Tales of the Scarlet Knight Collection: The Wrath of Isis

by P. T. Dilloway

  The path in the cave sloped down; it went deeper and deeper until she thought she might find a Lost World like in the old stories. In a sense that’s what did happen. On the walls of the cave, she saw crude drawings more like those of prehistoric people than ancient Egyptians. She took pictures of these to show Dr. Dreyfus and the others later.

  The farther down she went the more drawings she saw. Then the path abruptly ended. For a moment Louise considered going back—she had gotten plenty of great material already—until she realized her flashlight beam was going through part of the wall. She leaned closer to see what might be beyond the wall, but she couldn’t. She could certainly smell something musty and damp—like a crypt.

  Phones wouldn’t work this deep underground, but Louise did have a GPS tracker. She flicked it on and off a few times, to give the signal for help. While she waited, she clawed at the rock, but it was far too heavy for her to move on her own. All eight of the mercenaries had to use crowbars in order to get it to budge.

  In the meantime, Dan pulled her aside to chide her for her disappearance. That was after she’d launched herself at him; she’d thrown her arms around him and given him a kiss on the cheek. “I found something!” she said, careful to keep her voice down.

  She knew she was in trouble when he grabbed her and set her back on the ground. “Lou, what you did was very dangerous. You could have been killed.” He rubbed his face with one hand. “I promised your mother I wouldn’t let anything happen to you.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to run off. It just happened.”

  Dan glared at her, but before he could say anything else, the mercenaries had pried the stone that blocked the path loose by a few inches. The mercenaries, even without their guns and other equipment, couldn’t fit through, nor could Dan, but Louise could. Not only was she small and thin, she was double-jointed as well. She’d used this ability in her early childhood to hide herself in cupboards, closets, and one time even Mom’s underwear drawer when she and Renee played hide-and-go-seek. Despite this, Renee always seemed to find her with little difficulty.

  To squeeze through the opening proved to be no problem for Louise. She squirted through to the other side and played her flashlight around a rough chamber, inside which she found a dozen bodies. Fragments of cloth remained stuck to the bodies, but these were not Egyptian mummies, just normal corpses. Though from the bits of gold jewelry and the animal bone weapons left with the bodies, she knew they weren’t normal corpses.

  Her paper on the “First Kings of Egypt” not only earned Louise her PhD but her job at the Plaine Museum as well. When she came down the steps at the airport to the baggage claim, Mom waited there to give her a hug. “I’m so proud of you,” Mom said.

  Louise’s head snapped up. She understood what Dan had meant now. She hurried over to the elevator. She scanned the buttons and pressed the one for the subbasement. She had done a little work down here as all new employees were required to do. Most of that work entailed going through the old crates to make sure they contained what they were supposed to contain. The only question was: what was she supposed to find?

  For what must have been an hour she opened various crates; she peeked inside for some kind of hint. She didn’t find anything but a lot of old junk. There was nothing in any of these crates that would help anyone. Most of this stuff she didn’t understand why Mom bothered to keep it, except she couldn’t bear to get rid of anything that might have scientific value. Even the signs on the wall, like this old radiation warning sign, despite there hadn’t been much need to worry about that since before Louise was born. She ran a hand along the sign—

  The floor beneath her dropped suddenly, to deposit her into a cavern similar to the one in the Sudan, though not so dark. It smelled even worse, almost like sewage. Around her she saw a sea of mud with some bits of olive green wood here and there and an old radiation suit on a rusty nail. What was this place?

  It didn’t seem to be anything, except maybe an old bomb shelter from before even her mother was born. Why would someone go to all the trouble to install a hidden elevator to an otherwise useless bomb shelter? She thought back to that first trip to the Sudan, to the stone the ancient people had rolled into the cave to seal their royalty away from any prying eyes. What had someone hidden here?

