Tales of the Scarlet Knight Collection: The Wrath of Isis

by P. T. Dilloway

  This prophecy was the first thing that came to her mind after she felt the premonition. Emma was in danger. Not just Emma, but her baby as well. Aggie’s premonitions were about as specific as the mixture in the cauldron, so she couldn’t know exactly what danger Emma was in. At least not until the girl showed up—if she made it.

  Aggie sat bolt upright and nearly pushed Akako right off the bed. After well over a century of sleeping alone, Aggie still had some trouble with the concept of sharing her bed. She reached out with one hand to grab Akako’s arm and steady her.

  “Agnes, what’s wrong?”

  “It’s Emma. She’s in trouble. She’s coming this way.”

  Akako didn’t question her on this; she had known her long enough that she didn’t need to. She simply found her clothes and began to dress. They were both fully dressed and out on the front steps when Aggie heard the high-throated whine of the motorcycle’s engine. The grandmother in Aggie wished Emma wouldn’t ride such a dangerous vehicle. Even with the scarlet armor to protect her, it still made Aggie nervous.

  In this case Aggie could see she had a right to be worried. The way Emma sagged forward on the bike reminded Aggie of an old Western where the mortally wounded cowboy was slumped over his saddle as he rode into the sunset. Aggie wished she could use a spell, but Merlin’s magic in the armor would trump hers. “Stand back,” Aggie said to Akako.

  They stepped onto the doorstep and Aggie used a bed of feathers spell that turned the steps and sidewalk as soft as marshmallows. At least that might cushion Emma’s fall, provided she landed on the steps or sidewalk. There was nothing else she could do as the motorcycle came around in a wide turn. Its front tire caught the curb and Emma’s limp body flew through the air much higher than someone in a suit of armor should.

  As Aggie had hoped, Emma landed on her back on the front steps. Aggie hurried over to her side, to bend down to examine her. There was a wound in Emma’s left side and one in her right leg. Something black oozed out of both of them. Despite this, she smiled down at Emma. “Don’t worry, dear, we’ll help you.”

  “Save…my…baby,” Emma said and then passed out.

  “What’s wrong with her?” Akako asked.

  “I’m not sure. We’d better get her inside.” The magic armor didn’t weigh much, and while Emma had gained weight from the baby, she still was light enough to carry. Aggie hooked her arms around Emma’s armpits while Akako took the Scarlet Knight’s legs. They knew each other well enough that no verbal count was necessary for them to hoist Emma at the same time.

  They carried her into the parlor, where Aggie held Emma upright while Akako found a bolt of fabric to set on the floor. They set Emma down on top of this, so the strange black ooze could flow onto that. Aggie scooped up some of the black stuff to sniff at it.

  “What is it?” Akako asked.

  “Poison of some kind,” Aggie said. “Not anything I’ve seen before.”

  “The archives might have something,” Akako said. “Glenda commissioned a reference guide for poisons and antidotes two hundred years ago.”

  Aggie vaguely remembered something about that. Akako had only been in charge of the archives for eighteen months, but she had taken to the job with gusto to familiarize herself with everything in the computer system and down in the vault. “It’s on the first floor, right?”

  “Yes. Use my password to get into it.”

  Aggie looked down at Emma, who appeared to still be breathing. The poison continued to leak from the wounds. “Keep the armor on her—including the helmet. It’ll help keep the poison at bay. If she gets worse, brew some beguila root into some tea and force it down her throat.”

  “It’s down in the vault, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. Third drawer up and second from the left.”

  “I got it. Good luck.”

  Aggie kissed Akako on the lips, just a dry peck. “I’ll be back soon.”

  Then in a flash of light she was gone.

  ***

  The coven’s archives were located under a grave mound in Ireland, a place where few tourists were allowed to go. Aggie came to the archives as many times as she could manage to see Akako. The problem was that the concentrated magic in the archives made her ill after too much exposure, as happened to any witch. The consequences could be even direr for a mortal; they could end up as a three-headed toad or perhaps something even worse.

