Tales of the Scarlet Knight Collection: The Wrath of Isis

by P. T. Dilloway

  “Oh, really?”

  “As long as you’re back by midnight, dear,” Aggie said. She waved a crooked finger. “And keep to the historical district. No going to the Trenches.”

  “We won’t,” Renee said.

  “Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Mom asked and Louise stifled a groan.

  “I don’t see anything wrong, so long as they’re home at a reasonable time and they stay away from the dangerous areas.”

  “All right,” Mom said, her voice softer than usual. Though Aggie was several years younger than Mom—and looked about three decades younger—Mom always deferred to her as if Aggie was the older one. Mom put a hand on Louise’s shoulder. “Just be careful, baby.”

  “We will, Mom. Don’t worry about us.”

  Renee gave Aggie a brief hug before she led Louise into the garage. Aggie hardly ever went anywhere, so while her car was fifteen years old, it was in almost new condition.

  Aggie’s car didn’t have the autodrive feature like more modern vehicles, so Renee had to actually pay attention while she drove. The car also had more horsepower, so when Renee pressed the accelerator, the engine actually made noise. She of course waited until they were safely down to the corner to do this.

  “So your mom didn’t give you the belt for last night?”

  “No, I think she’s just glad to have me around,” Renee said. “So where do you want to try tonight?”

  “How about Gulliver’s?”

  “That’s outside the historical district.”

  “So? How are they going to know?” Aggie was far too ignorant of technology to have planted any kind of tracking chip on the car. Mom could have on hers, but her sense of morality didn’t permit her to spy on her daughter like that, something Louise had taken advantage of in the past.

  “She has her ways.”

  “Fine. How about the Brass Drum? That’s right on the border.”

  “Fine with me.”

  The Brass Drum was one of the seedier establishments in the historical district. That also meant it had a far better selection of men than the stuffier clubs that were only good if you were a gold digger who wanted to find a rich guy to marry. They were early enough that there wasn’t much of a line yet and as two attractive young women—at least in Louise’s opinion—they got inside within five minutes.

  They ordered a pair of Virgin Marys and then took seats at a corner table, where it would be easier to evaluate their options. In Mom’s day the men had picked up the women, but Louise had never been that patient. She saw what she wanted and she went for it.

  Renee came in handy with this process. Her borderline psychic abilities allowed her to size up a guy within seconds with ninety-nine percent accuracy. Louise pointed to a guy with shaggy brown hair and glasses. “What do you think?” she asked.

  “Definitely an artist,” Renee said. She closed her eyes and added, “A drummer in a local band. They’re not very good.”

  “That’s fine. I’m not looking to get married.”

  “He’s unattached. Average size. Passive type.”

  “So I have to do all the work? Pass.” She tilted her head towards a bearded man in a black suit. “What about that guy? Looks like a priest.”

  “Junior high English teacher. Has a schoolgirl fetish.”

  “So he’d be perfect for you.”

  “God, no!”

  “Maybe you could let me borrow your uniform.”

  “It’d be a little big on you.”

  “I probably wouldn’t be wearing it for very long.” They shared a laugh at this and Louise was glad Mom wasn’t here or she’d probably faint. Despite that she’d been named after Jane Austen’s famous matchmaker, Mom didn’t try to set Louise up with anyone, but she always asked indirectly if Louise was interested in anyone. For Mom, though, being interested meant dinner and a movie and a kiss on the cheek at the end. Louise had done that on her first date when she was thirteen but quickly grew bored. On a college campus, surrounded by fornicating young men and women, she had little interest in stolen glances and love poems. She wanted sex!

  “No, the guy for you is over there at the bar,” Renee said. She indicated a young man with curly blond hair and a tan like a surfer. “Outdoorsman, adventurous, and up for pretty much anything. And recently available.”

  “Well, now we’re talking.” Louise rolled up the hem of her dark green blouse; she tied it so her midriff was exposed and then tossed her hair. “What do you think? Still too dowdy?”

  “I don’t think it’s going to matter.”

