Tales of the Scarlet Knight Collection: The Wrath of Isis

by P. T. Dilloway

  Aunt Agnes stood up, patted Renee’s head and then kissed her wife’s cheek. “Lock all of the doors and go down to the vault if anyone tries to get in. I’ll be back soon.”

  With a flash she was gone.

  ***

  When she looked for Glenda, the head of the coven, a bar was the best place to start. Aggie visited a tavern in Hamburg, a pub in Dublin, and a dive back in Rampart City before she found Glenda at a karaoke bar in Tokyo. Aggie arrived as Glenda finished howling a version of Elvis’s “Suspicious Minds.” From her seat in the back, Aggie shook her head. Maybe Cecelia was right that Glenda was a useless drunk, unable to help her and Akako protect Renee.

  The head of the coven staggered back to where Aggie sat and signaled a waiter for a bottle of sake. “I never expected a family man like you to show up here,” Glenda said. Her breath reeked of rice wine.

  “Renee is in trouble. Some people are after her.” Aggie gave Glenda the short version of Cecelia’s story. She finished with the evidence Cecelia had found on the assassins.

  Despite the alcohol on her breath, there was nothing drunk in Glenda’s eyes or voice as she said, “The Heretics are finally making their move.”

  “Heretics?”

  “A shadow group made of people like Sylvia’s daughter—those with some magical ability, but not enough to be witches.”

  “Someone like Renee?”

  “Probably. They don’t usually recruit this young. They usually wait until the girl’s power—such as it is—begins to manifest itself. When she’s confused and vulnerable they swoop in and promise her power beyond her dreams if she joins up with them.”

  “How do you know about this?”

  “You think I spend all of my time singing Elvis tunes at karaoke bars?”

  This was pretty much what Aggie thought but she held her tongue. “Why haven’t you mentioned this to anyone? Why haven’t we done anything?”

  “What would we do? Kill them? Like you would kill that abomination of yours?”

  “I told you—”

  “I know, her name is Renee. She’s a mistake like Cecelia and all the rest. Of course none of you listen to me. You let feelings get in the way and next thing you know you’re three months pregnant with some mortal’s baby.” Glenda gulped down a shot of sake. “You and Sylvia have whelped more of the little bastards than anyone.”

  “Me? I didn’t—”

  “Those grandbabies of yours. Three of them were girls, weren’t they?”

  “Yes, but they all died.”

  “Or so you thought.”

  “Are you saying some of these Heretics are my grandchildren?”

  “Probably. I don’t have their entire roster. One-quarter magic isn’t much, but it’s enough to make potions if you know what you’re doing—if someone shows you what to do.”

  “But I loved my grandchildren. How could they become like that?”

  “Different reasons. Maybe they want to live forever, like you.”

  Aggie rubbed her temples and tried to think clearly about this. She thought back to her beautiful grandbabies, how happy they had been. None of them had gone to foster homes like Cecelia; none of them had ever been abandoned. She had always been there to make them clothes and bake cookies and kiss their skinned knees. “This isn’t possible.”

  “I know it’s a shock. That’s why I didn’t tell you. That’s why I haven’t told most of the others. It’s better if they think their mistakes have died than to think they’re out there murdering people for profit.”

  “We have to do something now. They’re after Renee.”

  Aggie expected Glenda to put up some resistance to this, to say that Aggie should let them have her abomination, but the head of the coven only nodded. “You’re right. We can’t let them have that much power.”

  “So what are we going to do?”

  “Bring Renee to Milton. We can keep her there. A dozen witches ought to be able to protect one baby.”

  “Akako will want to come too.”

  “Fine with me. The more the merrier.”

  “What about these Heretics? Are you going to mobilize the coven?”

  “I’ll leave them to you.”

  “Me?”

  “Take your niece along. Should be a good bonding experience.”

  “What about you?”

  Glenda turned to nod towards the stage. “I’m going to do ‘Heartbreak Hotel.’ We could make it a duet.”