  She took the rubber boots from the radiation suit so she could step into the mud. Whoever had installed that elevator had hidden something down here. She felt around the walls to find a crack or a hidden trigger like in old stories.

  Then her hand passed through one wall to touch a sheet of metal on the other side. The hologram gave way to reveal a metal wall that clearly wasn’t part of the original bomb shelter. She saw a thumb print reader, though she knew better than to stick her thumb against it.

  In college, as the biggest nerd on campus, she had gravitated towards other nerds, mostly the computer geeks. They engaged in a barter system, where she showed them about the carnal arts while they showed her various dirty tricks that could be done with computers. One of these involved how to reprogram a thumbprint reader. This would work better with proper tools, but she wasn’t about to go up and look for some, not when she was so close.

  A piece of rock worked well enough for her purposes. With the rock she smashed open the access terminal. From there it was just a bit of hacking to reprogram the reader and prompt it to reset the access print. Whoever had done the original programming had done a good job; they had built in several safeguards that nearly stymied Louise. In the end, the light above the reader turned green and a section of the wall peeled back.

  She crawled through the opening, unconcerned if she stained her black dress at this point. Once through the opening, she remained on her knees to gape in awe at what she saw. From the holographic map of the city, the computer, and the thickly padded massage chair, she knew this certainly wasn’t an old bomb shelter. This was the Scarlet Knight’s lair!

  Like every kid in Rampart City she knew about the Scarlet Knight. All sorts of stories floated around the playground and the halls of school about the city’s superhero. They said she could climb walls. She could turn herself invisible. Her golden sword could cut through anything. Her armor could deflect bullets. Basically she could do everything but fly. And Louise had found her hideout!

  She realized she wasn’t alone as a vaguely British voice said, “Well, are you just going to sit there all day gaping?”

  She looked up and screamed at the sight of a ghost.

  ***

  As a scientist, especially one who spent a lot of time around burial grounds, Louise didn’t put any stock into ghosts. There were some scientists, even legitimate ones, who tried to prove the reality of spirits from another realm. Besides the traditional belief that ghosts were the souls of the dead left behind to wander the earth, there were theories about quantum signatures, psychic imprints, and alternate universes overlapping.

  Louise didn’t believe any of these theories. But Renee did. Renee with her somewhat psychic abilities felt for certain there were spirits who hadn’t crossed over yet. She had even saved up her allowance to buy a Ouija board when she was eight. For most of one night they had tried to summon spirits from the Great Beyond until Aggie broke it up. She confiscated the board and said, “That’s not how you summon a ghost, dear.”

  Despite all of this, Louise couldn’t deny the shape that hovered over her sure as hell looked like a ghost. She could see through his blue-tinted form to the ceiling of the room. When she reached up with one hand to touch the hem of his robe, her hand passed through it.

  The strangest part of all was what the ghost looked like. With the robe, pointed hat, and long beard he looked like a wizard one of her computer geek friends played as in their role-playing games. Despite that his eyes didn’t have any actual color, she could still tell he gave her a Glare worthy of Mom.

  “You’re a ghost,” she finally managed to get out.

  “Very perceptive. I can see why you’re a doctor.”
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br />   Louise pushed herself up to her feet and put one muddy hand to her temple. “I must still be dreaming,” she said. Though for a dream, the mud felt real enough. “And how do you know who I am anyway?”

  “You think I just float around in here all day and night?” The ghost made a very human snort. “Do you have any idea how dull that would be?”

  “So who are you? What do you want?”

  “My name is Marlin. I—”

  “Marlin?”

  “Yes, like the fish. I am Keeper of the Lore for the Order of the Scarlet Knight.”

  “I knew it. This is her lair.”

  “Sanctuary. Lair has such a negative connotation. Makes it sound like she’s a spider or a mad scientist, though that’s not far off.”

  Louise looked around the room again, but as far as she could tell she and the ghost were alone. “Where is she? I’d love to meet her.”

  “Look in a mirror and you can talk to her all you want.”

