“All the same to us.”
She reached into her pocket for the knife, but she wasn’t fast enough. One of the men grabbed her arm and yanked it back hard enough for her to feel a pop in her shoulder. She’d dislocated her shoulders before to become used to the pain. A high pain tolerance was a prerequisite for an assassin and she had earned hers on that winter night in France so long ago.
She kicked the man in front of her in the crotch as hard as she could. It wasn’t hard enough for her liking but hard enough to make him double over. With her left hand she went for the man’s shotgun, but one of his fellows seized her other arm before she could make it. There was nothing left for her to do at that point but to thrash and scream as they dumped her in the back of the truck. Of course this being Rampart City, no one came to her aid.
The men had come prepared with rope to tie her arms and legs. The one she’d kicked in the crotch sat with her in the back while the other two rode in the front of the pickup. Cecelia lay on the bed of the truck; the unmistakable odor of pig piss, shit, and blood assaulted her nostrils. “So what are you assholes planning to do?” she asked. The man in the back of the truck only punched her in response.
If this were the mob they would have weighed her down and then tossed her in the harbor. If they were one of the many psychopaths running around the city, they’d drag her into an alley to take turns before they slit her throat. Since they were unsophisticated hicks from upstate somewhere, they took her to the one place that probably made them feel at home: Robinson Park.
In those days the park hadn’t gone to seed completely yet. There were bums and drifters on some benches, but not the gangs who would take up residence in the park thirty years from now. What was the same was the lack of a police presence, so that no cops saw the men take her from the pickup and drag her beneath the decorative bridge over the creek. She screamed anyway, at least until one got smart and stuffed a handkerchief into her mouth.
Once they were under the bridge, the men laid her down next to a trash barrel where some hobos had lit a fire. The hobos were smart enough to have already taken off. Cecelia squirmed against the bonds, but the men had done a good job with the ropes; they probably had lots of experience with pigs and other livestock down on the farm. There was nothing she could do as they loomed over her; the flickering orange light from the fire gave them a satanic appearance.
“Our cousin Gert told us what you done to her,” one said.
“We’s going to give you what you got coming.”
Cecelia waited for them to aim the shotguns at her and finish her off, but they didn’t. Instead, one reached into the bed of the pickup to take out a pipe wrench nearly as big and as heavy as the one she’d used on Gert at the factory. She closed her eyes and waited for the first blow.
As an assassin, Cecelia had been shot, stabbed, burned, and beaten in jobs that went sour. She hadn’t experienced anything like the pain these men inflicted since she had been fourteen years old. At first she tried not to scream, but in the end she couldn’t resist as they smashed the wrench across her body time and again. Blood ran into her eyes and filled her mouth along with chunks of shattered teeth when one of the men brought the wrench down on her jaw. They didn’t leave an inch of her untouched, but they saved her stomach for last. She screamed again as one of the men slammed the wrench into her belly. She tried to turn over, to protect Maria’s child, but the other two held her down on her back.
When it finally ended, it seemed as if she had endured an eternity of pain, though it had probably been only a minute or two. Once they finished, they pissed into her wounds. She tried to turn her head back and forth but couldn’t keep it from getting into her mouth to mix with the blood and broken teeth.
“That ought to learn you a lesson,” one of the men said.
“Whores like you ought to stay where they belong.” To illustrate where she belonged, they dumped her onto the street, in a gutter. By then she’d lost too much blood and endured too much pain to remain conscious. As she passed out, she heard the pickup squeal away and someone shout for an ambulance.
***
In her dreams she was fourteen again, back in the hospital in France. The old woman who had rescued her sat by her bed and looked kindly at her from behind her glasses. Cecelia lay on her side; she had already exhausted her supply of tears so that now she could only manage a sniffle on occasion. She didn’t know how long she lay there on her side, long enough for the room to turn dark and for someone to bring in a kerosene lamp.
“It’s a terrible tragedy,” the old woman said. Cecelia said nothing; she didn’t have the strength anymore for words. She didn’t so much as blink when the old woman patted her head. “It’s not your fault, dear. You were only trying to save yourself—and your child.”
Cecelia still didn’t say anything. She might have saved herself, but she had killed her child. She should have stayed home, given birth to the child, and let her foster parents ship the boy to Avignon. She could have escaped from the house after that and then made her way north to take back her baby. Then they would both have lived.
“It’s not your fault,” the old woman said again. “He did this to you. He put you in this position through his selfishness, his perversions.”
Only then did Cecelia finally work up the strength to say, “How do you know about him?”
“I know all about you, dear. Believe me when I say you’re a very special girl. Very special indeed. You have the power to turn this tragedy into a triumph. You can make sure your child did not die in vain.”
“How?”
“Come with me. I will help you understand your full potential. Then you’ll be able to repay him for what he did to you and your baby.”
Cecelia didn’t make a decision then, but two days later she was bundled up in a coach with the old woman, who referred to herself as the Headmistress. It was the start of her new life, the life that had risen out of the ashes of her child’s death. When she had blundered out into the snow that night, Cecelia inadvertently discovered who she was and the power she held.
