Tales of the Scarlet Knight Collection: The Wrath of Isis

by P. T. Dilloway

  Emma wondered who had finally reported Megan as missing. Had the housekeeper called Megan’s father? Or perhaps Captain Donovan had contacted the father to let him know his daughter had been missing from school all week. In either case, it brought a stab of guilt to Emma as she realized she’d completely forgotten about Megan since Pepe had told her about the explosion in the sewers. She hadn’t made much progress on the case in any event, but how could she set it aside?

  Someone else could find her now, Emma tried to tell herself. With the news reports, everyone in the metropolitan area—perhaps the nation if the major networks picked up the story—would be searching for Megan Putnam. Besides, no one knew if the girl was actually in danger or if she had simply run away.

  None of these rationalizations made Emma feel better. She had promised herself she would look for Megan and find her. Could she really put that aside for Jim? She thought again of him floating in the sewage and made her decision. She found a flashlight and then set out for the nearest bus stop.

  ***

  The police had left the area by the explosion, but there was still a pair of water department vehicles parked around the manhole cover, that had tied up traffic. The bus driver cursed about this as he steered past the city trucks to the next bus stop. Emma was the first one through the doors; she pushed her way through the crowds on the sidewalk until she found an alley with a storm drain. A bum had set up a cardboard house on top of the drain. With the incentive of five dollars, he was more than willing to move over a couple of feet.

  “You going down there, girlie?” the bum asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Maybe you’d like a little protection.”

  “No thanks.” She could imagine that the bum’s idea of “protection” would be to knock her out and then rob or rape her—possibly both. “I can handle it.”

  “Your loss,” he grumbled as she climbed down into the storm drain. From there she slid down the pipe that led into the sewers themselves. She tried not to think about how many showers she would need to get the stink of the sewers off of her. At the very least when she got back, Jim might feel more at home.

  She turned on the flashlight after she got to her feet and then swept the beam around. A pair of rats scurried into the darkness. She wondered if these were of a tribe friendly with Jim or one of the rogue groups that refused to recognize him as a leader. There’s only one way to find out, she thought.

  “Hello,” she said in ratspeak. “I am a friend of the king.” She couldn’t bring herself to use the title “queen” that Pepe used to describe her to the other rats. She hoped they would at least understand the concept of “friend.”

  One of the rats edged forward into the light. It tentatively squeaked back that the king was dead. “He lives,” she said. “He’s recovering aboveground.”

  The rats conversed between themselves for a few moments. The one finally asked why she had come down there. “I want to find out who tried to kill him and bring them to justice.” Rat justice varied wildly from her notion of justice; rats didn’t bother with juries or trials. They didn’t have prisons either. They would simply have a duel where the winner was right and the loser was dead.

  For this reason, the rats were excited to help her in her search. She told them what Jim and Pepe had said and then held up the remote control she’d found. “Did you see anyone carrying something like this?”

  They hadn’t, but promised they would ask their comrades. She supposed that was the best she could hope for at the moment. Since rats wouldn’t understand an address and she couldn’t accurately give Pepe’s name in ratspeak, she said, “I will send a representative down to meet you. He will be the one with the silver stripe on his back.” They seemed to understand this well enough and disappeared to spread the word.

  She continued to walk through the sewers, in search of another clue. She sniffed the air to try to pick up the leather scent Jim had smelled. Mostly she just smelled the sewage around her; Jim’s nose was more finely tuned after years in the sewers. She regretted she hadn’t asked Pepe to come along, not only to help her communicate with the other rats but also that his nose would be better able to find that leather odor.

  After two hours, she wound up within only a few blocks of the Plaine Museum and the Sanctuary. There wasn’t an actual shower there, but she had found a water pipe she could tap for a cold shower if need be. She also kept some extra clothes there for those times when she fell asleep in the Sanctuary and didn’t have time to get home before her first class. For those reasons, she started off in that direction.