  Akako could exist in the archives because of a unique condition. Through some quirk in quantum physics, she was “out of phase” with the rest of the universe. Aggie didn’t pretend to understand this, nor did Akako herself. She knew only that she could hear the voices of every other version of her in two hundred twenty-six other universes, though potentially there were an infinite number of her in an infinite number of universes. This condition also meant she couldn’t be affected by the magic of the archives.

  The downside of the latter was that a vanishing spell wouldn’t work on Akako. Otherwise Aggie would have preferred to stay with Emma, to help her if things turned ugly. Instead, she would have to hope Akako could think of something on her own should Emma take a turn for the worst.

  Aggie appeared next to an ordinary reference desk where Akako spent most of her time. Behind this were rows of computer servers and terminals so that the first floor of the archives looked more like a computer lab than the library for a coven.

  This was the work of Akako’s predecessor, Red, an orphan boy with the same condition as Akako. He had cataloged the weakest magic spells, the kind that could be stored on a hard drive. The more potent spells would overload the system if anyone tried to store them digitally, so those were kept in the secure vault downstairs.

  Aggie sat down at the terminal at Akako’s desk and then waited for the system to boot up. This took too long for Aggie’s tastes, since her friend was quite probably dying at the moment. She already knew Akako’s login information, one of the secrets they had shared while they spent time together down here. Again she had to wait for the system to log her in.

  To find the book of poisons and antidotes didn’t take long. Part of the way Akako spent time down here was to organize the system in a way that made sense. After some trial and error—Aggie did most of the trying and erroring—they had decided on a system of subjects, sort of like the Dewey Decimal System in public libraries. Aggie just had to find the topic “Poisons” and the guide came right up.

  Aggie wished she could have brought a sample of the poison with her, but she couldn’t be sure that it would travel, or that it might change if magic were used on it. So she had to go by her memory. She closed her eyes and thought back to the smells she’d picked up. The most prominent odor had been that of blood. Not Emma’s blood, but dried blood. Behind that was the stench of burnt feathers. Dove feathers.

  When she plugged these two items into the database, Aggie came up with one possible match. The poison in the database was labeled as, “Dark Offering.” It involved sacrificing a dove to Anubis, an Egyptian god of the underworld. The congealed blood could then be slathered onto a weapon, such as a knife or sword blade, like what had been used on Emma. The poison was said to work faster than the strongest snake venom; it paralyzed the victim in about thirty seconds and caused death in ten minutes if no cure was administered. If not for the armor, Emma would most certainly have died by now.

  She breathed a sigh of relief to see there was a cure, though the guide said it was unlikely anyone would ever have time to use it. The cure required someone to stick a knife into the wound—or wounds in this case—and at the same time say a ritual prayer to Ra, the Egyptian sun god. The poison would then be drawn onto the blade, so that once the knife was removed the poison would be gone and the wound could heal.

  After she printed out a copy of the entry, Aggie vanished herself back to her house. She found Emma still on the floor, though Akako had pushed up the visor so that the girl’s extremely pale face was visible. “She’s hanging in there,” Akako said. “She’s tough.”
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br />   “Yes, she is,” Aggie said. Maybe it was not only because of the armor, but because Emma had a child who counted on her to survive. There were always stories about mothers who would develop superhuman powers in order to save their young ones.

  “Get two daggers from the vault. It shouldn’t matter what kind they are.”

  Akako took off, to leave Aggie alone with Emma. Aggie decided to take off the helmet and prop a pillow beneath the girl’s head. After she wiped the sweat from Emma’s pasty forehead, Aggie whispered, “It’s going to be fine—you’ll both be fine. We’re going to give you the antidote and get this poison out of you.” Emma didn’t open her eyes, but Aggie thought she saw a flicker of understanding.

  Akako returned faster than Aggie would have thought possible, with two thin silver daggers. These were part of Sylvia’s weapons collection that Aggie was glad she hadn’t decided to donate to the coven yet. “What are you going to do with these?” Aggie explained, which prompted Akako to grimace. “You’re going to stab her again?”