The next time she returned to that hospital was three years later. This time she wore a black tunic and leggings and a black hood covered all but her eyes. In a twist of irony, they had him in the same bed she’d occupied. Given the state of 19th Century medicine, the fever he had contracted would certainly kill him in a day or two. She wasn’t about to wait that long.
Sweat covered his face and yet he shivered as he lay on the bed. His eyes flashed open to search for a moment before he saw her beside the bed. “Cecelia?” he asked, though she had not removed the hood. He reached out to her with a trembling hand. “My beautiful girl. You have returned.”
“Only to repay an old debt,” she said and then jammed the knife into his throat. She listened to the gurgle of his final words and then the hiss of his last breath.
It was over. She had finally obtained justice for her and her child. She left the knife on the sill of her foster mother’s window, a lock of hair tied around the hilt. This was long before genetic testing could obtain someone’s identity from follicles, but her foster mother would know who it was who had killed her husband.
Then she disappeared into the night.
***
When she opened her eyes, she thought she must still be dreaming. She could tell from the walls and the bedpan on the nightstand that she was in the hospital. And there was the old woman next to her bed. Except the old woman didn’t have glasses and her eyes were green, not blue.
She realized it was Sue Johnson, not the Headmistress beside her bed. Cecelia tried to say something, but all that came out was a gurgle similar to the noise her foster father had made before he died. Sue put a cup of water to Cecelia’s lips and tipped it up so the cool liquid ran down her throat.
Once the cup was empty, she tried to sit up, but Sue gently clamped down on her shoulder to keep her down. “Don’t try to move. Just take it easy.” Cecelia tried to talk again, but still couldn’
t form coherent words. “It’s all right. You’re safe. No one’s going to hurt you anymore.”
The memories of what had happened to her began to trickle back. Gert’s cousins had found her outside the motel and taken her to the park. They’d beaten her with a wrench and left her in a gutter. Cecelia saw them swing the wrench down at her stomach. She thrashed beneath Sue’s iron grip as she tried to work a hand down to feel her stomach. Sue took hold of her hand and looked into her eyes.
“I’m sorry, Maria,” she said.
There was no need to say what she was sorry about; Cecelia knew it even if she couldn’t feel her stomach to make sure: she had lost the baby. Unable to speak or even to scream, Cecelia could only cry into her pillow. Sue’s grip relaxed to become a gentle pat on her shoulder. “I know it’s not a consolation right now, but the doctor says you’ll be fine in a little while. A couple months and you’ll be good as new.”
Cecelia shook her head wildly. This couldn’t be happening again. Her carelessness had killed another innocent child. Even worse in this case was that she had killed Maria’s child. She had vowed never to kill a child after what had happened to her but now she had broken that promise. She had killed Maria’s baby just like she’d killed her own.
“I’m sure you don’t want to hear this now, but I know how you feel,” Sue whispered. “I know what it’s like to lose a child.”
Cecelia stared up at Sue with surprise while the tears continued to dribble down her cheeks. Through these tears, she saw Sue nod slightly. “My baby didn’t die, at least not right away. But she’s gone by now.
“I probably wasn’t much different from you at your age. I fell in love with a man. I thought he loved me, but he didn’t. Not really. He just wanted to use me for pleasure.
“Like you, I got pregnant. He wanted me to give the baby to my sister so no one outside the family would suspect anything. But I was selfish. I knew I couldn’t stand seeing my child grow up and not think of me as her mother.
“So I gave her away. I gave her to a lawyer who arranged for her to go to a good family. I couldn’t bear to so much as look at her. I knew if I did, I’d want to keep her with me forever, which would have been even worse. I knew I was no kind of mother, not like I’m sure you would have been—like you’re going to be someday.
“I never saw her again. I never knew her name or what became of her. Sometimes I’ll see a girl on the street and I’ll imagine it’s her. I’ll sit in a restaurant and I’ll look at the people there, trying to see that piece of me.”
For the first time Cecelia could remember, she saw Sue cry. She had seen before that Sue hid a secret pain, but Cecelia had thought it was about some man she’d lost long ago. While that was partially true, the pain was even deeper than Cecelia had imagined. “Even after all these years I still think about it. It still hurts. The pain will never go away no matter how hard you try. All you can do is go on living and try to do what you can to make up for it.” Sue patted Cecelia’s shoulder again. “You’re not going to be alone, though. I’ll be here and I’ll do everything I can to help you through it. OK, kid?”
With tears still in her eyes, Cecelia nodded.
Chapter 27
Louise didn’t go home to rest as Mom had suggested. She knew her mother was right, but every time Louise thought of her mother in that hospital bed with her signed casts and Nancy Drew book, Louise wanted to find Isis and punch her in the face. Maybe that would be the best way to go about it, though not from what Marlin had told her. From what he’d said, her armor could resist Isis’s power, but she would need more than the Sword of Justice to destroy the bitch. “Last time your mother had to sacrifice her heart,” Marlin said.
This time Mom had given up more than that, and all for that stupid book. A book Mom had never even read. This thought guided Louise back to the Plaine Museum. She used the cape to slip past the security in the main gallery and go down to the subbasement and then the sub-subbasement. There she found a not entirely welcome surprise.