  It didn’t surprise her when Marlin appeared before her. “Is this some kind of new beauty ritual? Douse yourself in raw sewage?” he said.

  “Shut up,” she said, harsher than she intended.

  “Looking for your friend? He’s probably off building another monument to you out of toilet paper.”

  “I know where Jim is,” she said and then told Marlin what had happened.

  It was one of the rare occasions when Marlin apologized for being insensitive. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I heard there was a blast underground but I thought some bloke had just lit a match in the wrong place.”

  She showed the remote control to the ghost and repeated what Jim had said. “You didn’t see anyone down here?”

  “No, but then I wasn’t really looking. You really think someone would try to kill him? Not like he has any money.”

  “I don’t know. He might have just been in the wrong place at the wrong time.” She made her way to the ladder that led up into the Sanctuary, which was the sub-subbasement of the Plaine Museum. At one time it had been a bomb shelter, until Percival Graves—the previous incarnation of the Scarlet Knight—had discovered it and used it as a hideout.

  Despite that Marlin was a ghost, Emma ordered him to wait outside the Sanctuary as she pushed aside the fake wall and then crawled inside. While she showered, she ran through everything again. She didn’t have nearly enough pieces of the puzzle at the moment to make sense of anything.

  After she toweled off and dressed in a gray coverall taken from the Plaine Museum maintenance staff with “Burt” sewed on the left breast, she sat down at the Sanctuary’s computer. It didn’t take her long to bring up the location of the explosion. As she expected, there wasn’t anything of obvious value in the area. No banks or commodity exchanges or jewelry stores. Mostly there were just lawyers and doctors, those who couldn’t afford digs in more prosperous areas of the city.

  About two blocks away she saw the new headquarters for TriTech, where Sylvia’s boyfriend worked. She would have to pay Sylvia a visit later and ask the witch what sort of things TriTech worked on. It wasn’t much of a lead, but at the moment it was better than anything she had.

  ***

  Since it had opened, Emma had been to Sylvia’s salon three times—all to get her hair cut. Sylvia had asked her to teach self-defense courses in the salon’s attached dojo, but Emma had turned her down; she had too much work at the moment between teaching and fighting crime. This was the first time that she’d come to the salon in a professional capacity.

  A brunette as young as Aggie pretended to be worked the reception desk. Her face lit up in a smile Emma sensed was fake. “Oh, hi!” the woman said. “You’re Syl’s friend. Emily, right?”

  “Emma.”

  “Oh, sorry.” The woman’s smile faded for just an instant. “She’s on the range right now. Would you like to wait or can someone else help you?”

  “Actually I just need to talk to Sylvia for a minute or two. If she’s not busy.”

  “Let me go check, OK?” The woman disappeared through the door that linked the salon to the dojo and gun range. Emma looked around the salon and saw every chair occupied at the moment. Clearly Sylvia’s venture was working out. She supposed it was better—and much safer—than to sell weapons to rebel groups.

  The woman returned a minute later with the same phony smile. “Syl said you can come on back.” Emma follow
ed her to the door. Just inside that, the woman gestured to a row of ear protectors. Emma took a pair and put them on.

  Sylvia stood in one of the shooting booths, an ancient Colt revolver in her hands. Emma and the woman waited as Sylvia emptied the weapon; she hit the paper target in the center each time. Once she finished, she turned around. “Hello,” she said and took off her ear protectors. Emma did the same. “Is this business or pleasure?”

  “Business,” Emma said. “Can we go somewhere private?”

  “Sure. We’ll go into my office.” Sylvia turned to the receptionist and said, “If anyone comes in looking for me, tell them I stepped out for a few minutes.”

  “Sure thing, Syl.” The woman hurried off while Sylvia motioned for Emma to follow her into a room connected to the salon not much bigger than Emma’s office at Rampart State. Emma closed the door behind them and then took a seat.

  “Someone almost killed Jim Rizzard last night,” she said.

  “The Sewer Rat? Why?”

