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

  “Then you had better tell them to stop it.”

  “Or what will you do, Dr. Earl? Tell your American embassy to send in the Marines? Your government would not be so foolish. Many of them already belong to me.”

  “If you don’t stop it, the Grakistanis are going to come back and hit you much harder. I can assure you of that.”

  “Perhaps. In which case my country will have no choice but to put down this rogue nation and its aggressive ways. The loss of life will be catastrophic: women, children, the elderly. And people in your country will watch it on their televisions and wring their hands, but in the end they will do nothing. They cannot afford to.”

  Emma could sense that Bykov had her over the proverbial barrel. For that matter he had the Grakistanis over the barrel too. The raid last night had played right into Bykov’s hands. He was probably disappointed Sylvia’s weapons hadn’t killed anyone so the case for war between Russia and its much tinier neighbor would be stronger. “You haven’t won yet.”

  “Not yet.” The man smiled at Emma, which prompted her to shiver. “In any case, we have more important business to discuss.”

  “I’m not doing any more business with you.”

  “You don’t have a choice.” Bykov whistled sharply. The doors opened to reveal the two-dozen burly thugs Emma had expected. They all carried AK-47s that were definitely not magically booby-trapped. “You will do this one thing for me and in return I will let you live.”

  “I won’t do it. Not unless you guarantee safety for the Grakistanis.”

  “You are in no position for such demands. I could easily have you killed and replaced with someone more rational, but it would be a waste of your talents.”

  Though she hated to admit it, Bykov was right. She was trapped. Not even the scarlet armor could save her at the moment, as there was no way for her to get it on before one of the goons shot her. “What do you want?”

  Bykov snapped his fingers. Markova stepped forward with a metal box the size of a ripe watermelon. She laid it on the table and then took a step back to allow her employer to open it. Emma gasped when she saw what was inside.

  It was a meteor.

  Chapter 8

  The meteor looked unlike any Emma had seen before either firsthand or in books. Its size and glossy dark brown color weren’t all that unusual. What made it so unusual was that it glowed.

  She took a step back from the meteor. “Don’t worry, Dr. Earl. My people assure me it is not radioactive.”

  “Did they tell you why it’s glowing?”

  “No, but you will.”

  “So you didn’t really need a geological survey of those fields, did you?”

  “Yes, but I could have found anyone to do that. For this I require someone of your expertise. You are the best in the field, are you not?”

  “I don’t know about that.”

  “Don’t be modest, Doctor. I’ve read your work. It’s quite good, especially for a girl so young. You should be proud.”

  “Why didn’t you just tell me you had a meteor you wanted studied? Why did you lie to me about it?”

  “I think you can see this is something special. I couldn’t risk someone else learning of it before I knew what I had.”

  Though Bykov had assured her the meteor was not radioactive, Emma still maintained her distance. There was something special about it all right—something dangerous. When she looked at it, she got the same feeling as when she had been around the armor for the Black Dragoon. A warning voice buzzed in her mind to tell her to run away, not that she could with so many weapons aimed at her.

  “I can’t tell you much here,” she said. “I need a proper laboratory.”

  “I’ve already arranged a facility downstairs for you. Anything else you need, I will provide for you.”

  “And what exactly do you want me to do?”

  “I want you to tell me what this is worth.”

  “Money? That’s all you want with it?”

  “Not only money, Dr. Earl. If this meteor truly is special, then it will be the greatest scientific find ever. And it will be my name attached to this achievement—and yours as well.”

  “I don’t need any glory.”

  “Come now, Doctor, haven’t you spent your entire professional life searching for a discovery like this? And now I offer it to you on a silver platter. You should be overjoyed at such an opportunity.” He tried to put a hand on her shoulder but she shrugged it away. “I’m not sure you’re seeing the entire picture. You’ll never have to worry about financial security again. You’ll have any position you want, anywhere you want. Your name will be mentioned alongside Einstein and Newton and the rest.”