  “Are you joking?”

  “I never joke about the King.” Glenda smiled that indulgent grin that always made Aggie feel five years old. “I’ll let Regina know you’re coming. It should take you a while to get your family there anyway.”

  “Thank you.”

  Glenda’s smile faded; her expression turned serious. “This isn’t going to be easy for you, Agnes. You’re going to have to decide who’s more important to you: the family you have now or the family you used to have.”

  “I understand.”

  “No you don’t. But you will. I’m sure you’ll make the right choice.”

  Aggie vanished in a flash of light back to her house in Rampart City. She vanished herself into the parlor so she wouldn’t startle Akako and Renee. She found them down in the basement; Akako watched over Renee while the baby slept on a couple of pillows from the couch and sucked happily on her thumb. This was something else they had discussed; Aggie was concerned Renee was too old to suck her thumb. “She’s still a baby,” Akako had said and once again Aggie had backed down.

  “Are you all right?” Aggie asked.

  “We’re fine. For now. What did Glenda say?”

  “She wants to keep Renee at Milton.”

  “Milton? That’s a boarding school.”

  “There are a dozen witches there. They can look after her.”

  Akako considered this for a moment. “I want to go too.”

  “We thought you’d say that. Glenda said the more the merrier.”

  Akako stroked Renee’s hair as she thought about this. “There isn’t another way, is there?”

  “Not that I can see.”

  “Then I guess we don’t have a choice.” Akako thought again and then asked, “What about you? What are you going to do?”

  “Find out who these people are and stop them.”

  “Agnes—”

  “I’ll take Cecelia with me after she’s finished healing.”

  “What if you can’t stop them? What if something happens to you?”

  Aggie knelt down beside Akako and put an arm around her shoulder. She wanted to tell Akako about what Glenda had said, that some of these “Heretics” might be her own flesh and blood. She decided against this; Akako had too much to worry about already. “I have to do this, Akako. I’m her father; it’s my job to protect her.”

  “You can protect her at Milton too.”

  “Akako, please, we both know they’ll keep coming after her. Not unless we find the root of the problem. This Headmistress Cecelia mentioned. She’s the only one who can stop it.”

  Akako sat there in silence for a moment and then nodded. “Just promise me you’ll be careful.”

  Aggie kissed her, not all that passionately with Renee in the room, but tenderly. “You know me. I’m always careful.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of,” Akako said and kissed her back.

  Then Aggie stood up and examined the drawers filled with potions and ingredients. “If we’re going to Milton, I’d better get another flying carpet ready.”

  She paused at the door of the vault to watch Renee sleep for a moment; she savored the moment as it might never happen again. Then she went upstairs to get to work.

  Chapter 10

  When Aggie and Akako had said the magic carpet was perfectly safe, Emma had always thought they meant that only while the carpet was airborne. In the event of a crash, she’d always imagined she would be on her own, as when she was on her motorcycle, only the wipeout in this case would be far more painful. She had never
imagined the carpet might be equipped with airbags.

  They weren’t airbags in the traditional sense. They were more like the soap bubbles Emma used to play with in the backyard as a kid. One moment the carpet had been plunging out of control towards the Russian landscape and the next, a clear, gooey substance came up from the pores of the fabric.

  “What this?” Jim asked.

  “I don’t know!” she shouted back as she still tried vainly to guide the carpet to a soft landing. With the back of the carpet shredded by the anti-aircraft shell, she could only try to keep the belly up and hope they came down somewhere soft.

  The snowy plain grew larger before her and while Emma desperately wanted to grab Jim’s hand, she knew she couldn’t. They needed their hands to cling to the carpet so they wouldn’t be thrown hundreds of feet through the air. “I love you,” she shouted to Jim.

  “I love you,” he said.

  The clear goo seeping out of the carpet had coated her legs, all the way up to her waist, but she didn’t pay it any attention at the moment. A moment before impact, the goo formed a bubble like the ones she used to blow from a plastic stick with Becky. The difference was this bubble was big enough to encompass her entire body and somehow light enough that it could float into the air with her inside.

