by null
“You’re not wearing it now, though,” said Bridget, commenting on his naked fingers.
“No, I … I gave it to Detective Dollins before I ran off, leaving him to go to his doom.” Bitter reproachment seeped from Knight’s voice as he chastised himself once more for the officer’s death. When Bridget offered the rationale that such could not be his fault, he snapped at her, saying;
“I know that. He was the police officer, the trained professional, the one paid to go out and take the risks for us, the grateful, helpless citizenry. But, knowing the truth of that doesn’t keep me from knowing the other truth, that I knew what he was going to face, and that I knew there was no way he was going to win against it.”
“Then why didn’t you tell him?”
“I …” The professor paused, the horrible scene in the basement flashing through his brain once more, then said, “I did. But he didn’t, wouldn’t listen.”
“Why didn’t you try to convince him?”
“Because …” Knight practically shouted the single word, then stopped himself from continuing. Dropping his head slightly, half-closing his eyes, he froze his anger, pushing it away from himself. Feeling it dissolving, he took a deep breath, shutting his eyes completely for a moment. And, after the moment had been exhausted he finally exhaled, then continued quietly, saying;
“Because he wasn’t the kind of man who quits. If I had told him in exacting detail what he was about to face, if I had managed to convince him of the truth of my knowledge, all I would have done was frighten him. And then maybe he wouldn’t have saved the, well … God only knows how many lives he saved.”
The two sat quietly in the shadow-filled living room, Bridget sipping occasionally at her tea, Knight hanging his head in deep recrimination. Within his mind, conflicting ways to tell his new assistant any more of what happened screamed back and forth, parts of him begging to share some of the secrets he had carried around within himself for so long, others barking down any such foolish notions. Finally deciding he had sat before her in silence long enough, he looked up, ready to continue their discussion.
“Bridget, let me say …”
And then, the professor went silent. Bridget Elkins had slumped over sideways during their brief respite and fallen into what appeared to be a deep sleep. Rising from his chair, Knight pulled a quilt from a nearby stand and spread it over the sleeping girl. Instinct taking over, the redhead pulled the cover up over her shoulder, her body understanding all too well that it was time to rest. As her well-formed legs automatically found their way up onto the couch and under the quilt, the professor crossed the room to the hallway that led upstairs. Staring at his houseguest for a moment, he said;
“Sleep peacefully, oh, so young Bridget Elkins. I’ll reveal a few more of my secrets to you in the morning.”
And then Knight shut down the small light still on in the living room. He would leave the light on in the hallway, just in case she awoke in the night needing the bathroom, or something from the kitchen, or for whatever other reason one might awaken in the middle of the night.
The professor thought about turning off the music as well, but then considered that the softly sung Latin hymns of the twelfth century’s most famous abbess would probably be more comforting for his guest than the police car, fire truck, and ambulance sirens that made up the background noise of the typical Brooklyn night. Giving the girl a second glance, he nodded unconsciously, confirming he had done all he could for her for the moment. And, so deciding, he exited the living room, heading up the stairs to his own bedroom.
Yes, he thought, that’s all I have to do in the morning, reveal more of my secrets. And, of course, explain to the board about the break-in, and the destruction of a useless artifact which had just become one of the most valuable pieces the museum had ever owned. And, of course, what I was doing with an intern in the museum in the middle of the night, and what the police had to do with it, oh, let’s not forget all the blood and bone fragments decorating the main lobby, and …
“Oh,” he told himself aloud as he reached the top of the stairs, “just shut up and go to bed. It’s not as if everything won’t still be just as bad when you get up.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“So, my bright and delightful houseguest, how do you like your eggs?”
Bridget stood in the doorway to Knight’s kitchen, eyes shut lightly, hair an unbrushed rat’s nest, her mouth looming open in a prodigiously wide and vocal yawn. She finally moved a hand to cover her mouth a split second before her yawn ended, realizing the uselessness of the motion even as she made it. Her other hand scratching at the side of her head, working its way through the tangle of her hair, she tried to respond only to find her voice garbled by her need to yawn once more. Sitting down at the kitchen table, she finally asked in a tired voice;
“Eggs?”
“Yes, eggs. You know—hen slugs, cackle fruit. Small, white, oval-shaped, those things they recommend you don’t put all in one basket—”
“I know what eggs are.”
“Ah, then we do have a basis for communication this morning, don’t we?”
The young woman tried to focus her eyes on the professor for a moment, then gave up and simply shut them once more. She had only arisen because the noise coming from the kitchen had invaded her sleep.
It was not that Knight was in any way an overly noisy chef. If Bridget’s slumber had been restful the redhead would have never stirred. But the truth was her sleep had been plagued by discomforting dreams, nightmares confusing and frightening enough to force her mind to search for any reason to escape back to the waking world. Coupling that with the fact that she had slept with her contact lenses in all night, one could readily understand why she might not be in the sunniest of moods.
“You always this obnoxiously chipper in the morning?” The young woman asked the question while focusing one eye on Knight. Her voice beginning to clear from use, she added, “Especially mornings after nights like the one we just had.”