  “And all I have to do is sell my soul to you.”

  “Don’t be so dramatic, Doctor. I’m doing nothing illegal here.”

  “Just in Grakistan.” She narrowed her eyes to glare at Bykov. “How did you obtain this meteor? Who’d you have killed to get it?”

  Bykov laughed. “You’re quite mistaken, Doctor. I didn’t have to kill anyone. It practically fell right into my lap. Or to be more precise, it fell into my son’s lap.”

  “Where is he? I might want to speak with him about it.”

  “As I told you, Ivan is off hunting. Bears or women I cannot say. There’s little he could tell you. He was passed out drunk at my hunting lodge near St. Petersburg with some whore. The meteor came down through the roof and nearly crushed his foolish head. He woke up long enough to call Katarina.”

  “Is that true?” Emma asked Markova.

  “Yes. He was unconscious again when I arrived. I called in a hazardous materials team to make sure it wasn’t dangerous. Then I brought it here so you could study it.”

  “What if I don’t want to help you?”

  Bykov gestured to the armed guards. “Then you’ll end up in a shallow grave and someone else’s name will go into the history books.”

  Emma looked around helplessly. There was nothing she could do at the moment but play along and hope an opportunity to escape presented itself. “Show me this lab you’ve set up.”

  ***

  Markova led her through the kitchen, into the pantry. A guard moved aside a box of silverware to reveal a trapdoor. “During Soviet times, this led to a bunker,” she explained as she climbed down a metal ladder.

  Emma expected to find a dirt or concrete room similar to the Sanctuary beneath the Plaine Museum back in Rampart City. Instead, she found an apartment larger and more luxurious than her own had ever been. “There is food and water stocked in the kitchen, enough to last for several months. And of course the bathroom is fully operational.” Markova led Emma through the living room, kitchen, and dining room into what might have been a library but was now a makeshift laboratory. “This is where you will be working. I will come down every day to check on your progress and report to Mr. Bykov.”

  Emma had to admit that as far as prisons went, this one wasn’t bad. Still, it was a prison nonetheless. “Why are you doing this? He could have contacted any museum or university in the world and turned it over for research. There’s no need for any of this.”

  “My employer does not want to let the meteor out of his possession until he knows how valuable it is,” Markova said. “Please do not make this harder than it needs to be. Do the work and then I will make sure you are freed.”

  “Katarina, please, you have to see what he’s doing is wrong. Innocent people are dying so he can make more money. Doesn’t that bother you?”

  “Mr. Bykov took me in when I had no one. He raised me like his own daughter. I owe him my life.”

  “What about those other lives? Don’t you care about them?”

  “It is not my concern.” Markova took a step back. “I will return to check on your progress. Please do not let Mr. Bykov down.”

  “Katarina—” Emma tried to grab the other woman by the shoulder, but a guard stepped forward to block her; he smashed the butt of his rifle into her abdomen. Emma dropped to her knees
as she struggled to breathe.

  Markova barked a warning at the guard. “I am sorry about that, Dr. Earl. Perhaps it will remind you of the gravity of this situation.”

  Emma could say nothing as Markova left the bunker, trailed by the guards. The hatch slammed shut to seal her into her underground prison.

  ***

  Most of the food in the kitchen was canned or freeze-dried, the type you would expect to find in a bunker a hundred feet underground. In preparation of Emma’s arrival someone had brought down a variety of cheeses and vegetables. Her stomach growled to remind her she hadn’t eaten anything since what passed for stroganoff at the encampment. She took out some of the vegetables to make herself a salad.

  “This is the nicest dungeon I’ve ever seen,” Marlin said. “I remember this one in Jerusalem in what must have been the 11th Century—”

  “I don’t want to hear it,” she said. She knew the details were likely to kill her appetite. “I suppose you’re here to tell me to summon the armor to escape and put a stop to all of this?”

  “You have to admit it’s better than sitting around here.”

