When she checked the archives computer, Renee wasn’t surprised to see she had only been in the vault for an hour. It had been a lifetime, in which she had finally grown up. She wasn’t a baby anymore or even a child who masqueraded as an adult like so many others. She was a grown-up now and she had a grown-up’s work to do. She knew where to begin.
Water still dripped off her body when she vanished into the corridor of the hospital. A woman’s scream reminded her she’d forgotten something important: clothes. In the jungle she hadn’t needed anything to wear, but in Rampart City they were necessary camouflage.
Just an hour ago Renee would have been mortified to appear naked in front of the candy striper about her age. Now she simply walked up to the young woman whose nametag read, “Laura.” Laura had been sorting a pile of scrubs; she’d lined them up in neat rows, though now she could only gape at Renee.
Renee snatched a set of scrubs from the cart and began to put them on. As she did, she looked around the hallway. “Is that Emma Earl’s room?” she asked Laura.
The candy striper nodded. But a moment later, she shook her head. “Which is it?” Renee asked her.
“She was in there. Her parents took her home this morning.”
“Her parents?” Renee didn’t know a lot about the history of Louise’s mother, but she did know Emma Earl’s parents had been murdered a long time ago. This must be another one of Isis’s tricks, probably the worst one yet.
“They’re really nice folks. You can see why she’s such a little sweetheart with parents like that.”
Renee finished dressing in the scrubs while she thought back to what Louise had said about her grandparents. She remembered a day about twelve years ago when she’d wanted to sleep over at Louise’s house. “I can’t,” Louise said. “Mommy and I are going to see Grandpa and Grandma in Parkdale.”
Parkdale. That’s where Emma had lived, in the suburbs, where it was safe. Renee turned to Laura, who still gaped at her as if she were still naked. “You’ve been very helpful,” Renee said.
Now that Renee had a vague idea where Emma might be, it didn’t take long to find her. Renee closed her eyes and listened, not with her eyes but with her mind. It was a skill she’d learned in the jungle when she tracked animals. She supposed this was part of the “pure magic” as Nek called it.
At Milton, her teachers had explained a witch should never vanish to a place if she couldn’t see her destination clearly. “You could end up stuck inside a rock or a board or between floors,” Ms. Chiu had said. Aggie had seconded this; she explained she didn’t even vanish herself onto the first level of the archives out of fear she might land on Mom.
Renee had never been to Parkdale, but it didn’t matter. She could see it well enough with her mind. She could see the street Emma lived on with the rows of ranch houses with their green lawns and fenced-in backyards. She could even see the house where Emma lived, a white house with blue trim and a swing set in the backyard for little Emma to use.
A child’s startled scream told her she had vanished herself to the right place. Renee saw she had landed in Emma’s room, at the foot of her bed. Emma lay on the bed, her feet wrapped in bandages but no longer trapped in casts. A pair of crutches was propped beside the bed; Emma held up one of these like a gun to point it at Renee.
The little girl’s eyes narrowed behind her glasses. “Renee?”
“It’s me. I’ve come to help you.”
There was a tap on the door. “Emma, are you all right in there?” a woman’s voice said. The door opened and the woman stepped inside. She had the same curly red hair as Louise, only shorter. Her nose also didn’t have the same sharpness or her teeth the same overbite, but otherwise it was easy to see why this woman was Louise’s namesake. The woman didn’t see Renee at the foot of the bed, just as Nek hadn’t seen Renee in the clearing.
The woman bent down beside Emma and put a hand to her forehead. “I’m fine, Mommy. I’m just playing,” Emma said.
“You should get some rest, baby, like the nice doctor told you to.”
“I will.”
Emma’s mother kissed her on the forehead and then smiled. “You just let me know if you need anything. All right, baby?”
“Yes, Mommy.”
Renee waited until the door closed to say, “She’s not really your mother.”
“No. I’m not sure what she is. A puppet, I guess.”
“You’re not a little girl either.”
“No.”