  She watched from the bubble as the carpet went limp and reverted to its true form again. There was no crash or explosion, or even a thump. The carpet merely dropped into the snow, weighted down by the duffel bags still attached. She turned in her bubble to see Jim drifting a few feet behind her in his own bubble. He poked at it with one finger, but the bubble was tough enough that it didn’t pop.

  That moment came once they’d drifted to the ground beside the carpet. The bubbles touched down on the snow and then vanished without even a satisfying pop. Emma sat there in stunned silence until she felt the seat of her pants turn wet from the snow and stood up. “Well, we made it,” she said.

  “What we do now?”

  “We get out of here before someone finds us.” She knelt down beside the carpet to unfasten the duffel bags with their supplies. These she handed to Jim while she rolled the carpet up to carry on her shoulder.

  “Why you take carpet? It no fly now.”

  “There might still be some magic in it. We don’t want someone like Bykov to get his hands on it.”

  “Good point.”

  Emma had not brought a compass, but this didn’t matter as she could tell what direction they needed to go by the sun’s position in the sky. She pointed to what she knew was north. “His compound is probably a couple hundred miles that way.”

  “Hundreds of miles?”

  “All we have to do is find a road and maybe we can get someone to give us a ride.” Or the more unseemly way would be to use the Sword of Justice to carjack someone. This would probably make her unfit to use the sword or to wear the armor. Still, if that meant she could get to Bykov’s compound and search for Louise, she would do it.

  She gave Jim a kiss on the cheek and then finally took his hand as she’d wanted to on the carpet ride down. “Come on, let’s get moving.”

  They set off into the forest; Emma walked behind Jim to use the carpet to sweep their tracks from the snow to leave no trace of where they’d landed or where they’d gone.

  ***

  They were both used to walking—running in her case—that the trek through the snow didn’t bother their muscles. The much more dangerous problem was snow that got into their boots and seeped through their socks to drench their feet. After what must have been five miles, Emma could no longer feel her feet. While Jim didn’t complain, she knew from the cautious way he stepped that he felt the same.

  Still they pressed on. They didn’t have a choice. Patrols would surely be out to search for them and despite that Emma had wiped the tracks away, she knew the farther they got from the air force base they’d seen the better. There was no road in this forest, not even a trail that might have made walking easier. They had a map with them, but she didn’t know exactly where they had come down, so she could only keep them moving north and hope they came across something friendly.

  As they got farther into the forest, she performed “Peter and the Wolf” to entertain Jim; the piece seemed appropriate for the occasion. Her humming was badly off-key, but Jim didn’t seem to mind this. She remembered her mother had played the part of Peter for a charity performance at the opera house. The kids all got to sit on the stage while the musicians played. This included Emma, who was seven and Becky, who was eight.

  Her thoughts turned to Louise. Did her daughter have any creative talents? Could she make works of art the way her grandmother or her father did? Or was she too literal-minded, like her mother? Would Emma have the chance to find out?

  She felt Jim’s hand on her shoulder. “You tired?” he asked.

  “No. I was thinking about my mother. She played the cello for the opera.”

  “What a cello?”

  “It’s like a violin only bigger.” Jim stared at her blankly, so she said, “It’s a musical instrument made out of wood with strings on it. It makes beautiful music—if you know how to play it.”

  “You play it?”

  “No. I don’t have any musical talent. Or any artistic talent. All I can do is read books and regurgitate them.”

  “That not true. You smart. And you hero.”

  She smiled slightly at that. “Well, I guess there is that.” She turned to kiss Jim on the lips. “But the armor does most of the work.”

  “I love you anyway.”

  She kissed him again. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

  They continued to tramp through the forest while she finished the story. Jim shook his head. “They leave wolf alive?”

  “Yes.”

  “That dumb. Wolf come back.”

