Standing on a second-floor balcony, Rahnasto looked down at the dance floor. The eagle in the center of the floor was missing one of its black marble wings and most of a foot; no one would be holding any dances here for a long time. He reached into his jacket for the roll of Tums and popped a couple in his mouth.
Below, hundreds of his soldiers milled around, most of them smoking and swapping jokes, their voices echoing off the white marble columns. None of them knew why they had been summoned, nor did Rahnasto, not really. That maniac Set wanted them here to make some kind of grand announcement. Rahnasto didn’t want to imagine what it would entail.
He turned to Andropov and asked, “Any sign of him yet?”
“No, sir. No one’s seen anything but our people.”
Rahnasto shook his head. He hoped this wasn’t an elaborate ruse, a practical joke. Or maybe Set would call the police and have them all rounded up. No, that wasn’t his style. He would be far more likely to use that staff of his to cave the roof in on them. Why else hold the meeting in this dilapidated building?
At the stroke of three, a bolt of lightning rained down from above to strike the center of the eagle on the dance floor. The black marble exploded, most of the eagle winding up in tiny pieces against the wall. Set’s voice boomed, “We will bring another, much larger eagle to its demise. Tomorrow night we will begin a campaign unlike any other. We will bring this city and then this entire feeble nation to its knees!”
Rahnasto searched the balconies for Set. He finally saw him on the fifth floor. Some of the soldiers below must have seen him as well. They aimed their guns at the fifth floor, not that it would do any good. Even if they had the range, bullets couldn’t hurt this monster.
The monster jumped from the balcony. He plunged through the air, ignoring the shots fired by some of the more jittery soldiers below. Set came down in the center of the eagle that he had blasted moments earlier, landing as easily as a feather.
His red eyes glowed as he surveyed his audience. “For too long we have been enslaved by a government that cares little for its people, a government that uses its citizens as pawns in its power games. That time will soon be at an end. We will bring this country low, starting here, in Ren City. And you will help me.”
“Why should we?” one soldier asked, the same question Rahnasto was thinking but wasn’t dumb enough to ask.
“Because you have two choices: join me or die.” The eyes on the staff flashed red. A bolt of lightning struck the soldier dead just as it had Dominguez and nearly the Silver Seraph. Set swept the staff around, glaring at his audience. “You of course require financial incentive. Let me say that my new government will be very sensitive to your needs. You will finally have free rein to do as you wish, without any worry about interference.”
No one dared to ask how this would be accomplished. Set must have known it was on all their minds, though. “The lifeblood of this nation is its money. That is where we will strike first. Tomorrow we will raze every major bank in this city. We will loot and plunder in a way never seen before.
“When we have finished, we will begin hitting other targets. Renaissance City will be brought to its knees, drowned in a sea of chaos. From here we will spread, until we have enveloped this country from one ocean to the other.”
There were no cheers, not even polite applause. No one dared to say anything. Rahnasto imagined most of them were thinking about how quickly they could get on a plane, train, or bus out of Ren City, away from this lunatic. Rahnasto shook his head; these men weren’t an army, they were criminals. They, like him, cared for only one cause: money. Risking open war with the Federal government was not a lucrative idea.
“There are no doubt many cowards among you. Those who try to desert me will wind up like this one.” Set kicked the dead soldier. “Do not attempt to betray me either. You will assemble here tomorrow. I will provide Mr. Rahnasto with a list of our targets and the weapons necessary. That is all. Go and rest for tomorrow the war begins!”
Rahnasto leaned against a pillar, watching as the bewildered soldiers filed out. No one said anything, probably still afraid of getting a lightning bolt through the chest. He and Andropov waited for Set to appear on the balcony. As promised, he had a list of fifty major banks in the city. At the top of the list was the Federal Reserve bank.
“The Fed? That place is a fortress.”
“Leave it to me,” Set hissed.
Then he was gone. Rahnasto sighed and turned to Andropov. “Get started on his list. Have everything ready by tomorrow night, understand?”
“Yes, Mr. Rahnasto.”
“Good.” Rahnasto staggered out to his waiting car. At a moment like this he wished the Private Eye were inside; he’d let the do-gooder shoot him this time.
Chapter 14
The silver trunk didn’t have any handles or even a lock to keep it sealed. Lois turned to Percy and said, “Am I supposed to say ‘Open Sesame’ or something?”
“Just get close enough and it’ll open for you.”
“How convenient.” She knelt down in front of the trunk. The swan on the lid came to life, its eyes turning blue as it stared at her. The swan let out a loud trumpeting sound and then went back to being inanimate. Lois continued to stare at it until the lid opened.
Every kid growing up in Ren City knew about the Silver Seraph. There weren’t any good pictures of her, so that descriptions of her varied wildly on the playgrounds. Everyone agreed that her armor was silver and that she was a she. Lois had never put much stock into those stories, finding the idea of superheroes to be juvenile.
She couldn’t deny those stories as she held the Seraph’s helmet in her hand. The wings on either side of the helmet were similar to those of the swan on the lid. She opened the visor and tried to imagine Mom’s face behind it. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t believe it. Mom wasn’t a superhero; it wasn’t possible for a woman who never raised her voice to beat the crap out of people as a hobby.
