Tales of the Scarlet Knight Collection: The Wrath of Isis Read online

  When she came within a foot of it, the red shell of the case suddenly came alive; angelic faces appeared on it. The eyes of these faces glowed the same as Steve had in her dream. Becky kept herself at arm’s length as she reached out towards the case. She closed her eyes, prepared for whatever it had in store for her.

  The case opened with a soft click. Becky opened her eyes and heaved a sigh of relief. Inside she saw the red plate armor stacked neatly along with the golden cape and boots. On top of it all was the sheath that contained the Sword of Justice.

  “Well, you survived that. Unfortunately that was the easy part,” Marlin said.

  ***

  To put on the scarlet armor was easier than Becky had imagined. The armor was already accustomed to Emma Earl’s body, so there was no readjustment needed as she began to don the arm pieces, then the leg pieces, and finally the breastplate. The tricky part was to manipulate Emma’s longer fingers to do up the straps. The golden boots came next, followed by the gloves, and then the cape. For the very last step, Becky reached inside the case for the red helmet with its golden plume. She took a deep breath before she dropped the Scarlet Knight’s helmet onto her head; once she did she couldn’t turn back.

  She hoped for some surge of power or perhaps a voice—Steve’s voice—to guide her. Instead all she had was Marlin, who had glared at her the entire time. No surge of power ran through her; she still felt like Becky Scherr, albeit skinnier. “What do you think?” she asked.

  “I think we’re doomed,” Marlin said.

  “Then you’ll just find someone else, right?”

  “Of course. That’s what we’ve been doing for four thousand years. No reason to stop now because of some foolish girl.”

  She wagged a gloved finger at Marlin. “I’m not a girl, you prick. I’m a woman and you better start treating me like it.”

  “I can see this is going to be fun. Now, what did Emma tell you about the armor?”

  “The armor is invulnerable to everything except magic or holy weapons. The soles of the boots are made of a rubber that allows me to bounce if I take a couple of small hops first. The gloves can open locks and let me climb up walls. The cape allows me to become invisible to those who aren’t pure of heart—but not video cameras—and can be used as a parachute. If I tap the helmet visor once I can see in the dark. The Sword of Justice can cut through anything and I can guide it with my thoughts and it glows in the presence of evil. Did I miss anything?”

  “You forgot that if you do anything to prove yourself unworthy the armor will kill you,” Marlin said. “Keep that in mind, woman.”

  “Yeah, fine, I’ll try not to kill any nuns or steal candy from a baby. Now, can we get started or what?”

  “Go right ahead. You’re the boss. Doesn’t sound like you need me at all.”

  “Don’t start sulking. I didn’t ask for this.”

  “Fine. Ordinarily we’d listen to the police scanner or watch the monitors for a crime, but since someone destroyed those we’ll have to play it by ear.”

  The way Marlin said “someone” caused Becky to raise an eyebrow. What did the cranky old ghost mean by that? She thought to ask, but he didn’t seem to be in the mood for lengthy explanations. Besides, she had a job to do. “Wait, how do I get out of here?”

  ***

  It wouldn’t have been difficult for Emma to sneak out of the Plaine Museum as she had worked there for five years and thus had memorized the camera layouts. For Becky the process became more difficult. First, she had never walked with a cape wrapped around her body. Second, she had to rely on Marlin to guide her through the maze of video cameras that watched the museum’s main gallery.

  One issue she didn’t experience was any fatigue from the armor itself. Though the red armor looked like plate armor made of steel or some other metal, it felt as light as plastic. “It’s magic armor,” Marlin growled at her. “Now get ready to run straight ahead. Ready? Go!”

  Becky ran as best as she could; she felt as if she were in a sack race at a company picnic. She galloped along past Alex the mastodon into the center of the gallery. Marlin hissed at her to stop and wait for another break in the cameras. She continued to zigzag around the museum’s main gallery like a chess piece until she finally reached the front door. The security guard on duty was in one of the side galleries so he didn’t notice as she opened the door.

  “We made it,” she said after she reached an alley and dropped the cape.