  Before she could sashay over to the bar to try her luck, she saw a familiar face. Thankfully not her mother or Aggie, but the young woman from the museum—the one who said she was Dan’s daughter. “Hey, check out that girl over there,” Louise said.

  “I thought we went through that already. I’m not like Mom and Aggie.”

  “No, I don’t mean like that. She came into work today and said she’s Dan’s daughter.”

  “His daughter? But Becky—”

  “Not from Becky. From his wife.”

  The girl strolled across the room, oblivious to everyone. Louise was about to wave to her when Renee took her hand. In seventeen years of friendship, Louise had never seen Renee look so frightened. Her friend seemed ready to dive under the table. “You don’t want to get involved with her,” Renee whispered.

  “What? Why?”

  “There’s something wrong about her. Something very wrong.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. I just know you don’t want to get mixed up with her.”

  Louise decided it was better not to argue with Renee. “Come on, let’s go somewhere else. It probably wouldn’t have worked out with that blond guy anyway.”

  ***

  Eileen saw the girls in the corner booth out of the side of her eye. The half-breed stared at her, the girl’s fear palpable. Her friend didn’t notice anything amiss, but then Louise Earl was her mother’s daughter in a lot of ways.

  They would both go on her list. It was a long list, but then she’d had almost twenty-two years to make it. Twenty-two years she’d been trapped in this bag of flesh. Every day she had strained and struggled to recover the powers she had lost, the abilities that were hers. A little at a time she relearned them; she had started small and then worked her way up.

  She would have liked to wait a little longer. Another year or two and she would be unstoppable. But that girl in the corner booth had found the book. There was a chance the girl might never figure out how to open the book, let alone how to use it. Then again the girl was the daughter of that damnable Emma Earl, with at least the same amount of intelligence as her mother, if not more.

  Eileen couldn’t take the chance she would be stopped short of her goal this time. From her previous experience she knew the book was only the start of her problems. She wouldn’t be able to complete her plans so long as the Scarlet Knight stood in her path. Merlin’s magic in the hands of Emma Earl had stopped her last time and she would make certain it didn’t impede her this time.

  She stepped up to the bar and ignored the males who gawked at her. She didn’t have time for these fools now. There was far more important work to be done at the moment. She beckoned for the bartender to come over to her. The man trotted over like a trained puppy. “You, minion, will take me to Mr. Rahnasto.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” the bartender said. She followed him around the bar and then through the kitchen. The cook dropped his cleaver onto the floor and the dishwasher shattered a load of glasses as she walked past.

  At the rear of the kitchen stood two burly men, who likewise were instantly smitten by her. They posed no threat at all; they opened the door so she could stroll into a back room dominated by a poker table. She recognized Jarko Rahnasto—known as Mr. Nasty to Rampart City’s underground—by the jagged scar that ran along the side of his face. This came from an incident that involved the Swedish Mafia and a hockey stick that had driven a divide betwe
en the Scandinavian mobs.

  “Who the fuck is this?” Mr. Nasty asked his guards in Finnish. “I didn’t order no girls.”

  “My name is Eileen,” she said back in Finnish. She sat down at the table. Unlike his minions, Rahnasto’s mind was strong enough that he didn’t instantly give in to her charms. But someone as greedy as him would respond to far more traditional methods. “I heard the Scarlet Knight broke up your deal with the Russians last night.”

  “How does a girl like you hear that?”

  “It’s not important. What is important is I can make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

  “You?” Mr. Nasty laughed at this. “You couldn’t even pick up a gun, let alone kill the Scarlet Knight.”

  “Not me personally, but I can give you the power to do so.”

  “Really? Why should I believe this?”

  Eileen turned to Rahnasto’s guards. At her command, they raised their weapons and pointed them at each other. “One word and you’ll be looking for two new bodyguards.”

  “You are lying.”

  “Fire,” Eileen said in Finnish. She didn’t look, only heard the two small pops of silenced weapons followed by two corpses hitting the floor.

  Mr. Nasty stared at her; the scar on his cheek turned paler than the rest of him. “How did you do this?”