Despite the time they’d shared in the attic of Aggie’s house, it still freaked Louise out a little to see her best friend with gray hair, wrinkles, and turkey jowls. Renee had always been the younger one, the sidekick for Louise’s shenanigans. For the moment at least Renee was the older one. And back at the hospital, Mom was the younger one.
Renee lay on the floor, curled up around the red case of armor. She had probably thought the same thing, that the armor was the only thing that could protect them from Isis, so she had clung to it like a life raft. Louise bent down to shake her friend’s shoulder. “Renee? Time to get up,” Louise said.
With a groan Renee opened her eyes. In them Louise saw a moment of panic before she must have remembered where she was. Louise wasn’t prepared for Renee to jump to her feet much faster than should have been possible for an old woman and press Louise into a hug. “Oh, thank goodness you’re safe. I thought for sure she’d gotten you too.”
“No, I’m still here. And so are you. Have any trouble finding the place?”
“No, your new friend helped me find it.”
“Yes, but I hope you find someone else next time. I’m not a bloody tour guide,” Marlin said as he appeared through the wall. “How’s your mother?”
“She’s holding up.”
“It’s terrible what Isis is doing to her,” Renee said.
“You know about that?”
“I felt it.” Renee shivered. “I felt what she did to everyone, twisting their souls and their memories around. It’s awful. It won’t be long until she does that to the whole world.”
“She won’t get that far,” Marlin said. “The Master will return before then.”
“You mean Merlin?” Louise asked. “If he can beat her, why doesn’t he just do that already? Why’s he making Mom and everyone else suffer?”
“I thought I explained that to you.”
“Oh, sure, because there are dire consequences.” Louise snorted at this. “As if things aren’t already pretty fucking dire.”
“The next time he comes back is for the Final Reckoning. That means it’s for all the marbles. There won’t be many who survive that one. Though with you two handling things I don’t suppose that will be long in coming.”
“Hey, we’re doing our best.”
“Bang up job so far.”
“Yeah, well, what do you expect? Mom was the Scarlet Knight for almost thirty years. Aggie and the others have been witches for centuries. So zip it.”
Renee put a hand on Louise’s shoulder. “Calm down, dear.” She put her other hand to her head. “I’m sorry. I’m starting to feel like an old lady.”
“It’s fine—”
“No it’s not! If I’m feeling like an old lady, can you imagine how Aggie feels? How your mom feels? You can only look at a mirror image for so long before it starts to change who you are inside.” Renee sank down on the chair in the Sanctuary and ran a hand through her gray hair. “I wish things could go back to how they were. This is too much for me.”
“Come on, don’t worry. We’ll find a way to fix this. Won’t we, Marlin?”
“Oh, sure. Of course.” He rolled his eyes and Louise shot him a dirty look.
Louise sighed. It was clear she would have to take charge of this situation. Renee was far too rattled to think clearly and Marlin seemed only to excel at criticizing her. “All right, here’s what we’re going to do: Marlin, get out there and see what Isis is up to. Renee, go to the archives and see what you can find on Isis and this Final Reckoning.”
“What about you, fearless leader?” Marlin asked with a sneer.
“I’m going to figure out how to read this fucking book.”
Marlin snorted. “Sure, take the easy job.”
***
Despite that she had found the book in the Egyptian desert and lugged it all the way back to America, Louise hadn’t spent much time with the Book of Isis. She had dusted it, checked it for damage, and tried to date it; there hadn’t been time
to read it. On the flight back she had spent some time to try to open the book only to find it locked.
The lock wasn’t a traditional lock like the one that had been on her childhood diary. This was more like a magnetic seal, only there were no magnets five thousand years ago. At least not magnets like modern society understood. It was possible that the ancients had found a piece of magnetic ore—maybe even part of a meteor, which would have driven Mom mad with joy—and deduced how to use it in order to keep the book shut. Still, such a primitive magnet should have been easy enough to break through with a good tug. Louise tried that both with her muscles and with the augmented strength of the armor to no avail.
Next she tried to use the Scarlet Knight’s gloves, when she remembered what Marlin had said about the gloves being able to open locks. She planted her hands all over the book’s jet-black surface, but nothing happened. So much for Merlin’s magic overpowering Isis’s.
Louise took the Sword of Justice from its sheath and held it over the book. To her surprise, the blade didn’t glow as it did in the presence of the Black Dragoons or Isis herself. Louise thought something created by Isis would radiate the same evil as she did.
That thought tickled something in the back of Louise’s mind. Why would Isis create this book in the first place? Mom seemed to think it was the key to defeating Isis, but then why would Isis have made it? She seemed too smart to leave something that powerful around where any silly archaeologist could unearth it.
Unless the Book of Isis wasn’t created by Isis. It couldn’t have been written by Merlin either, or Marlin would have said something. Perhaps someone else had created it, maybe someone who wanted to provide a warning about the evil of Isis. There’s only one way to find out, she thought. That was to open the fucking book.
Tales of the Scarlet Knight Collection: The Wrath of Isis Page 96