  “Just barely. Think you’re up for climbing the wall?”

  “Sure.” In her real body, Becky would have become winded after five inches—she had never done even one pull-up in gym class—but Emma’s body scampered up the wall like a spider. Again the armor didn’t weigh her down so she barely noticed it as she made her ascent. Once at the top of the building, she began to hop on her boots to prime them for a jump. She ran across the roof and waited for the last moment to hop one final time to launch herself into the air.

  Landings had always been Emma’s problem. Becky didn’t have any better luck with her first landing. She collapsed face-first onto the roof of the next building. The armor protected her from injury so that only her pride hurt. She could feel Marlin’s eyes on her. “Shut up,” she said once she rolled over.

  “I didn’t say anything.”

  “I know what you were thinking.”

  “I was thinking you’re just as graceful in this body as she is.”

  “Shut up,” she snapped again.

  “Why don’t you stay here and practice with the Sword of Justice while I go look for a crime for you to thwart?”

  “Are you saying I can’t find my own crimes to thwart?”

  “No, I’m saying you need to practice with the bloody sword. The last thing we want is for you to throw it and take some poor bloke’s head off.”

  Becky considered this for a moment. “All right. Just hurry up. And you’d better not be slinking off to find her.”

  “What’s that cow going to do?”

  “Hey! That’s my body.”

  “Yes, well, damn fine job you’ve been doing with it—if you’re aiming to become a sumo wrestler,” Marlin said. Before Becky could tell him to shut up again, the ghost whizzed out of sight.

  She decided to do as he suggested and pulled the Sword of Justice from its sheath. The golden blade felt light in her hand, almost as if it weighed nothing. She took a few practice swings to get used to the weapon. Then she cocked her arm back and hurled it into the air.

  Becky’s eyes narrowed as she struggled to focus enough to guide the blade. Emma said this was the skill that had taken her the longest to master—she had never really mastered the landings. “You have to empty your mind of distractions and think only about the sword,” Emma had told her once. It was really hard for someone like Emma to empty her mind, not when she could calculate the mass of the sun, learn Swahili, and memorize the composition of every meteor found in the Yucatan Peninsula all at the same time. For Becky the problem was more she thought she didn’t want to fuck it up, which in turn became a self-fulfilling prophecy. The golden blade spun out of her mental grasp to slice through the air conditioner on the roof.

  “Shit!” Becky hurried to pick up the Sword of Justice and then jump to the next rooftop before anyone came up to investigate why air conditioning in the building had suddenly broken down. She tried to throw the sword again, this time with her eyes closed. For a few seconds the blade remained under her control, but then it crashed back to the roof, albeit safely.

  She had tried a dozen times with similar results before Marlin found her. “If you’re up to it, there’s a robbery at a market on Eighth and Orchard,” he said.

  “I’m up to it. I’m the Scarlet Knight, remember.”

  “The substitute Scarlet Knight. Try not to get a swelled head.”

  “Whatever.” She followed Marlin across the rooftops until she reached the corner of Eighth and Orchard. She threw herself off the roof of the building. Halfway down, she
snapped the cape up to slow her rate of descent. It worked just as advertised to allow her to land safely behind the market.

  “Well done,” Marlin said. “Now, there’s one man in there with a gun on the cashier. There’s one woman over by the dairy case praying to God. There’s a coward in the snacks aisle wetting himself. If you want my advice—”

  “I’ll take care of it.” Becky opened the market’s back door to step inside. In a similar situation on her first night, Emma had wrapped the cape around herself and tried to sneak up on the robber, but had not counted on a video camera monitor behind the cashier that allowed the robber to see her.

  Becky didn’t bother with a subtle approach. She ran into the market from the back room like a charging bull. “What the—” the robber managed to get out before she collided with him at full speed like a linebacker. The armor knocked the robber back through the market’s front window, where he bled on the sidewalk for the police to arrest, should they ever bother to show up.

  “You wreck store again!” the cashier howled. He reached beneath the counter for a shotgun. “You go now!”