  “Magic.” Eileen leaned forward and flashed a smile. “The same magic that can kill that bitch the Scarlet Knight.”

  “And if you give me this magic, what do you want in return?”

  “I need some help to retrieve a book from the Plaine Museum.”

  “A book? That is all?”

  “It’s a very important book.”

  Mr. Nasty smiled. “I think we can do business.”

  Chapter 14

  Before the war, the Harmon-Farmer Company made bicycles. Now thanks to Uncle Sam they made B-24 Liberators. As she followed Sue Johnson to the front gates of the plant, Cecelia didn’t mention she’d shot down six B-24s during the war after she’d commandeered a prototype Me-262 to turn over to the Soviets. She hadn’t needed to shoot anything down, but she had wanted to test the fighter’s capabilities to see how much she should charge the Russians. When they had balked at this price, she turned around and sold it to the Americans, though she hadn’t mentioned how many Americans the plane had killed.

  Of course Maria Costopolous probably couldn’t fit into the cockpit of a Me-262, let alone actually fly one. Cecelia was grateful to have Sue with her as they took the streetcar to the waterfront; she felt vulnerable for the first time since she had been taken in by the Headmistress. Sue had taken a motherly—or perhaps grandmotherly—interest in her that had prompted her to grab one man by his shirtfront and physically eject him from his seat. “Can’t you see this woman is pregnant, you prick?”

  This same motherly interest came in handy when they arrived at the gate. A fat old man with a clipboard looked Cecelia over. “Who’s this?”

  “Maria Costopolous. She’s new,” Sue said.

  “Mr. Dugan has to approve all new hires and I don’t see no Maria Cost-whatsit on the list,” the guard said.

  Sue stepped forward until her breasts touched the fat man’s larger ones. “Her name is Maria Costopolous. You either learn it or I’ll feed it to you one letter at a time.”

  “I still don’t see her on the list.”

  “Then I’ll take her to Mr. Dugan and get her on the list.”

  “No way. You can go in, but she has to stay out here until I get clearance.”

  Sue put an arm around Cecelia’s shoulders. “Does she look like a fucking Jap to you? Or a goddamned Nazi?”

  “Can’t be too careful. That’s what they say.”

  “You’re such an asshole.” Sue began to push Cecelia towards the front gate. “We’re going inside. You want to shoot us in the back, be my guest.”

  The guard grumbled something and slammed his clipboard inside his shack, but he apparently did nothing more as they went through the gate unmolested. “Don’t worry about that old codger,” Sue said. “He’s just one of those blowhards who’s pissed off because he can’t get into the war any other way.”

  “Kind of like you?” Cecelia said.

  “Yeah, kid, kind of like me,” Sue said and laughed. “You’re all right.”

  “Thanks.”

  Sue took her into the cavernous factory, where other workers, mostly women, were hard at work to produce more of the bombers that would dump bombs on German and Japanese soldiers. Sue led Cecelia up a metal staircase, to the foreman’s office. From the nameplate, this was the Mr. Dugan the guard had mentioned.

  Mr. Dugan was young enough to still be able to fight in the war, but it became clear why he wasn’t when he held out a wooden hand for her to shake. “So you must be a friend of Sue’s.”

  “Yes, sir. Maria Costopolous.”

  “Do you have any experience with this kind of thing, Maria?”

  “Well, on the farm I helped my father with the tractor and cars.”

  “I guess that’s more than some of them.” Mr. Dugan leaned back in his chair and lit a cigarette with his good hand. “If Sue thinks you can do it then I’m sure you can.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Make sure she gets a locker and then put her to work.”

  “I’m on it, Boss,” Sue said. She gave Cecelia a light push towards the door. On the way down the stairs, Sue said, “Dugan’s an all right guy. Mostly he stays out of the way and lets me run the show, which is better for everyone.”

  “So you’re the power behind the throne?”

  “You’re a quick one. We’ll find out how quick.”