  “I’m not doing that anymore.”

  “So you’re just going to let them kill you because of some stupid rule you invented?”

  “I don’t expect you to understand.” There were no knives in the kitchen for obvious reasons, which left Emma with no choice but to tear apart the head of lettuce. She wished she could do the same to Bykov. But then that was the problem: she had killed once already, so now it would be easy enough to kill again. Where did it stop? And how did it make her any better than Bykov or Don Vendetta or one of their mindless thugs?

  “This is no time for foolish pride. That man wasn’t anything special. He was a lowlife who nearly killed dozens of innocent people—and you. He isn’t worth this much trouble.”

  “It doesn’t matter who he was or if he was a bad person. I killed him.” She finished with the lettuce and dropped it into a bowl. She stared at her hands for a moment. “I promised myself no one would ever die because of me again.”

  “So this is about your parents? I thought you had gotten over that already.”

  “I can’t ever ‘get over it.’ Can’t you understand that?”

  “You’re behaving like a child. You know you didn’t kill your parents and you know you didn’t mean to kill that man. Stop all this sulking and do what needs to be done. Do your job.”

  “Fine, I will,” Emma said. She took the bowl of salad into the makeshift laboratory. One of the guards had left the meteor on the worktable.

  “That isn’t the job I meant.”

  Emma couldn’t help but notice the ghost stayed in the doorway, far away from the meteor. “You can sense it too, can’t you? There’s something not right about this.”

  “You mean other than it’s glowing?”

  “That’s part of it.” Emma chewed thoughtfully on a mouthful of lettuce. “There’s no sense leaving here until I know what it is.”

  “Yes, well, good luck with that. I’ll just leave you to it then.”

  Emma waited until the ghost left to push aside the bowl of salad so she could look closer at the meteor. Her mind continued to buzz warnings, but she ignored these. She had a job to do. She reached out to take the meteor from its metal container—

  An electric charge ran through her and shot her across the room to slam into a wall. The world around her turned dark.

  Chapter 9

  Emma pulls the blankets over her head, not wanting to look. Even if she does look, it won’t be there. It’ll slither away out of her vision. She’ll still be able to feel it there. Through the blankets she can still feel it watch her, stare at her, as it waits for its chance.

  She tries to remind herself she’s a big girl now, five-and-a-half years old. That’s too old to believe in monsters in the closet or under the bed. Only babies still believe in stories like that. There’s no such thing as monsters.

  She turns underneath the blankets to face the wall. This does nothing to calm her nerves as it only makes her more vulnerable when the monster emerges from the closet to devour her. Still, she refuses to turn back to face the closet. She won’t give in. She’ll lie here and stare at the wall and go to sleep. In the morning Mommy will wake her up for school and she’ll open the closet door and there won’t be anything inside except her clothes and toys—only the things that should be in there.

  She squeezes her eyes shut and wills herself to sleep. There’s nothing to be scared of. She’s perfectly safe—

  A crash from within the closet prompts Emma to bolt from her bed. She races down the hallway to her parents’s bedroom. She throws open the door and then catapults into the bed between them. Before either of them can sit up, she’s already pressed herself to Mommy and buries her face in Mommy’s nightgown.

  “Emma, what’s wrong? Did you have a nightmare, baby?”

  “No. There’s a monster in the closet.”

  “Oh, sweetie, there’s no such thing as monsters.”

  “What about the ones on Sesame Street?”

  “Those are just puppets,” Mommy says. She pats Emma on the head. “You know that, baby. We’ve talked about this before, haven’t we?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what happened?”

  “Daddy opened the closet and there was no monster.”

  “That’s right. There was no monster.”

  “But this time there is! I can feel it. I know it’s real!” She begins to cry at this. Mommy pats her head again. “It’s real this time!”