  “I don’t know. He might have been in the wrong place at the wrong time or it might have been intentional.”

  “Is he all right?”

  “He’s fine. Your sister’s looking after him.”

  “Aggie was always good with the healing potions. So what do you need my help with?”

  Emma reached into her pocket and produced the remote control. “Do you know what this is?”

  Sylvia’s cheek twitched for just a moment. “A detonator. C4 charges probably. Pretty common stuff on the arms market.”

  “So there’s no way to trace it?”

  “Probably not. I can try.” Sylvia’s cheek twitched again.

  “That’s fine,” Emma said. She tucked the remote back into the pocket of her coverall. “There was something else I wanted to ask about. The site of the explosion was only a couple of blocks from TriTech.”

  Sylvia’s cheek didn’t twitch this time so much as it jerked in a spasm. “TriTech?”

  “Yes. Isn’t that where Tim works?”

  “Yes,” Sylvia said in almost a whisper. “You think they’re involved?”

  “I don’t know. What do they do there?”

  Sylvia smiled, but it was as false as the woman at the reception desk. “Oh, I don’t know. Robots and stuff like that. You know me, no good at anything without a trigger or blades.”

  “Do you think I could talk with Tim? He might be able to help.”

  “No!” Sylvia smiled again. “He’s been so busy lately not even I get to talk to him anymore. Last night he didn’t come home until after midnight.”

  “What’s he working on?”

  “I don’t know.” To Emma’s surprise, Sylvia began to cry. It was something she had never seen before.

  Emma patted Sylvia on the back and said, “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s not your fault.” Sylvia wiped at her cheeks with the hem of her shirt. “I just forgot what this was like. How much it hurts.”

  Emma had felt that hurt herself with Dan Dreyfus and Becky. “Is there something I can do to help? I could talk to him—”

  “Please don’t.” Sylvia took Emma’s arm and squeezed it hard enough to make Emma wince. “You have to promise to leave him alone.”

  “Sylvia, if he’s in some kind of trouble—”

  “No, he’s not in trouble.” From the way Sylvia’s cheek twitched again, Emma knew the witch had lied. “I just don’t want him to know that I told you. I want us to work it out.”

  “Sylvia, please—”

  “Just leave it alone, Emma. Tim doesn’t know anything. All he ever thinks about is his work. He can’t help you.”

  “Maybe someone else there—”

  “Just stay away from that place entirely. Please.”

  “Are they doing something illegal?”

  “It’s not anything like that. Please don’t go poking your nose around in there. You’re only going to be disappointed.”

  “What aren’t you telling me, Sylvia?” Emma tried to look the witch in the eyes, but Sylvia looked down at the floor. It was the meekest she had ever seen the witch before.

  “I can’t talk about it. Just let me handle it. Please. It doesn’t have anything to do with you or your friend. It’s personal.”

  “All right,” Emma said. She left Sylvia in her office with the door closed, worried about what sort of personal business Sylvia had with TriTech. She would have to find out tonight. In the meantime she had to get back and see how Jim was doing—and take another shower or two.

  Chapter 7

  The archives for the witch coven weren’t located on any map. The closest any map came was an ancient burial mound believed to have been used by some of the very first settlers in Ireland. The archives were buried beneath this mound, accessible only to those in the coven. Inside were thousands of years of spells preserved in case they were ever needed.

  Akako’s job was to manage these many spells. She had tried to find someone else, but there was no one else who could stand it. Not only the isolation and claustrophobia but also the high concentration of magic itself.

  Anyone—witch or mortal—could work on the first floor of the archives, which featured only computer terminals, on which were stored the tamest of the spells. This had been the work of Akako’s predecessor, who had been named Red. He had been the Red native to this universe, who to everyone had appeared to be a teenage boy.

  Akako came from a parallel universe, one in which she had been an ordinary graduate student. For years she’d hidden a secret from everyone—that she could hear the thoughts of hundreds of other Reds in hundreds of other parallel universes. She had never even told her husband, Aggie Joubert.