  From the look on Jim’s face, Emma knew he wasn’t thinking of the wolf from the storybook. He was thinking of the wolf who had stolen their daughter. “We’re going to find her,” Emma said. “We’re going to get her back.”

  “I know.”

  When night fell they were still in the bowels of the forest with seemingly no end to it. Emma laid the carpet out on the ground while Jim searched nearby for wood that might be dry enough to use for a fire. She cleared away a spot of ground and found some rocks for a fire pit. The wood he brought back was still a little damp, but they managed to get it lit after they used half the box of matches she’d brought along.

  They sat on the carpet beside the fire and huddled against each other for warmth. Their feet dangled by the fire to get some feeling back into their toes. “We really need some marshmallows,” Emma said.

  “Why?”

  “It’s a camping tradition,” she said, though she had only gone camping once with Aunt Gladys after her parents died. She looked up at the night sky, at the stars above them. It occurred to her that Jim had probably not seen the stars in a long time, since he’d spent most of his life in the sewers. “Aren’t the stars pretty?”

  “Yes. They sparkle like you eyes.”

  She didn’t have time to say anything as he leaned over to kiss her. They lay down on the carpet, though with the cold they had to keep most of their clothes on. The last time they had made love they had conceived Louise and now the search for her had brought them together again. Only this time Emma doubted they would conceive a child since she’d been taking birth control pills since she lost Louise, to make sure she couldn’t lose another baby. This knowledge freed her to enjoy the moment, the closeness between her and Jim.

  At the exact moment she came, Emma heard something heavy crash through the brush. Another moment later she saw the bear.

  ***

  In the dim light from the fire, she recognized the bear as an Ursus arctos arctos or common brown bear native to Russia. This particular brown bear looked to be about eight feet long, which meant it was probably a male. At the moment it hadn’t seemed to spot them; it merely sniffed at the air in sear
ch of food.

  “Don’t move,” she whispered into Jim’s ear. Jim had managed at least to pull out of her so that they lay side-by-side on the carpet, their heads turned to stare at the creature. The bear stuck its nose into Emma’s duffel bag and then tore it open with its front paw as easy as opening a can of soda. Emma watched with scientific fascination as the bear gulped down her energy bars—wrappers and all. “Keep still,” she said as the bear continued to sniff around for anything more to eat. “Maybe he’ll go away.”

  If the bear didn’t go away, they would be in big trouble. She could try to summon the case of armor to grab the Sword of Justice to kill the animal or the golden cape to make them invisible, but this would probably take far too much time. Despite its enormous size, she knew the bear’s reflexes were almost as quick as her own.

  The bear didn’t go away. It loped around the fire until it stood in front of the carpet. Emma’s command not to move was sorely tested as she felt the bear’s wet snout prod her in the small of her back. She kept her body limp and hoped the bear didn’t decide she was a snack. He didn’t; he moved on to Jim instead.

  The bear was far more intrigued by Jim’s ratskin jacket; it sniffed it from the hem all the way up to Jim’s neck. Emma had the magic words to summon the armor on her tongue, though she knew by the time she could say them it would be too late. After what felt like an eternity, the bear grumbled something to itself and then plodded off.

  Once the bear was gone, Emma’s entire body turned to a pool of jelly. She sagged against Jim and put a hand to his cheek to make sure he was still there. “Are you all right?” she asked him.

  “I fine. Not smell like food.”

  “That makes two of us,” she said.

  She doubted the bear would come back, but she said the magic words anyway. She took out the Sword of Justice and kept it in its sheath as she set it between them on the carpet. Then she took out the golden cape, as much to use it as a blanket as to keep them invisible from predators. “Maybe I should keep watch,” she said.

  “No, I watch you.”

  In the end they decided to split the watch; Emma took the first shift mostly because she had a watch to keep track of the time better. She slipped her socks and boots back on and then huddled beside the fire with the Sword of Justice on her lap. She couldn’t see Jim beneath the cape, so she turned her eyes skyward.