  She feels Daddy’s big hand on her back. “It’s all right, kiddo. I’ll take care of it.” He crawls out of bed and then turns on a light so he can find his glasses. “Now, I’m going to show you there’s no monster in there and then you’re going to sleep in your bed like a big girl.”

  Mommy wraps her arms around Emma to lift her from the bed. Emma clings to Mommy, her head on Mommy’s shoulder. The warmth and softness of Mommy’s body makes her feel safe and secure, like nothing can hurt her.

  They follow Daddy along the hallway, back to her bedroom. He turns on the cat ballerina lamp beside Emma’s bed. The lamp’s dim yellow light casts shadows around the room that prompt Emma to bury her face in Mommy’s hair. She braces herself as Daddy reaches for the closet doors. They creak open—

  “There’s nothing here, honey. Just a few of your toys fell off a shelf.” She turns her head to see Daddy bend down to pick up a stuffed grasshopper. “That’s all it was, see?”

  “No it’s not! I can still feel it.” She points to a corner darkened by shadows. “It’s over there. It’s hiding.”

  Mommy runs a hand through Emma’s hair. “Now, sweetie—”

  “It’s there!”

  “What does it look like, honey?” Daddy asks.

  “I can’t see it. I just know it’s there.”

  Daddy reaches into the corner and waves his arm around. “See? Nothing there.”

  “I know it’s there. I know it is!”

  “Emma, please, you know better than to lie.”

  “I’m not wying!” she screams, unable to control her speech impediment. She begins to sob; Mommy’s hair absorbs her tears. “I’m not!”

  Mommy pats her back. “All right, sweetie. I’m sorry. You’re not lying. But there’s nothing here. There’s no one in here but you, Daddy, and me. Do you understand?”

  “But I can feel it.”

  “Everyone is scared of the dark sometimes, baby. But there’s nothing there that isn’t there when the lights are on.”

  Emma knows this is true and that there is no monster, that monsters don’t exist. But she can still feel the presence of something at the edge of her vision, just out of sight. It’s not her imagination.

  Mommy passes her into Daddy’s arms. He eases her onto the bed and looks down at her with a smile. “It’ll be all right, honey. I’ll stay right here until you fall asleep, OK?”

  “Carl, she has to learn to
get to sleep on her own.”

  “Just for tonight, right, kiddo?”

  “Yes.” She sits up to kiss Daddy on the cheek. He pulls the blankets up to her chin and then brushes hair away from her face to kiss her forehead. “I love you, Daddy.”

  “I love you too, sweetie.” She closes her eyes, but she can feel him beside the bed, her tiny hand wrapped in his much larger one. She can also feel the monster still there in the corner as it waits for its chance to strike. She knows not even Daddy can protect her from it forever; one day it will emerge from the shadows to devour her.

  Chapter 10

  When she woke up, it took Emma a few moments to remember she wasn’t five years old anymore and that her father was not next to the bed. He had been dead for over seventeen years now. She wasn’t in Parkdale or even Rampart City; she was in the bunker of an evil Russian tycoon.

  “What happened to you?” Markova asked. The woman bent down to help Emma sit up.

  “I’m not sure. I touched the meteor and then there was a shock and I landed here.” She didn’t mention anything about her dream—or rather her memory, a memory she had not thought of in twenty years. “Did you booby trap the case?”

  “Why would we do that?”

  “I don’t know, to make sure I don’t steal it or destroy it?”

  “That would be counterproductive to our goals.”

  “True, but maybe your employer changed his mind about me.”

  “He would not do that, not until he gets what he wants.”

  Emma only grunted in response to this. She touched the back of her head and felt dried blood, but there didn’t seem to be any other damage. Markova offered a hand to help pull Emma to her feet. The room seemed to tip and sway for a moment before it came to rest.

  “Do you require a doctor?”

  “No, I think I just need to lie down for a bit. If that’s OK with you and your employer.”

  “Of course. We are not monsters, despite what you might think.”

  “I don’t think you’re a monster. I think he’s a monster.”