  At the base of the stairs they ducked into a locker room that since the war had been converted into the women’s locker room and kept separate from the men. Sue went down a row of lockers until she came to one marked, “23.” When Sue opened the door, Cecelia saw there were still a woman’s clothes in there. “Angie quit a couple weeks ago. Left her shit here. I think she’s about your size.” Sue took out a denim shirt similar to the one she wore only bigger and with the name “Angie” written on the left breast.

  Cecelia found that Sue was right; the shirt fit her pregnant stomach with some room for her to continue to grow. The pants were a little too loose, but there was a belt so she could cinch them tight enough. Cecelia turned to a mirror and tried not to grimace when she saw Maria Costopolous’s meek reflection. Sue came up behind her to plant a hand on her shoulder. “You look fine. Just tie that hair up so it’s not in your face.”

  “Yes, Boss.”

  After she used a kerchief to tie back her hair, Cecelia followed Sue onto the floor. The B-24s under construction looked far more impressive from the floor than they had in the sights of the Messerschmitt jet. She didn’t have much time to gape as Sue was already pushing her towards where three other women worked on a wing.

  “We’ll start you off with something easy. Just tighten these screws. You do that and maybe we’ll get you on to something challenging.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Cecelia said. She picked up a screwdriver to tighten the screws like she saw the others doing. In her own body this would have been simple enough. Maria’s scrawny arms made it more of a challenge; she had to grunt and strain to get the screw to turn.

  A blond woman with “Gert” on her shirt pretended to wipe sweat off her brow so she could mask a snicker. “You want some help with that, honey?”

  “I can get it,” Cecelia snapped. She started to turn the screwdriver again with a vengeance. This time it came more easily.

  “The kid’s a natural,” Sue said.

  “Yeah, right,” Gert grumbled. She waited until Sue walked away to check on the rest of the line before she said, “So did Sue find you at the pound or did you follow her home?”

  The other women laughed at this while Cecelia imagined shoving the screwdriver through Gert’s neck. She could have done that easily in her body, but with Maria’s the screwdriver probably wouldn�
�t break the skin. “If you must know she saved me from a couple of men in an alley,” Cecelia said.

  “Probably a couple of unsatisfied customers.”

  Cecelia slapped the screwdriver onto the wing and then turned to Gert. “You got some kind of problem with me?”

  “Yeah, I do,” Gert said. She poked Cecelia in the stomach. “We don’t need no Mexican street trash here.”

  “I’m not Mexican. I’m Greek. It’s a whole other continent, you rube.”

  “You’re all the same to me. Another whore who couldn’t keep her legs together.”

  “Why don’t we go outside and I’ll put my legs up your ass?” This threat sounded pathetic with Maria’s voice, but Cecelia didn’t care. She wasn’t about to take shit from some white trash bitch. She yearned for just one of her poisoned daggers.

  “Fine with me.”

  “What the hell is going on here?” Sue shouted. “Why aren’t you people working?”

  “We were working fine until she showed up,” Gert said.

  “She called me Mexican street trash,” Cecelia countered.

  “Look, both of you, the war’s out there. Try to remember our boys are counting on us to make them some airplanes to kill the bad guys.” Sue waved a finger at both of them. “I come back here and catch you all goldbricking again and I’m firing the lot of you. Got it?”

  “I’m sorry,” Cecelia said.

  “Yeah, me too.”

  “Don’t be sorry. Just get back to work.” Sue raised her voice. “That goes for all of you. Let’s get to it!”

  Gert switched places with another woman so she and Cecelia wouldn’t be near each other, which made the next four hours go by more smoothly. Sue returned just before the horn blew to indicate lunchtime. “How’s it going?” she asked.

  “Better. I’m getting the hang of it.”

  “I knew you would. Come on, I’ll buy you lunch.” They bought sandwiches and bottles of Coke off a truck and then Sue led Cecelia over to a pile of junk parts that faced the harbor. Sue pointed to a streak of black smoke in the harbor. “That’s a destroyer out there. A bunch of them come and go, searching for U-boats.”

  “Have they found any?”