If she needed any further proof, she found it in the white boots that came with the armor. The size-12 boots could only belong to Mom with her huge clown feet. Feet that would never move again, at least not on their own.
This thought snapped Lois back to reality. This Set person had crippled Mom and Lois was going to find him and teach him a lesson. She finished laying out the armor, noting how big it was, sized for Mom’s body. She held the breastplate up against her chest and found that it went all the way down to her thighs. “Maybe your armor should have picked someone taller.”
“It’ll adjust to fit. It is magic armor after all,” Percy said.
She muttered something under her breath and then decided to start with the boots. Her feet were about the same size as Mom’s, but as she watched, the boots started to glow white as they shrank an inch or two for her. Next she picked up the leg pieces and began assembling them. As she strapped each one on, it would glow white for a moment and then shrink to fit. As she flexed her leg, she noted the armor didn’t feel any heavier than a pair of jeans. Magic armor indeed.
She saved the breastplate for almost last. This time when she held it up and began buckling it, it glowed white and started to shrink. At the same time, it expanded outward to accommodate her breasts, which since she was fourteen had been bigger than her mother’s, something she’d taken pride in back then. Except Mom didn’t have any breasts now, not after what Set had done to her.
With this sobering thought in mind she picked up the helmet. She tried pushing her hair up to fit inside, but a few tendrils snuck through. She would have to get a haircut at some point to make it more manageable.
She turned to face Percy, flipping up the helmet’s visor. “How do I look?”
“I think you’ve set a new record as the shortest to ever wear the armor. The previous holder back in 1790 was five-feet six inches. You have him beat by at least seven inches I’d say.”
“I’m not that short.” She usually listed her height as five-two on her driver’s licen
ses, although she was probably an inch or two shorter. “Maybe the boots can give me a little extra lift.” She waited but nothing happened; apparently the armor only resized to fit, not to improve her self-esteem.
“Well, I suppose it’ll make you more agile,” Percy said. “Or something like that.”
“Gee, you’re such a great teacher. Where they’d find you at anyway?”
“I was the first Seraph. It’s a long story, but suffice it to say that after Arthur died, someone had to carry on. Merlin made this armor and I was chosen to wear it much the same way you were.”
“With a trippy dream?”
“Yes. It led me to Merlin’s cave and he instructed me in how to use the armor to continue fighting against darkness. After I died, Merlin asked me to stay on as a spirit to teach the others. Since it was either stay as a ghost or take my chances with the Great Beyond, I decided to stay.”
“You took the coward’s way out,” Lois said. “Now you’re here, haunting a natural history museum.”
“I don’t haunt the museum. I’m not rattling chains or any of that nonsense.”
“So what did you do for Mom?”
“First I helped to train her about the armor, which is what we will be doing tonight.”
“What about Set?”
“You can’t fight him until you know how the armor works.” The ghost crossed his arms and gave her a hard stare. “He nearly killed your mother and she was perhaps the best in our history.”
Lois snorted. That figured. If Mom were going to be a superhero she would have to be the best at it, just as she had been the best at everything else in her life. There seemed to be no way for Lois to escape her shadow. She sighed and said, “Fine, what do you want to do?”
“First you’ll need the cape so you can get out of here.”
“Hey, I don’t mind this silly armor, but I draw the line at a cape.”
“The cape isn’t just for decoration. It allows you to become invisible and it can serve as a parachute for long jumps.”
“Oh.” Lois reached into the trunk, bringing out a stack of shimmering white material. She shook it out, hoping that it too would shrink to accommodate her. She tied it to hooks on the shoulders of the armor and then took hold of the cape to flourish it around a few times. “So how do I turn invisible?”
“You have to wrap the cape around your body.”
“Fine.” She tried whipping the cape around like she’d seen Dracula do in the movies. Instead of turning invisible, she wound up on her rear end. Percy rolled his eyes at her while she felt her face turning warm. Some superhero, she thought. “Don’t say anything.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it. Though perhaps you should practice it a bit more.”
She nodded and got back to her feet. This time she didn’t try using such a violent motion, letting centrifugal force do most of the work for her. The cape went smoothly around her body. She could still see herself, though. “Did it work?”
“There’s only one way to find out. But first, you should probably grab your weapon.”
“My weapon?”
“Caledfwlch. The blade of the great king himself, forged by—”
“Yeah, I know the story. Arthur pulled it out of the stone and all that. How’d you end up with it?”
“There wouldn’t be much point in having magic armor without some kind of magic weapon to go with it, would there? Why should Merlin fashion a second blade when he already had a perfectly good one?”
“So you’re saying he was too lazy to make another sword?”
The ghost shook his head. “I don’t know how your mother ever put up with you.”
“I don’t know either,” Lois said. She reached into the trunk and found a black scabbard with silver stripes. The hilt of the sword was also silver, the neck of a swan wrapping around it. She gripped the hilt and then gave the sword a firm tug. The blade sprang out, glowing white. Looking more closely at it, she saw the blade wasn’t metal; it was made of crystal, as if Merlin had carved it out of a diamond. “I bet this would fetch a few grand at a pawn shop. Is it really a diamond?”