“Well, to be perfectly honest,” the professor replied, one eye on the three large squares of butter melting in his skillet, “I have no way of gauging the level of my chipperness, as it were. There’s never anyone here to comment one way or the other.” Hoisting an egg into cracking position, he asked;
“Now again—eggs?”
“Scrambled?”
“A time-honored method of fixing the venerable, delectable egg,” he replied. “One heartily approved from the tables at Junior’s just down the road, all the way back to the court of Constantine the First. And who knows, perhaps further.” Quickly breaking open a half dozen one after another with one hand, he added, “The bacon is on that plate, there on the table, under those paper towels—”
“Bacon?”
“Yes, you know, pork—beloved by man and dogs, food of the gods, the other white meat …”
Bridget groaned as if being physically assaulted. As Knight tended his skillet of eggs, dashing pepper, stirring and flipping, the redhead sent a hand clawing across the table toward the aforementioned platter. As she lifted the edge of the paper covering with her index finger, the scent of warm bacon slithered outward toward the helpless young woman.
“Oh God, you’re evil—”
“Moi?”
Caught in its siren spell of fatty goodness, Bridget hesitated for a moment, then finally pulled forth a piece, part of her mind assuring her that the resulting damage to her health and figure would be all the professor’s fault while another, more straightforward segment of her brain crowed with joy over the fact that the bacon was both thickly cut and not overly crispy. The young woman devoured the first piece and was pulling two more free when Knight approached the table, a plate in each hand. As he slid one in front of her, eyeing the buttered toast next to her eggs, Bridget swallowed, then asked;
“Do you eat like this all the time?” When the professor assured his assistant that he did, she added, “Then how do you stay so slim? Are you, what—like in the
gym thirty, forty hours a week?”
Knight shook his head, driving a fork into his own eggs with one hand while gathering a handful of bacon with the other. Depositing the strips atop his eggs, he attacked the mass with knife and fork, cutting it all into sections, which he then started shoveling into his mouth with lip-smacking gusto. After his third bite, he started in on a piece of heavily buttered whole wheat toast, talking in between bites.
“No, no time to waste on gyms. I do a lot of walking, however. Here in New York we walk everywhere. One does all their shopping within their own neighborhood.”
“Really?”
“Any place you go in the city, within ten blocks you should be able to find anything you need—bakeries, hardware stores, plumbing supplies, groceries, coffee shops, automotive centers, oh yes. The faces may change, Irish, Italian, Jamaican, one ethnic bundle unrolling over the last, waiting for their turn to be displaced.”
Knight took another staggering mouthful of everything on his plate, leaking noises of enjoyment from the corners of his mouth. Finally, after he managed to swallow the lot, the professor moved away from the tangent he had begun, saying;
“Anyway, it could be the walking, or as I told you yesterday, I am blessed with an exceedingly indulgent metabolism.”
“Along with the superpowers?”
Bridget’s comment brought a hammer down on the china plate of their conversation. The question did not shock Knight, did not catch him off-guard or even give him pause. He had been expecting it. He was not, however, about to stop chewing his mouthful of bacon, eggs, and toast to rush into an answer. Finally swallowing, however, the professor dropped a forkful of eggs onto the remaining bit of his first piece of toast, saying;
“I don’t have any superpowers, lovely Bridget. And, before you begin to protest, allow me to explain.”
The redhead sat back against her chair, unconsciously moving her body straighter. Her eyes wide open, she stared at her superior intently, as if doing so could in some way verify his veracity. Her attention focused upon him to the exclusion of everything else, she did not notice herself planting her feet firmly against the floor, or the fact of her fingers balling into fists, pressing into the flesh of her legs. Barely able to breathe, she simply stared, waiting for the promised explanation.
“I’m a scholar, as you know, of antiquities. I’ve been on digs around the world, have studied in, oh, I don’t even remember how many universities at this point …”
Knight paused for a moment, his eyes taking on a faraway look. Absently picking up a piece of bacon, he held it between two fingers, moving it back and forth in a languid pattern. His voice slower, more thoughtful, he began speaking once more, his eyes still locked on some spot beyond the kitchen.
“I’ve also met my share of outsiders in my time, alchemists, black priests, Wiccans, all manner of both fraudulent and legitimate occult characters, users of magicks black and white … and I’ve, well … I don’t know how else to put it … I’ve learned a few tricks along the way.”
“Tricks?”
“You know the kinds of things I mean, slowing the heart rate until it stops, snake charming, hearing thoughts, dream casting, card reading—”
“And the flying …”
Knight paused once more. The young woman across the table from him could read the hesitation in his eyes, sense the tension mounting throughout the muscles of his neck and shoulders, down his arms. Even his jaw seemed tighter. Then, much to Bridget’s surprise, suddenly he seemed to completely relax. Half his mouth curling into a smile, the professor raised the piece of bacon he had been toying with to his mouth and bit it in half. Chewing the delicious strip, he popped the other half into his mouth as well, then wiped his fingers on his napkin, talking around his bacon while he chewed:
“In the eastern Andes of Peru, in the Urubamba Valley, one finds the ancient city of Machu Picchu. It was built by the Incas at the height of their civilization, a remarkable centrally planned metropolis carved out of a mountainside a mile and a half up in the sky. It was found by modern man in 1911, after it had apparently lain dormant and unused for over four hundred years.” The professor swallowed his half mouthful, unconsciously smacking his lips before he went on, saying;
“It has always been believed that when the Spanish tore through the New World they somehow missed the rich splendor of Machu Picchu and its sister cities. Such is not the case. They found it, all right, and in the early fifteen hundreds they marched up the mountain determined to slaughter and plunder that amazing city as they had so many others. But, when they reached the summit and came roaring in, they found the inhabitants of Machu Picchu all together in the center of town.