  Louise gaped at him in disbelief. “Me? I’m not the Scarlet Knight.”

  “You are now. You heard the Call. Just like the previous Scarlet Knight and the one before her and so on for the last almost four millennia. It’s the ancient tradition—”

  “That dream. Dan’s voice. This is what he wanted me to find.” She rubbed her temple, which inadvertently rubbed mud into her hair. The Scarlet Knight—her? It seemed impossible. “I can’t be a superhero. I don’t even have my own place to live yet.”

  “Be that as it may, you heard the Call and that means you’re the one. So if we could just get to it—”

  “Wait a minute. What happened to the last Scarlet Knight? Where is she?”

  “Indisposed. Now, we really don’t have a lot of time for stupid questions. There’s the fate of the world at stake and all that.”

  She gave Marlin a Glare of her own. “Could you give me a minute? This is sort of a lot to take in.” She rubbed at her eyes and wondered if all of this would disappear and she would find herself in bed. If she were lucky, these last few days would be a nightmare and she’d wake up to Mom pressing a washcloth to her forehead and Dan would bring over some chicken soup made by his cook with extra noodles—the way Louise liked it. Everything remained as it was, with her in a dank cavern with a ghost who glared at her. “This is really happening, isn’t it? It’s not a dream? Or a psychotic episode?”

  “I’m starting to wish it were,” Marlin grumbled. “This was so much easier in the old days when you just pointed them to the armor and told them who to kill. Of course people back then were a lot more superstitious. They didn’t need all these rational explanations.”

  While Marlin ranted, Louise saw a metal case in one corner of the room. From the scarlet color of the case, she knew this had to be where the magic armor was kept. The armor that according to the ghost belonged to her now.

  She knelt down in front of the case. As she reached out to it with her hands, angelic faces suddenly appeared along the case. They hummed like a heavenly choir as her hands came closer. She kept her body back to touch the case at arm’s length. The case yawned open at her touch.

  She leaned forward and saw the armor piled up neatly inside with the helmet on top. She reached inside to pick up the helmet and study it like an ancient artifact. From what Marlin had said, she supposed it was. What she couldn’t deny, though, was it felt real enough, the metal cool to her touch. “I don’t believe it,” she said.

  “Yes, well, believe it. Could you just put it on so we can get started with the training?”

  Louise dropped the helmet back into the case. “Wait a minute. Who said I’m even going to do this? What if I don’t want to be the Scarlet Knight?”

  “No one has ever refused the Call. The last one tried, but she couldn’t deny her fate. So either you can get on with it or you can whine and bitch and do it anyway. Your choice.”

  “What’s your problem? Why are you so fucking pissed off?”

  “It might be that I’m a ghost and that I’ve had to spend almost four thousand years explaining this to morons.”

  “I’m not a moron! I have a PhD.”

  “Fine, you’re a very intelligent moron.”

  Louise stood up and held up her middle finger at the ghost. “Fuck you and your Order, buddy. I don’t need this bullshit.” She checked her watch. “Mom’s probably waiting for me.”

  She made it to the door before Marlin said, “Don’t you want to find who did that to your mother? And who killed Dreyfus? And that tub of lard Becky?”

  “Becky’s dead? When?”

  “Yesterday. She got her. And you should see what she’s done to your friend and her father. Ghastly business.”

  “Renee? What’s happened to Renee?”

  “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

  “Come on, don’t hold out on me now. What happened to Renee and Aggie?”

  “Let’s just say that they’ve both been born again and leave it at that.”

  “Born again? You mean they’re babies?”

  “Yes, though I imagine Aggie will be a corpse before much longer. Unless maybe the Scarlet Knight does something about it.”

  Louise leaned back against the wall and tried to wrap her head around all of this. “You’re saying that someone did all of those things to Mom, Dan, Becky, Aggie, and Renee?”