“Of course not. It’s a magic crystal, the kind not in existence anymore. With it you can cut through anything of this earth. It will also respond to your thoughts. I’d suggest trying that, but we need a bit more open space for that.”
“Then let’s go somewhere more open,” Lois said.
* * *
As Percy had said, the only way to test the armor’s invisibility was to go out and see if anyone could see her. She managed to wrap the cape around herself without falling down, though she found it hard to walk with the cape like that. She shuffled down the hallway, back to the elevator. This time she hoped there was a cop in the elevator, or that they would be waiting for her when she got where she was going.
There was no one in the elevator when the doors opened. The smart thing would be to go to the first floor and then out of the museum. But seeing the button for the third floor, she had another idea. She pressed the button for the third floor and then listened to the elevator grind its way up.
Percy’s head appeared through the doors as he asked, “Are you sure this is wise?”
“No, but it’ll be a great test.”
The doors opened on the third floor. Even from down the hallway she could see the yellow tape blocking off the Egyptology department and two policemen on duty. If that bitch Detective Murphy knew she was up here she would have Lois thrown in jail, but Lois had to take the chance. She had to see what had happened to Dr. Johnson.
The uniformed cops didn’t look her way as she shuffled towards them. They were discussing the pitching rotation for the Rennies as she came up to them. She pressed herself against the wall, hoping they didn’t run into her. They kept talking for at least five minutes, until one said, “I’m going down for a smoke. You want a coffee or anything?”
“Yeah. Make it black. This place is so fucking boring. I don’t know who Murphy thinks is going to show up here.”
“Better than driving around collecting drunks.”
“I suppose so. Just make it quick, would you?”
“Right.” The one officer sauntered off, leaving just one between her and the door. She waited until he began pacing to ease herself over to the door. The hard part came in ducking beneath the yellow tape without letting the cape drop.
Then she was inside. She found more tape sealing off Dr. Johnson’s office. With the cops outside, she didn’t have to be so careful with this tape.
She barely held in a gasp once she was inside. The office had been trashed, either by Set or the police, she didn’t know. She saw tape on the floor marking where Dr. Johnson’s body had been found. The tape wasn’t necessary since there was still a patch of blood on the floor. She bent down, staring at the blood in disbelief. Dr. Johnson had died here.
“Find what you’re looking for?” Percy asked.
“Not yet,” she whispered. She crept around Dr. Johnson’s desk, finding the drawers flung open and emptied out. The CPU on the floor was just a hunk of melted plastic and metal, as if it had been struck by lightning. That gave credence to what Percy had said about this Set character. It also meant there was nothing for her to find; Set had already covered his tracks.
“If you’re finished, may I suggest you use the window?”
“The window?”
“Go out on the ledge.”
Lois opened the window, grateful that the alarms had been turned off or destroyed. The ledge was about a foot wide, a bit narrow for her feet. Still she managed to ease herself along the edge of it until she was away from the window. Then she let the cape drop. “Now what?”
“Turn around and stick your gauntlets against the wall.”
She did as he suggested. She put her left gauntlet against the wall. When she tried to pull it back, she found it took a bit of effort. Looking closer at the gauntlet, she saw tiny suction cups had appeared along it. She stuck the gauntlet back against the wall and then tried
the right one as well. Similar suction cups allowed her feet to stick to the walls as well. These made it far easier to climb up to the roof than it had been to climb up Jeff’s skeleton all those years ago.
Percy waited for her at the top. “That was impressive. Now let’s practice a bit with the sword.”
“Sure,” Lois said and pulled Caledfwlch from its scabbard. “So it will respond to my thoughts?”
“That’s right. So long as you concentrate. How do you think Arthur got it out of that stone?” She shrugged at this. He said, “Let’s start with that. Stick the sword into the roof and try to pull it out with your mind. A smart girl like you can do that, can’t she?”
“I suppose.” She jammed the sword into the roof, not hard enough to cut all the way through, just enough so that it would stand up. Then she took a step back and stared at the white crystal blade. Nothing happened. She squinted at it, willing it to move, but still nothing happened. She turned to Percy. “Are you hazing me? Does this thing really work?”
“Of course it does. You just need to focus.”
She snorted; patience had never been her strong suit. “I bet Mom got this to work pretty quick, didn’t she?”
“To move the sword, yes. It took her a bit longer to master her control.”
“Then I’ll probably never get the hang of it.”
“It’s not that hard. Most of us in the society weren’t MENSA candidates but we managed to do it.”
“That’s comforting.” She closed her eyes and took a few deep breaths. She thought of what the martial arts books she’d read said about clearing your mind of all other thoughts and focusing on the moment. Or maybe that was Yoda in Star Wars. She tried to think of nothing except the sword, not about Mom or Dr. Johnson—
She heard the sound of metal clattering on stone. Opening her eyes, she saw Caledfwlch lying flat on the roof. “Did the wind knock it over?”
The Night's Legacy Page 15