Renee nodded. She took one of Emma’s tiny hands in her own. “I want you to close your eyes. Don’t think about anything—I know that’s hard for you, but just try it. Let yourself simply exist. Can you do it?”
“I’ll try.” Emma took off her glasses before she squeezed her eyes shut. Renee closed her eyes as well to listen with her mind as she’d done at the hospital, though this time she kept the focus solely on Emma’s bed.
When she opened her eyes, Renee saw an adult Emma in the bed; her unbandaged legs hung over the edge. The strange thing was that Emma didn’t look the way Renee remembered her. She looked only about Louise’s age, her hair copper red and face unlined. Emma must have sensed Renee staring at her. “What?” she asked.
“You’re still so young.”
Emma rolled off the bed and went over to the mirror as if sleepwalking. She took a handful of red hair with one hand while the other ran down her smooth cheek. When she turned around, she looked down at the floor, her cheeks red. “There’s something you should know,” she said. “I’m not really forty-seven. Twenty years ago—when I was pregnant with Louise—there was an accident in the archives. A spell got out and it brought me here.”
“That makes sense.”
“It does?”
“As much as anything else,” Renee said with a shrug. She held out her hand for Emma to take. “Come on, Louise is waiting for us.”
“Wait, what am I supposed to tell her about this?”
“Don’t tell her anything. She’s a smart girl. Like her mom. She’ll figure it out.”
They were both still laughing at this when they vanished from the house in Parkdale.
***
Louise realized the flaw in Mom’s plan shortly after she left the hospital: the archives didn’t have a phone. She tried Renee’s personal phone without any success. Other than that, she didn’t know any other way to contact her friend. So she settled into the chair in the Sanctuary to wait for Renee to show up.
For the first time in days, Louise managed to fall asleep. The armor, while made of metal, didn’t feel much heavier than a pair of flannel pajamas—the kind Mom had worn at the hospital. Not even this thought was enough to keep Louise awake; she finally heeded Mom’s advice to get some rest.
She awoke to a flash of light and started out of the chair; she reached for the Sword of Justice. The sword fell out of her hand when she saw Renee and Mom there, although neither one looked the same as just a few hours ago. Renee’s body looked young again, while her eyes looked much older, with a feral gleam to them. The hospital scrubs she wore were several sizes too big, so that she looked like a scarecrow. Were those teeth around her neck?
As for Mom, she looked gorgeous—at least in a Mom sense. She still wouldn’t win a Miss Universe pageant anytime soon, but she looked healthier than Louise had seen her—as an adult at least—in a long, long time. Her skin seemed to almost glow with good health and was nearly as smooth as when she was six years old. Her hair had turned back to the copper shade Louise remembered it as before Becky left.
Louise collapsed against her mother as much to make sure she was real as out of relief to see her as an adult again. “I don’t understand,” Louise mumbled into Mom’s chest. “What’s she up to now?”
“Nothing, baby. Renee did this.”
Louise turned her head to face her best friend. “Thank you.”
“You don’t need to thank me. I only did what needed to be done.”
Louise nodded. The seriousness on
Renee’s face reminded her they had work to do; it wasn’t the time for her to bawl. She straightened herself up and pretended to brush dust from off the armor. “So, um, I guess you’ll want this back now,” she said.
“No. You’re the Scarlet Knight now. It’s yours.”
“What are we going to do now?”
“The same as before.”
“But, Mom—”
“This doesn’t change anything. There’s still only one way to make sure we get rid of Isis once and for all. I have to make the sacrifice.”
Louise turned to Renee. “Can’t you do something? I mean, if you were able to override her magic once—”
“I can’t destroy her magic. I can destroy her body, but she’ll find a new one.” There was a flatness to Renee’s voice that went with the oldness in her eyes. It was as if in a few hours she had become a world-weary sage. Between her and Mom, Louise felt like the kid in the room. Mom pulled Louise close again and patted the back of her head, which was the only part not covered in armor at the moment. “I know how much this hurts, but it’s the only way. You know that. We already talked about it.”
“But that was when you were a little kid and you were crippled. Now you’re you again. I don’t want to give that up.”