  “That’s right. One person. The most evil creature ever to grace the face of the earth. And you’re the only one who has even a hope of stopping her.”

  With Becky dead—or at least according to the ghost—Louise knew there was only one person who could be responsible: Eileen. She thought back to the night in the Brass Drum, the way Renee had reacted when Eileen came into the club. And the way Renee had glared at Eileen during the funeral, as if she wanted to kill her. “Eileen. That bitch.” She looked up at Marlin. “What do I do?”

  “You put on the armor and do what I tell you. Should be simple enough for a genius.”

  ***

  As an Egyptologist, Louise hadn’t spent a lot of time with medieval European armor, which the Scarlet Knight’s suit obviously was. Most of it was self-explanatory, though Marlin bitched at her when she put the leg pieces on backwards. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s not like they taught us this at Berkeley.”

  “They didn’t teach you anything at Berkeley except how to drink and screw from what I’ve heard,” Marlin said.

  “How did you hear that?”

  “Never mind. Hurry up and get dressed.”

  The previous Scarlet Knight had been taller than her, though almost as skinny. Lucky for her, the armor adjusted itself to accommodate her smaller frame; it actually shrunk as she put it on to fit perfectly. The boots were the only part of the armor that didn’t have to reshape themselves; they already fit her big feet comfortably. The most awkward moment came when she put on the breastplate, which shortened itself lengthwise while at the same time deepened to fit her breasts; apparently the last Scarlet Knight was not well-endowed in that area.

  With the rest of the armor on except for the helmet, she reached inside for the golden cape. As she lifted it up, her fingers went slack inside the golden gloves so that the cape drifted back inside. She pushed it aside to reach inside for the other item in the case, one that didn’t belong there: the Book of Isis.

  “Oh God,” she said. She studied the cover of the book to make sure it was the same as the one she’d found in the desert. The one she had checked into the Plaine Museum. The one Mom had checked out and claimed she would put back in a day or two. “Mom. How could you?”

  For the first time since they’d met, Marlin actually looked sympathetic. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I was hoping you wouldn’t figure it out.”

  She thought back to her memory of waking up in the middle of the night. The heavy footsteps accompanied by a metallic sound. The blanket that covered Mom’s body but couldn’t conceal the bulkiness of her. Something hard pressing against Louise when Mom leaned down to kiss her. “How long
?” she asked. “How long has she been doing this?”

  “Since before you were born. When she was your age.”

  “She’s been doing this for almost thirty years?” Louise collapsed onto the chair by the computer—a chair Mom had brought down here. She had built all of this. She had installed that elevator in the subbasement too; she’d probably asked her buddy Megan Putnam to include that on the plans. The bruises, the lack of sleep, the premature aging, and the arthritis all made sense now. “Jesus Christ. Who else knows about this?”

  “Becky of course. Aggie and her wife. That doctor found out not long after you were born.”

  “Dan?”

  “No, he never found out. Probably should have, the twit. Never met a man who could be so smart and so dumb at the same time.”

  “Does Renee know?”

  “No, she had enough problems to deal with.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Do we have to get into this now?”

  “Yes, damn it!” Louise wiped tears from her eyes and then stood up. “If you want me to help Aggie and Renee then tell me what’s going on. Please.”

  “Fine, but you aren’t going to believe it.” Marlin waited for her to sit down before he said, “Aggie is a witch. She’s more than five hundred years old—or at least she was. Her wife, that’s even harder to explain. She’s from another dimension or something like that.”

  “And Renee? She’s a witch too?”

  “No one’s really sure what she is. I don’t think she even knows.”

  Louise had always thought she was the one good at keeping secrets. Now she realized everyone around her had kept secrets from her. While her childhood had been anything but normal, she’d never thought it was this…weird.

  She wiped at her eyes with a gloved hand, though this was probably not something the real Scarlet Knight—her mother—would do. “What about my father? What’s the story on him? Is he a wizard or a Moloch or something?”