  “That’s what it said to do. Stab these in and say a prayer to Ra.”

  “Well, I guess if that’s what the guide said.” Akako handed the knives to Aggie, who didn’t share much enthusiasm about this cure either. It seemed like common sense that to stab someone a second time would only make things worse. But then magic didn’t usually follow common sense or Aggie’s life would be far less complicated.

  Aggie took one knife in each hand, to stick them both in at once, though the guide didn’t have any instructions on multiple wounds. “Here goes nothing,” she said. Then she plunged one knife into each wound. Akako held up the page from the guide so Aggie could read off the ancient Egyptian words. She hoped she pronounced them correctly; if only she could ask Emma’s friend Dan Dreyfus the Egyptologist for help.

  She went through the prayer twice before she began to slide out the knives. As she did, she saw the silver blades coated with a tar-like substance. “It’s working,” she said. She eased the knives out of the wounds and dropped them into a wastebasket Akako held out. Aggie would have to burn the contents of the wastebasket later or find some other way to destroy the poison.

  In the meantime she had other problems. Now that the poison was out, Emma’s blood began to flow from the wounds. The magic armor didn’t seem to stem the tide, at least not initially. “Give me something to put on these,” Aggie said. Akako tore strips from a gray dress Aggie had been working on.

  “Come on, dear. Don’t quit on us now,” Aggie whispered into Emma’s ear as she jammed torn bits of fabric into the wounds. The gray cloth turned dark red in seconds. Aggie repeated this procedure a half-dozen times.

  Finally whatever had stopped the armor’s regenerative powers—the poison or the cure, Aggie didn’t know—must have faded. The flow of blood stemmed, to leave only a faint trickle. This Aggie wrapped in bandages Akako brought down from the bathroom. “I think she’s going to make it,” Aggie said.

  “She still doesn’t look good.”

  “We have to give her time.” Aggie put a hand on Akako’s shoulder. “Come on, let’s get her upstairs and put her to bed.”

  Chapter 4

  Since neither Becky nor Dan could cook, they usually went out for dinner. Tonight, Becky rummaged through the pantry. She heated up two cans of soup—one tomato and one chicken noodle soup. In addition she found a box of saltines and some ramen noodles, nothing that required her to do more than heat water.

  They ate this in the kitchen, instead of the dining room with its table that could seat forty-six. She did have to use the second-best china since Dan didn’t have any paper or foam bowls she could use. After she ladled out the soup, she took her seat across from him on the island in the center of the kitchen.

  “Reminds me of my college days,” Dan said with a smile. She knew he would be fine with this meal because he was fine with just about everything. Sometimes she wanted him to put his foot down and insist they do what he wanted. Tonight, she was glad for his easygoing nature; she needed someone to buoy her spirits after the debacle that was Emma’s baby shower.

  That debacle was why she had insisted they stay in tonight. The last thing she wanted at this moment was to be out at a fancy restaurant or even a greasy spoon, surrounded by other people. After her spectacular failure, she wanted only to hide out in Dan’s mansion and then snuggle with him in the bed.

  Of course she should have known he would remember the shower. Unlike a lot of other men, he remembered things like birthdays and anniversaries. He also remembered the things she said, such as that the baby shower was today. Or maybe it wasn’t such a surprise since she’d insisted he help her make up the nursery that had prompted Emma to freak out.

  “So how did the shower go? Was she surprised?” he asked.

  “Yeah, you could say that.” Becky took a handful of saltines to crumple into her soup.

  “She didn’t like it?” Becky shook her head. “What happened?”

  “She began crying and ran into her room. Aggie convinced her to come out and apologize later.” Becky didn’t add that as soon as the party guests had gone home, Emma had taken off on her motorcycle; she claimed she had Scarlet Knight business to attend to. Becky had then called Dan, to seek his comfort. “I feel like such an idiot. I’m her best friend. How could I misjudge this so badly?”

  “Well, it’s kind of a new situation for both of you.”

  “Yeah, I guess so.” Becky smiled slightly. “I always thought between the two of us, I’d be the one who got knocked up first.”