  Becky barely had time to leap through the window the robber had broken; she landed right on top of him. She rolled off of him, which prompted him to groan; she punched him in the mouth. “Stay down, creep,” she said. She picked herself up and saw the cashier had leaped from behind the counter to take a shot at her. Becky took off around the corner; she heard the distant sound of sirens. Tomorrow the ungrateful cashier would bitch on the news about the incident and the Scarlet Knight—again.

  “Well that was an interesting technique,” Marlin said.

  “It got the job done.”

  “I suppose. What it lacked in style it made up for in comedy at least.”

  “Shut up and go find something else for me to break up.”

  “It’s going to be a long night,” Marlin grumbled. Becky nodded to herself. It would be a long night; she just hoped the next person she saved was a little more grateful.

  Chapter 18

  The witches had to visit five taverns before they finally located Glenda. Sylvia had insisted they buy a drink at each dive in Glasgow, Tokyo, Mexico City, Johannesburg, and Prague, so that by the time they reached Dublin, she had begun to wobble a bit when she walked. Despite this, Sylvia ordered a pint of Guiness after she plopped onto a stool next to Glenda.

  “About time you two showed up,” the older witch said.

  Ms. Chiostro took the other stool beside Glenda. The bartender shot her a nasty look when she insisted on a club soda. “I’m watching my figure,” she chirped at him. She batted her eyelashes for effect. The man’s resentment instantly fell away.

  “It’s disgusting to watch you do that,” Glenda said.

  “Aren’t I allowed to use my gifts?” Ms. Chiostro tossed a tress of hair, which practically made the bartender drool. “Why should I go around like an old hag? That’s just a stereotype.”

  “Seemed good enough for you the last hundred odd years.”

  “Yes, well, that was before I saw what happened to poor Tabitha.” Ms. Chiostro shivered at the thought of the woman—four centuries younger than her—turn into a statue of black rock before she had crumbled into ash thanks to Isis. The same had nearly happened to Sylvia, but she had chopped off her hand before the dark magic could spread any farther. “It really makes you think.”

  “We’re not immortal. You already knew that after your mother and Sophie died.”

  “Yes, well, I think I got a little complacent.” The bartender set the club soda in front of Ms. Chiostro and then waited like a puppy. “I think we should go somewhere more private to talk.”

  “Fine with me. This stool is murder on my back anyway.” Ms. Chiostro only shook her head at this. If Glenda wanted she could easily look as young and beautiful as Ms. Chiostro, but she refused. Old habits died hard after three thousand years.

  They found a booth in the corner, where Ms. Chiostro and Glenda faced each other while Sylvia faced the door, watchful as a bodyguard. There wasn’t likely to be anyone in Dublin who would want to kill them, so long as they didn’t display their magic. Otherwise some of the more aggressive Catholics might try to burn them at the stake—the operative word being try.

  Glenda took a sip from her beer bottle. “So your girl’s gotten into more trouble?”

  “I should have known you’d already be aware of it,” Ms. Chiostro said. “Are you watching her? Maybe having a little birdie keeping tabs on her?”

  “Nothing so insidious. I sensed there was something foul afoot. It didn’t take long to figure out who was at the heart of it.” The old witch shook her head. “This girl certainly has a knack for creating problems.”

  “It’s not Emma’s fault. And neither was that business with Isis. She wasn’t the one who dug her up.”

  “No, but she’s the one who sent that damned fool archaeologist there.”

  “She’s also the one who defeated Isis, in case you’ve forgotten.”

  “And she’s the one who insisted we keep that girl alive.”

  “You can’t expect a Scarlet Knight to kill an innocent baby.”

  “Innocent? She’s been touched by Isis.” Glenda took a long pull from her bottle of beer. “Mark my words, one day that’s going to come back to haunt her—and you.”

  Sylvia grunted an affirmative at this. She had wanted to kill the baby they had found in the rubble of Isis’s temple. Deep down, Ms. Chiostro felt the same way, but she knew Emma Earl well enough to know the girl would never harm a child, even a potentially evil one.

  “How is little Eileen?” Ms. Chiostro asked.