“You have to, baby.”
The worst part for Louise was she knew Mom was right. That damnable logical, pragmatic part of Louise’s brain, her scientific mind, told her this was what they had to do. They couldn’t just kill Isis’s body or she would come back to start it all over again; they had to go to the root of the problem, to take her power away.
Louise also knew her mother wouldn’t let her make the sacrifice. For Louise’s entire life Mom had tried to protect her, not only from outside dangers but from her own secrets; she wouldn’t stop trying to do that now. “It’s not fair,” Louise mumbled. “Daddy already gave his life for me. Why do you have to too?”
“Because life isn’t fair, baby. You know that.” Mom smiled at her, which broke Louise’s heart. “I’ve always been proud of you, baby. You’re just how I’d always imagined you’d be.”
“Oh, Mom—” Louise couldn’t manage to get anything out of her mouth, so she tried to put all of her love into one final hug that ended far too soon for her liking.
“Now come on, it’s time to go.”
Louise tucked the Sword of Justice back into its sheath and then found the helmet. She flipped down the visor to cover the tears in her eyes. Then she took Mom and Renee’s hands to form a circle. With a curt nod, Renee vanished them from the Sanctuary.
***
The Temple of Isis was easy to find, though Renee had never been there or even heard of it before. The evil that radiated from the place practically lit up her consciousness like a spotlight. Once she took both Dr. Earl’s hands, she had only to stretch out and steer them to the center of all that evil, the last place any sane person would want to go.
The place looked about as Renee would have imagined. The walls, ceilings, and floors were all the same shiny black as the Book of Isis and the Black Dragoons—the same black as Isis’s eyes. There were statues at least twenty feet high of the goddess, larger versions of the ones Louise had found in the desert. Torches provided the only light, to cast harsh shadows about the room, which she supposed was all part of the intimidation Isis sought.
Renee had vanished them to the entryway, about a football field away from the altar in front of the largest statue of Isis, some hundred feet tall. That was the place where Louise’s mother would sacrifice herself to the god Anubis in an attempt to strip Isis of her powers. No one had told Renee of this plan specifically, but she had seen it in the minds of both Earl women. They both radiated the same resolve and acceptance, though Louise had an undercurrent of sorrow as well at being forced to help her mother make her an orphan.
Renee’s heightened senses told her Isis was already here, as was Aggie. She tried to get a deeper read on Aggie’s state of mind, but her father’s mind was too jumbled at the moment. As for Isis, Renee didn’t need to read her mind; it was pretty much an open book. She hated Emma for foiling her the last time and by extension anyone with anything to do with Dr. Earl. For that reason she had conducted her war of terror on Emma, to force her to endure not just physical but spiritual agony as well.
Perhaps Louise’s mother didn’t realize it, but Renee knew the plan all along hadn’t been solely about the book. Isis wanted to break Emma Earl, to corrode that pure heart of hers and fill it with the same hate and thirst for vengeance that swelled her own. In that she had failed, at least so far. There was still the chance if Emma had to watch Louise die on top of everything she would finally snap.
Previously Renee might have sworn not to let that happen. Now she knew better. Louise and her mother were part of the natural order just like everything else. Renee would try to save them, but that was all she could do. Anything else would be a waste of effort. In life, as in the jungle, those who strutted around only made themselves easy prey.
“There’s the altar,” Emma Earl said.
“Let’s get this over with,” Louise said with false bravado that fooled no one.
“Hold on,” Renee said. “Here she comes.”
As befitted Isis’s style, she appeared in front of them in a puff of smoke. In her arms she cradled little Aggie, who looked the same as Renee remembered from the last time. “Hello girls,” Isis said. Her black eyes turned to the elder Dr. Earl. “My goodness, Emma, how you’ve grown. Last time I saw you, you were just an adorable little tike being tucked in by Mommy and Daddy. How are they, by the way?”
“Leave her alone!” Louise shouted. Her hand went to the sword at her belt. Her mother put a hand on her shoulder.