  Dan dropped his spoon into his bowl of soup as if his hand had gone numb. They had dated for almost eighteen months now, but the idea to make things more formal had never been brought up. He had lost his wife and she had lost her husband in acts of random violence, so the loose arrangement had worked out fine. She knew from the look on his face that it had been a bad idea to bring up the baby issue.

  “No, I didn’t mean I wanted a baby. I mean, not now. Someday, maybe. I just meant that I didn’t think she’d get pregnant out of wedlock like that.”

  “Oh, sure. I know what you mean.” Dan picked up his spoon to drain some more soup from the bowl. “Who’s the father, anyway?”

  “Her boyfriend, Jim,” Becky said. “You met him once. The artist.”

  That meeting had been in Dan’s bedroom upstairs after he had woke up from a potion administered by Aggie’s sister Sylvia. They hadn’t met since then; the Sewer Rat wasn’t the type to go on double dates. “Oh. So what does he think about this?”

  “I don’t think she’s mentioned it to him.”

  “Shouldn’t she? He’s going to find out at some point.”

  “Well, he’s not around much.”

  “That’s awful. How did she meet him?”

  “Could we just drop this? I don’t want to talk about it.” Becky jabbed her fork into a pile of ramen noodles with a vengeance.

  “I’m sorry. I just wanted to help.”

  She reached across the island to pat his hand. “I know. I’m sorry. It’s just been a really bad day, you know?”

  “I know.” He squeezed her hand. “I’m sure this is just a phase she’s going through. In the end she’ll be glad for all your help.”

  “I hope so.”

  “Come on, you’re going to be a great surrogate aunt.”

  Becky snorted at this. She had done a great job at being a surrogate relation so far. She’d been a surrogate sister to Emma when they were kids. She’d been a surrogate mother to Brandi and Bambi because their awful mother had been too drunk to raise her kids. When Emma moved back to the city, Becky had even become a surrogate mom to her at times. Maybe that was her destiny, to fill in as the surrogate.

  “I’m serious. You’re going to do a great job. Her daughter will be lucky to have you.”

  Becky snorted again. She didn’t want to think anymore about the future, or about the awful baby shower. She pushed away from the island, to leave the remains of her soup and
ramen noodles to clean up later. Dan took her hand and followed her up to the bedroom.

  They fell asleep in each other’s arms as they so often did. Because of this, Becky elbowed him in the head when she heard the phone ring. She saw it was three in the morning. Even before she answered, she knew something had happened to Emma. That could be the only reason for a call so late.

  Her suspicion was confirmed when Aggie said, “Emma’s had a little mishap.”

  “Mishap?”

  “Someone attacked her with poisoned knives.”

  “Oh my God! Is she all right?”

  “She’s fine right now. She’s sleeping. But I think you ought to find that doctor of hers so we can make sure the baby isn’t hurt.”

  “I’m on my way.”

  ***

  Becky had never met Dr. Pavelski before. For obvious reasons she didn’t have any need to see an OB/GYN herself. Emma had insisted she see the “baby doctor” on her own; most of the time she told Becky only after the appointment.

  Because of that, Becky was prepared for a very cold reception when she pulled up at the Waterside Condos complex at three-thirty in the morning. As the name implied, the Waterside Condos complex was located on the waterfront, to replace several old warehouses in a half-hearted attempt to revive the area. The views were supposed to be spectacular and the rents were good. So long as you didn’t mind a two mile drive to the nearest convenience store it was fine.

  Becky left her car in a fire lane; she figured this was an emergency. From what Aggie had said, the worst was over—at least for Emma. The witch couldn’t be sure about the baby and was reluctant to use any sort of spells or potions that might help her find out. They could have gone to the emergency room, but Becky agreed with Aggie that it would be better to deal with this discreetly so the police didn’t have to get involved and ask a bunch of inconvenient questions.

  She hurried into the lobby, where a security guard looked up from a newspaper. “I need to see Dr. Pavelski,” Becky said. “It’s an emergency.”