  In that universe, Aggie had been a man and they had been married and deeply in love for all of three months before a drunk driver killed Aggie. When the Red in this universe had died, he’d created some kind of hole in space-time that allowed Akako to slip through and be reunited with Aggie, after a fashion. Granted this Aggie was a woman and a witch to boot, but she was as gentle and caring as the Aggie Akako had married.

  Akako kept a picture of Aggie on her desk to remind her of what she missed here. She hoped someday they could be together for more than a couple days of the month, but she doubted if it would ever be possible. Aggie would always be a witch and thus couldn’t live in the archives with Akako. The raw magic in the archives had driven away every other witch who attempted to do Akako’s job and even Aggie became ill if she stayed too long. In the past the coven had used a series of orphans to work in the archives, despite that the magic here was even more dangerous to them. If Akako quit, her replacement might wind up as a toad or something much worse.

  No, there would be no replacement. Akako was unique in that she existed “out of phase” with the universe—every universe—and thus magic didn’t have any effect on her. Glenda, the head of the coven, had chosen the original Red for just that reason.

  With a sigh, Akako tried not to think it might have been better never to have stepped through that hole in space-time, to have gone on without Aggie. In time the hole in her heart might have healed instead of being torn open every time she and Aggie had to say goodbye.

  The lift door from the burial mound opened to jerk Akako out of her gloomy thoughts. She checked her logbook, but saw no one was scheduled to come down to the archives today. She almost fell out of her chair to see Aggie’s sister Sylvia emerge from the lift.

  To say that Sylvia didn’t like her was an understatement. To Sylvia, Akako was an intruder who had stolen Aggie away from her. To compensate, Sylvia had made herself young and found someone to love, but every time they met, Akako could see the disdainful looks Sylvia gave her.

  That was why the look on Sylvia’s face almost caused Akako to collapse from her chair again. The witch’s lip trembled and her eyes were red. She had been crying, Akako realized. A butch woman like Sylvia never cried. Not unless something terrible had happened.

  “Is something wrong?” Akako asked. She
got out of her chair to meet Sylvia. “Did something happen to Agnes?”

  “No, nothing like that.” Sylvia straightened and her lip stopped trembling but the sadness remained in her eyes. “I need a spell.”

  “Sure. Is it a Class One or—”

  “No, it’ll be downstairs. It’s an old one.” Sylvia held out a piece of paper.

  Akako had just enough time to read the words, “I’m sorry.” Then something heavy hit the back of her head and she passed out.

  ***

  Jim Rizzard didn’t prove to be much of a handful. He slept most of the day and ate only when Aggie brought him a tray. The giant rat Emma had named Pepe stayed with him except for a few moments to do his business. He actually used the toilet like a human being, which Aggie found disconcerting. She would have been more surprised if the rat had flushed afterwards, but that seemed beyond his capabilities.

  Aggie came in a few times to check Rizzard’s injuries. The only problem she had with Rizzard happened the first time she attempted to check on him. She had mistakenly pushed back the tarps Emma had put over the window to allow light to flood into the room. Rizzard shrieked and then ducked beneath the covers as if he were a vampire. “Bitch!” he screamed.

  “I’m sorry,” Aggie said. She rearranged the tarps. “I need some light so I can check on your injuries.”

  “No light,” he said from beneath the covers like a child.

  To solve the problem she found an old sleeping mask in the attic. This she gave to Rizzard to wear so he wouldn’t be able to see the light when she pushed aside the curtains to examine his wounds. From what she could tell, the wounds had healed perfectly. And from what she could tell there were no horrible side effects.

  The second time Aggie came in to check on Rizzard he woke up calling Emma’s name. “No, it’s just me. Her friend, Aggie.”

  “Where she go?”

  In truth Aggie didn’t really know where Emma had gone, only that she wanted to find out who had nearly blown Rizzard up. “She’s trying to find out what happened to you.”