Then she thought of something she’d suggested to Jim after they tried unsuccessfully to bluff their way into Harry Ward’s TriTech company. She’d suggested they put a camera and harness onto one of his friends and then send the rat into the building to find out what was going on. Jim nixed the idea out of fears for the rat’s safety. In the wake of TriTech’s destruction, Emma had found some of Tim Cooper’s broken RAT robots in the sewers. She thought if a real rat was too risky, why not a remote control one?
After some hours of tinkering—when Dr. Pavelski would have told her she should be asleep—Emma came up with something much smaller than a rat. The FLI—Flying Listening Intelligence—was the size of an ordinary housefly and looked identical to the naked eye. Only if someone broke the thing open would they see the tiny exoskeleton, cameras, and microphone.
She had rigged the FLI so she could monitor it from her laptop; she didn’t have time to try to rig up a display in her helmet. Though the FLI operated primarily on remote, she could key in commands when she found something of particular interest. At the moment she suggested the FLI pull up near the ceiling and hover near the door to the don’s back room. It was there the don and her lieutenants conducted most of their business.
This could finally be the break Emma and Captain Donovan needed in order to get something solid on Don Vendetta. There would still be the problem that Emma couldn’t reveal her identity to turn over the evidence and the Scarlet Knight couldn’t testify in court. Still, if she could find out more about the don’s operations, she and Donovan could arrange a sting as they’d done over two years ago. The don had escaped then with some help from Isis. This time Emma hoped they’d be able to make something stick.
The door to the back room opened as a woman came out. Emma took advantage of this to send the FLI into the room. The robotic spy perched itself up by the ceiling so its cameras could peer down into the backroom. The sound quality from this vantage wouldn’t be the best, but she should be able to hear what was said.
Emma felt a stab of disappointment to realize the don herself was not inside. She did recognize a few of the don’s top lieutenants around a poker table. It soon became clear they weren’t concerned with poker at all. They were concerned with her.
“She got our shipment to the Trenches last week,” said the woman Emma identified as Maya Reynolds, who ran things in the Trenches, the city’s poorest neighborhood. “Put ten of my guys in the hospital and the rest are in jail.”
The don’s number two, Anita Martinez, shook her head at this. “Seven years. Seven fucking years and she’s still harassing us. Why hasn’t anyone put her in the ground yet?”
Another of the women shrugged. “What are we supposed to do? She’s got that armor. Our weapons can’t do shit against it.”
“Then maybe we need some better weapons,” Martinez said.
“Leave that to me,” a woman’s voice hissed.
Emma tilted the FLI’s head to locate the source of the voice. She didn’t see anything until a black shape stepped out of the shadows. The don’s lieutenants had their guns out, but a second later the shape had moved to stand on top of the table. “Who the fuck are you?” Martinez asked.
“The one who’s going to bring in the Scarlet Knight.”
“Yeah? How are you going to do that?”
“I’m going to start by using live bait.” Emma’s eyes widened as she watched a knife suddenly appear in Reynolds’s throat and in the right eye of another lieutenant. The others fired their guns, but the woman once again disappeared; she reappeared a moment later behind Martinez, to stab a knife into her shoulder.
Emma shifted her position on the rooftop that overlooked the Plastic Hippo. “Mekka lekka weep ninibaum,” she whispered. A red case appeared beside her on the rooftop. So much for reconnaissance.
***
Once Emma knew for certain she was pregnant—and she would keep the baby—she consulted with Marlin, the Keeper of the Lore for the Order of the Scarlet Knight. He knew everything there was to know about the armor—or almost. “The master didn’t exactly conceive the armor with a woman in mind. With the men the only problem was to keep them from getting someone else pregnant.”
“Do you think it will do anything?” She thought back to shortly after she’d begun to wear the armor. After the Black Dragoon used a hypnotic suggestion against her, the armor had bonded with her in an attempt to maintain her sanity. Years later, when an alien parasite attached itself to her, the armor switched her into Becky’s body so she couldn’t infect it. She put a hand to her stomach, which at the time was still flat. “Do you think it will hurt the baby—or me?”
“I think if it were going to do that, it would have done it already. Easy enough for it to have zapped the little bugger when it was still a zygote.”
“That’s true.” The armor had regenerative properties to help her heal from injuries, which in theory could have destroyed the fertilized egg before it could develop any further. The only theory Emma could decide on was that the armor had the same kind of morality she did and thus couldn’t bring itself to kill a future life.
Now that she’d gotten the tests back from Dr. Pavelski, Emma could be reasonably certain that the armor’s magic hadn’t affected her daughter at all. Still, she always felt a certain reluctance when she donned the scarlet armor. Horrible visions came to her mind that her baby would look like a wolfman or reptile or something even worse.
There wasn’t time for these doubts this time. She dressed in the armor as quickly as she could manage; she felt it expand slightly to accommodate her enlarged stomach. The boots also became larger for her swollen ankles. She was glad Marlin hadn’t shown himself yet to make a snarky comment about how she looked. That was the last thing she needed at the moment, when she needed to concentrate to stop this mysterious assassin before she killed everyone inside the Plastic Hippo.