“The soldiers, crude and brutish, laughed as they prepared to wipe out yet another civilized population, but their greedy joy turned quickly to fear. The Incas they had surrounded there, eight thousand feet up in the clouds, managed to evade their guns and lances. All of them—every single man, woman, and child—escaped death that day by doing something that so frightened the invaders they reportedly ran all the way back to the floor of the valley without stopping.”
“They flew away?”
Knight let the other side of his mouth curl as well to create a complete smile. He liked his new assistant. She was intelligent, had grit enough not to fold into weeping hysterics after all she had been through, and did not shy away from pork products and all their nitrate-soaked goodness. The tone in her voice held nothing of sarcasm. She was offering her thoughts on the subject, showing an ability to step beyond that which most people were incapable of achieving.
Tell her! a voice from the back of his mind shouted. For Christ’s sake, just tell her—
Reaching into his pant pocket, the professor pulled forth the Disc of the Winds. Handing it to Bridget, he said;
“Yes—that’s exactly what each one of them did … with one of these.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“Professor Knight,” the security guard at the front desk hissed, waving the director frantically over to his station. A rail-thin young black man of average height, he continued in his conspiratorial tone, saying, “If you think alla this is bad,” his hand indicating the score of forensic types working in the lobby, as well as the mob of various media types being held outside the museum, “I got some more bad news for you.”
“Do tell… .”
“Upstairs,” answered the man, shifting his eyebrows upward, “there’s a buncha cops and like worse than that waiting for you in your office—they didn’t none of ’em look like the happiest of dudes, neither. Maybe you might want to be thinking about turning around—sliding back out the door.” Turning his head pointedly away from the professor, he added;
“I can tell ’em straight—I haven’t seen you.”
Putting his hand to his forehead, Knight gave the guard a short salute. “It’s all right, Dix,” he told the younger man, somewhat amused by the fact that he knew his casualness about the matter was in no way what the guard had expected. Feeling he owed Dix an explanation, he added, “Don’t sweat it overly, my friend. I had anticipated as much. Although,” he added as an afterthought, “it will probably be a bit disconcerting to my new assistant. Please keep an eye out for her; take care of her for me.”
Dix promised to do so, asking the professor for a description. As the guard’s eyes went slightly wide and his mouth began to reveal a gleaming grin, Knight added, “I’d also appreciate it if you didn’t start in with one of your patented pickup attacks. She’s a nice girl, one I’d like to get a full summer’s work out of before someone like you crushes all the sweetness out of her.”
The guard made a feeble show of protesting such a description, then suddenly laughed, confessing he could not keep a straight face. After adding that he would be on his best behavior, he then said, “Must be something to do with what all went down here last night, huh?”
“That would be my guess,” Knight responded. Then, lifting his eyebrows playfully, the professor put
his hand to his mouth to disguise his words, adding in a mock sinister whisper, “If not, then I suppose they finally found out about my cocaine-smuggling operation. I have it sent up from Colombia hidden in statues for the museum, you know. And here I thought I was being so clever.”
Dix’s eyes went wide for a split second at such an admission. Then, when he realized Knight was merely having sport with him, the guard pointed an index finger at the professor, chuckling out loud as he said;
“You one crazy white man.”
“That is what they keep telling me.”
As the guard wished Knight “good luck,” the professor accepted the sentiment both graciously and honestly, then walked off toward the elevator bank which would take him to his office, his mouth curling into his familiar one-sided smile. His hand pressing the button to summon his ride, Knight let his mind slip back to the question of his new assistant.
Despite the fact that the redhead had been at least seemingly quite open about her past when they had chatted the day before, Knight knew how clever people could be about hiding those aspects of themselves they did not want known to the world. She had suddenly learned a great deal about him—far more than most ever learned.
What, he wondered, if she’s not all she seems?
Although he hardly thought it possible, there was nothing to say that the young woman was some innocent babe in the woods. She had done her undergraduate work in two different, major cities, after all. There was no avoiding such things. If she had never smoked a single joint, never once gotten falling-down drunk, never snorted a powder or popped a pill, et cetera, she would be a rare young American, indeed.
I suppose you think she’s still a virgin, too.
Knight found no quick answer coming into his brain to answer the snide thought, one that made him feel a trifle embarrassed. Who was he, he asked himself, to be wondering about such things? After all, the professor reminded the leering side of his brain, there were such people to be found in every corner of the world. Even in the United States they numbered in the tens of millions. After so many years in a place like New York City, however, Knight had to admit that perhaps he had become more than a trifle jaded.
