like a melon hitting pavement.
The screaming stopped.
Abel descended slowly, his legs barely holding him up. He reached the body after a moment, checked for a pulse even though he knew—knew with absolute certainty—that Kilgrave was dead. The fall, combined with the injuries Jessica had received hitting the beam, had done the job thoroughly.
The Purple Man was gone.
Abel stood there for a moment, breathing hard, the sweat now cold on his skin. His head was still pounding, a dull, persistent ache that made it hard to think. The effort of maintaining Occlumency, combined with the wandless magic, had left him on the ragged edge of collapse.
But there was still work to do.
He made his way back to where Jessica lay, still frozen in the petrification spell. Her eyes tracked his movement, the only part of her that could move. He could see the questions in those eyes—Who are you? What just happened? Where's Kilgrave?
"He's dead," Abel said quietly. "And now you're free."
He raised his hand, fingers spread, and released the spell. Jessica's body unlocked gradually, sensation returning in waves. She gasped, her superhuman system rebooting itself, and for a long moment, she simply lay there, breathing.
"What..." she started, her voice hoarse. "What happened? Who—"
But Abel was already moving. He adjusted his hood, covered his face more thoroughly with a loose scarf he pulled from a nearby maintenance area, and quickly descended from the rooftop using a combination of levitation and careful parkour.
By the time Jessica reached the edge of the rooftop, looking down at the city below, she saw only shadows disappearing into alleys.
Abel's apartment was dark and cold when he returned home.
He stumbled through the door, barely making it to his couch before his legs gave out. The headache had evolved into something worse—a splitting, nauseating pressure behind his eyes that made him think, for a moment, about what an aneurysm might feel like. But it would pass. It always did. Occlumency was like physical training—the more you used it, the more the pain became a familiar companion.
He sat in the darkness for a long time, just breathing.
Theresa had been left safely in the restaurant's back room. Kilgrave was dead. Jessica was free. The surveillance footage had been wiped—Abel had made sure of that before leaving, carefully erasing any evidence that he'd been there, any image of his face, any hint of what had happened in those moments of violence.
He pulled his laptop toward him, still sitting in darkness, and opened his email. The Amazon and eBay notifications glowed on his screen—the materials he'd ordered for wand-making had arrived. Wood samples. Feather cores. Twigs and branches from trees whose names would have been familiar in the wizarding world.
There was work to do. There was always work to do.
But tonight, Abel Shaw simply sat in the darkness and tried to remember what it felt like not to be tired.
END CHAPTER 4