Ordinarily the don kept two-dozen burly male guards around the club. These had rushed inside once the shooting started, except for three at the front door. Emma ignored these and used the side door to access the backstage area.
When she did, she found the strippers she’d seen earlier inside a dressing room, in various states of undress. Beneath her helmet, Emma’s cheeks turned warm; Becky was right that she wouldn’t have lasted two seconds in this business. “Are you all OK?” she asked.
“Yes,” one dressed as a nurse said.
“Are you really her?” one in a showgirl outfit asked.
“Yes. Go out the side door and keep running. I’ll cover you.” Emma stood in the center of the hallway while the strippers scuttled out behind her. Though she didn’t approve of their line of work, they were innocent bystanders.
“Thank you!” the showgirl called out before the door slammed shut.
Emma listened for a moment, but heard only silence. She wished she could communicate with the FLI to see where the assassin might be. Then again it probably wouldn’t matter given how the woman had seemed to appear and disappear at will.
She shuffled along the hallway and stopped at the glittery curtain that led to the stage. When she stuck her head through the curtain, she gasped in shock. Twenty men were dead, piled up to one side of the club along with the tables and chairs.
The woman stood in the center of the room. Besides the black coverall, the woman wore a black ski mask so only her green eyes were visible and her pink lips, which at the moment were curled in a smile. “I knew you’d show up. You’d protect even these scumbags. Or try to. You’re a little late.”
Emma pushed the curtain aside to step onto the stage. The last time she’d been on this stage, she had still been recovering from the Black Dragoon’s wound, only able to wear the cape and helmet to meet with Don Vendetta. That meeting had not gone well and Emma doubted her second time on the stage would go any better.
“What do you want from me?”
“It’s not what I want. My employer wants you dead and to take that armor of yours.”
&nbs
p; “Who’s your employer?”
“That’s not your concern.”
Emma took a step forward and then hopped off the edge of the stage. She kept a hand on the hilt of the Sword of Justice, but didn’t pull it out yet. There might still be a way to avoid any further violence. “How did you know I’d be here?”
“A lucky guess. And if I was wrong, a few less petty thugs wouldn’t matter.”
“You think this is some kind of game? Those were people’s lives.”
“It’s my business.” Emma didn’t see the woman’s hand move. One second she just stood there and the next Emma found a knife embedded in her right thigh. It took her a moment to feel the pain as she stared at the wound in disbelief. No ordinary knife could penetrate the magic armor.
As the pain set in, the woman sprung.
***
In her seven years as the Scarlet Knight, Emma had never faced an adversary like this. The Black Dragoon—both of them—and the alien-enhanced Koschei had relied more on brute force than quickness. This had given her an advantage in their battles. The closest she’d come to someone with the same agility was in a fight against Aggie’s sister Sylvia six months ago.
Maybe it was because the pregnancy had slowed her body or maybe the woman really was as fast as she appeared. She seemed to simply appear wherever she wanted in the blink of an eye. One moment she was halfway across the room and the next she was right in front of Emma to cuff the side of her head. When Emma looked up, the woman actually sat on the bar.
“I don’t want to kill you,” the woman said. “You give me the armor and we’ll call it a day.”
“I can’t do that.”
The woman appeared in front of her again to kick Emma in the center of her chest. She toppled onto her back, where she found the woman’s eyes looking down at her. The assassin again smiled at her. “Don’t you think your baby would like a chance to be born?”
“I can’t give you the armor,” she said.
“That’s too bad. After seeing your work, I’d hoped we could be friends. Or at least not enemies.” The woman gave a slight shrug. “Oh well.”
Emma counted to three and then flailed with all four limbs as if to make a snow angel. Her right leg connected with the woman’s ankle, to topple the assassin. Emma rolled over and pinned the woman to the floor. The assassin glared at her, but she still smiled.
“You really are good. I’ve been doing this a long time and this is the longest anyone’s lasted against me.”
“You sound proud of that.”
“Why shouldn’t I be? Aren’t you proud of your work?”
“I do what I have to do. It’s not particularly fun.”
“I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree.”
When Emma felt the pain in her midsection she thought at first the baby had kicked. Only then did she glance down to see that a knife stuck out of her side. Again she hadn’t actually seen the woman move; it was as if the knife had appeared there on its own. The woman punched her in the side of the head to knock Emma off.
With presence of mind, Emma rolled to wrap the golden cape around her body, to turn invisible to human eyes. She dragged herself away, and plucked the knife out while she bit down on her lip so she wouldn’t scream. With her other hand she reached down to the Sword of Justice, to ease it from its scabbard.
The woman got to her feet and stood once more in the center of the room. “Is that your best trick? Do you think so little of me?”
Emma yanked the Sword of Justice from the scabbard as the woman took a set of infrared goggles from her pocket. With these she would be able to see where Emma crouched on the floor. That wouldn’t matter. Not if Emma was quick enough.
The Sword of Justice couldn’t fly as fast as the assassin’s knives, but it was enough. The golden blade tumbled through the air, to head not for the woman, but for the controls to the stage lights. Over seven years Emma had learned enough fine control that she could use the tip of the sword to flip the switches to turn on the lights—the very hot lights.