  “You want to see her?” Glenda emptied a bowl of pretzels onto the table. Without asking, she took Ms. Chiostro’s club soda and then dumped it into the bowl. After she checked to make sure no one paid any attention to them, she recited a few magic words.

  The club soda thickened until it became solid crystal. In it, like a makeshift television, Ms. Chiostro saw an ordinary nursery with clowns on the wall. A little girl sat at a table in the center of the room, her black hair tied into skimpy pigtails by yellow ribbons that matched her dress. As if she sensed she were being watched, the little girl turned so that her brown eyes looked directly at Ms. Chiostro. The girl’s brown skin brightened as she smiled. “Would you like some tea?” she asked in a sweet little voice.

  At first Ms. Chiostro thought the girl had spoken to her, but then Eileen reached across the table to pick up a doll that looked very similar to her. “Are you sure you don’t want any, Agnes? It’s very good.”

  That the little girl had named her doll after Ms. Chiostro was enough to almost make the witch cry. “Eileen?” a woman’s voice called out. “Are you ready for bed?”

  “In a moment, Mother,” Isis said. The girl’s adopted mother came into the room and wagged a finger at her daughter.

  “It’s past your bedtime, young lady.”

  “I’m sorry, Mother.”

  Eileen’s mother picked her up from the table to kiss her on the cheek. “Let’s go brush your teeth and then you can kiss Daddy goodnight.”

  “Yes, Mother.” The little girl and her mother disappeared from the room. The club soda in the bowl turned to liquid again.

  “Well, she seems happy enough,” Ms. Chiostro said. She dabbed at her eyes. She had raised three children already, but still yearned to be Eileen’s mother.

  “She seems damned creepy,” Sylvia said.

  “She did not. She seemed like a normal little girl.”

  “Do you know many two-year-olds who talk like that? There’s a reason they call them the ‘Terrible Twos.’” Glenda shook her head. “That child hasn’t thrown a single tantrum in the last nine months. The second she could talk she was already speaking with the vocabulary of a ten-year-old. No good is going to come of this.”

  “What do you want us to do: kill her? She’s just a child.”

  “For now she’s a child. Eventually she’ll grow up.”
r />   “We’ll deal with that when the time comes—if it comes.” Ms. Chiostro lifted the bowl to her lips. The club soda retained some of the saltiness from the pretzels, but she didn’t so much as grimace; she didn’t want to show weakness in front of Glenda. “In the meantime, why don’t we get down to our real business?”

  “Very well, but there’s no good news there either.”

  “You don’t know how to change them back?”

  “If it were just a matter of changing them back I could do it with a snap. But with his magic involved, it’s impossible.”

  By his, Glenda meant Merlin the wizard who had created the scarlet armor. It was Sylvia’s turn to snort at this. “You’re saying his magic is too powerful for you?”

  “I’m saying it makes things more complicated. If you don’t want your girl to end up with half her brain stuck in a bird or some other dimension, we have to be careful.”

  “Then we need to go to the archives,” Ms. Chiostro said.

  “You aren’t likely to find much there.”

  “We have to at least try. Emma and Rebecca are counting on us.”

  “Fine, it’s your time to waste. You want me to get a cab for you?”

  “We can get there on our own.” Ms. Chiostro stood up and then swept out of the room; she hoped she didn’t look too much like a haughty teenager. She had always felt that way in Glenda’s presence even when she looked like an old woman. Some habits were hard to break—even after five hundred years.

  ***

  There was a gas station down the street, where Ms. Chiostro got the key for the restroom. Sylvia stood outside to pick at her teeth with her hook while a group of teenagers stared at her. “Grandma, don’t you have to go too?” Ms. Chiostro said loudly enough for the teenagers to hear.

  “I’m fine,” Sylvia said.

  “Well, can you come with me anyway? I don’t like going to strange bathrooms alone.”

  Sylvia grinned evilly at her. “Of course I will, dear. A girl your age has to be careful.” Sylvia put her claw hand around Ms. Chiostro’s shoulder for support to ham it up for the teenagers.