“Careful, baby. We don’t want to hurt Aggie.”
“Yes, you wouldn’t want to do anything to harm the innocent little baby.” Isis tickled Aggie’s chin until the baby giggled. “I suggest if you want her to live, you surrender yourselves and the armor to me.”
“How about you put Aggie down and I’ll cram the Sword of Justice up your ass?”
“Such a temper. You must have inherited that from your father. I hear they dumped him in a cesspool over by Swede Road in the Trenches. Appropriate isn’t it, to dump garbage in the garbage?”
“Why you—” Louise was about to lunge forward, but her mother held her back with both hands this time. Despite that she didn’t have the scarlet armor on, Emma Earl’s presence seemed to be enough to keep her daughter in line.
“Take it easy, baby,” Emma whispered. “She’s trying to rattle you.”
Renee watched all of this with little interest. She knew these were the formalities, like trash talk at the weigh-in for a boxing match. While Isis talked, she also tried to read her opponents, especially Renee. Even without any psychic abilities, Renee could have figured this out from how Isis made certain not to look at her, in the hope to catch her unawares.
“So, Emma, what sort of zany scheme have you devised this time? I suppose by now you’ve read what’s in the book. You’ve probably come to offer yourself as a sacrifice.” She paused for a moment, to read Emma and Renee’s faces; it was just as well Louise had the visor of her helmet down. “That’s so noble of you. Of course you couldn’t sacrifice your daughter, though I can’t imagine why. What kind of man do you think is going to marry the Sewer Rat’s daughter and make little rat babies with her?”
Emma kept her hold of Louise, her voice even as she said, “I’m not like you. I wouldn’t trade Louise’s life for anything, especially my own.”
“I suppose you wouldn’t. That’s why you were the Scarlet Knight. It’s funny how someone supposedly so innocent and virginal can act like a whore. Did you ever tell darling Louise about fucking her mentor? In that cow Becky’s body no less! Of course that created quite a bit of trouble for you in the end, though it did lead to you finding your true love—a man who rummaged through people’s shit for food.”
“You goddamned bitch!”
Louise howled. “If you weren’t holding Aggie—”
“Calm down, Louise,” Renee said. She sensed the time was right. “She wants you to prove yourself unfit to wear the armor. That’s the only way she can touch you.”
“Not the only way,” Isis said. She snapped her fingers and a moment later a dozen Black Dragoons appeared. They aimed their various weapons at Renee, Louise, and Emma. “Perhaps you’d like to reconsider my offer?”
Renee put her hand on Emma’s shoulder and vanished her and Louise across the room, to the foot of the altar. Emma nodded to her and then said, “Louise, hold off the Dragoons while I make the sacrifice.”
“What about Isis?”
“Renee will deal with her.”
Renee gave Emma’s hand a brief shake. “Good luck, Dr. Earl. And goodbye.” Then Renee vanished back across the room, to where Isis waited for her, smug grin still in place, though Renee knew it was a front.
“You’ve certainly changed a lot since we last met.” Isis stroked Aggie’s tuft of blond hair as if the baby were a pet cat. “There’s still time for you to join me.”
“No.”
“Come now, Renee, why are you fighting for those who’ve shunned you for your entire life? Why protect those who called you ‘Weird Renee’ and a freak?”
Renee only stared back at Isis, just as she had stared at the jaguar whose teeth she now wore around her neck. She understood now that the secret to Isis’s magic was to exploit those cracks in someone’s soul carved out by fear. She would plant an evil seed in that crack and then allow the roots to spread until the victim shattered and succumbed to her will. “You have no power,” Renee said. “Your power is only an illusion.”
“Is that so?” Isis stroked Aggie’s hair again. “Your father seems to have believed it well enough.” Isis gave Aggie’s hair a sharp tug that caused the baby to cry out, her face red.
“You can’t kill her. You know if you do, I’ll kill you.”
“You? Kill me? You think because you ate some bugs and snakes in the jungle that you can destroy me?”
Tales of the Scarlet Knight Collection: The Wrath of Isis Page 99