When the woman turned towards this infrared surge, Emma bolted. She ran for the door as fast as she could. She leaped into the air, onto the roof where she’d left her computer. The FLI was still connected, still poised on its spot on the wall.
She gasped not only to see the don’s lieutenants slumped over the table, but also to see the woman looking up at the FLI. “Next time,” the woman said and then the FLI went dead.
Chapter 3
The motorcycle was the first thing Emma knew she would have to lose. To ride the bike at a hundred miles per hour while she zigzagged through traffic required precise manipulation of her body weight to maintain her balance. This became more difficult as she added weight from the pregnancy.
It was even more difficult at the moment with a wound in her side and one in her leg. On a straightaway she took one hand from the bike to touch the wound in her side. What came back didn’t have the dark red color of blood; the wad of sticky fluid on her hand was black. She nearly lost her balance again while she stared at this.
She’d already felt her head swim a couple of times, but she’d attributed this to the loss of blood and the baby. Now as she felt a tingle in the area around the wound, she realized it might be something worse. Those knives might have contained poison. Poison that would slowly kill her if the wounds themselves didn’t kill her quickly.
Kill her and her baby. The poison was already in her blood, which would trickle through her womb, into the veins of her unborn child. Even if Emma found an antidote to the poison, it might still be too late to save her daughter. Emma put her hand back on the bike and leaned forward to try to wring a few more miles per hour out of the engine.
The tingling in her side became a numbness. The same happened with the wound in her leg, until she could no longer feel her right leg. She willed the leg to stay tucked in, but couldn’t turn her head to see if it was or not.
The numbness began to spread up the side of her body. She took her left hand off the bike to try to shake some feeling back into it. Nothing happened, just as she knew it wouldn’t. The poison would soon creep up through her neck, into her brain. Once that happened, she would either pass out or lose her balance and throw herself off the motorcycle. In either case, she would be facedown on the pavement and unable to get back up.
Worse yet was the numbness began to spread across her midsection. So far her daughter had kicked very rarely; Emma yearned for one of those kicks right now so she could feel her child. She desperately wanted to know that her baby was still alive, not a corpse in her womb.
To make the right turn became the most difficult part of her journey from the rooftop of the Plastic Hippo. She couldn’t feel anything below her neck, so she had to will her body to position itself properly and hope for the best. Though she couldn’t feel it, she could see the bike wobble and threaten to flip onto its side. “Please, no,” she whispered. Though never a religious person, she prayed to every deity she knew of to let her make it.
The motorcycle held the turn and she managed to right it and head into another straightaway. It wouldn’t be much longer now until she reached her destination. Whether Aggie could help her, she didn’t know. The poison might have spread too far already for even the witch to cure.
There were always magic potions like the one she’d used on Jim after he was injured by an exploding RAT. But what effect would a restoration potion have on her womb? Would it abort her daughter the same way she’d thought the armor itself might have? She couldn’t let that happen. She couldn’t let Aggie give her something that could hurt the baby. But if she didn’t, then what? Six months was too early to take the baby out.
Aggie’s house came in sight. She wasn’t surprised to find both Aggie and Akako on the doorstep. Emma’s vision began to blacken around the edges. It wouldn’t be long now before she was gone completely. With her last ounce of strength, she spun the motorcycle into the final turn. The front wheel clipped the curb, to send her airborn
e, but she didn’t care. The armor would protect the outside of her body. It was the inside she had to worry about.
She landed on the doorstep, whether on her own or through Aggie’s guidance she had no idea. Her vision was down to little more than pinpricks at this point. Through those she saw Aggie look down at her and smile. “Don’t worry, dear, we’ll help you.”
“Save…my…baby,” Emma said and then passed out.
***
For someone with real magic, there was only one way to see a person’s future. That was to have a sample of that person’s hair or nail clippings or maybe some fresh blood if you could get it. The latter could be awkward unless you were a nurse.
Of course fortune telling was against the coven’s rules. A witch shouldn’t even try to see her own future, let alone someone else’s. This was mostly because the future was always subject to change, especially if you made someone aware of it. There were philosophers who argued everything had already been determined, that free will didn’t exist. Aggie knew this wasn’t true, except in the broadest sense. If you told someone they would die in a skydiving accident they might not go skydiving, but they still might die of a heart attack the same day. Some things, most notably death, were inevitable.
When she first learned Emma was pregnant, Aggie couldn’t resist a peek into the girl’s future. Emma visited frequently enough, had even lived with Aggie briefly, so it wasn’t hard to find a few stray copper hairs around. She’d gathered enough to make up a lock about the same thickness as her pinky. With these hairs and some ordinary ingredients she had boiled up Emma’s future in her best potion cauldron.
What she saw had made her faint. Emma would never hold her baby in her arms. The cauldron couldn’t tell her exactly what would happen to mother or child, only that Emma wouldn’t get to hold her baby—ever.
Tales of the Scarlet Knight Collection: The Wrath of Isis Page 65
