Once he got the hang of jumping without a face plant, it didn’t take him too long to get down to the docks. The problem then became that Renee hadn’t given him the exact location of the meet and the New Stockholm docks were just as large as those in Rampart City. The first time he touched down, he landed just inches from a group of dockworkers on their lunch break. As they scattered, they shouted, “What the hell is that?”
“Sorry,” Tim mumbled through the suit’s loudspeakers. “Wrong place.”
He galloped along the docks and wondered how he would ever find this weapons deal. The solution came when he picked up the sound of gunfire from nearby. Tim pushed himself into a run and then hit the boosters. While in midair, he could see at least a dozen men scattered on a pier by a freighter. From the flashes of light he could tell they shot at someone. As he started his downward arc, he saw a smaller flash come from behind a pile of ropes. That must be the one the others were shooting at.
Even if this wasn’t the arms deal, it still meant there was probably someone who needed his help. He came down, galloped forward a few steps, and then cut in the boosters again. As he rose into the air, warning lights came on. The boosters were overheating from too much use. “Shit,” he said to himself. The engines seized at the apex of his jump, which left him with no choice but to scream down like a meteor.
He slammed into the center of the group of men, who managed to get out of his way to avoid being flattened. He plowed into the thick wooden planks, but by some miracle didn’t go through to drown in the harbor. Even while facedown, he could hear the men gather around him; the safeties of their weapons clicked.
They shouted in some language he couldn’t understand. Probably Swedish, at least if he’d come to the right place. One of the men poked at his back with the barrel of his weapon, as if to figure out if he were alive or not. He decided to play dead, at least until someone touched the base of his helmet.
Then he raised his head and torso a couple of inches. This allowed him to free his hands and then push himself up to roll out of the crater he’d made. He wound up on his back and stared up at a dozen gun barrels. A blond man in an expensive suit knelt down to stare at him. “Who are you? A cop?”
“No,” Tim said. He wished he’d watched more action movies so he might have a better comeback. “I’m your worst nightmare,” he added.
This was met with scattered laughter. The blond man said, “Dispose of this buffoon.”
“I don’t think so,” a familiar voice said. Though Tim couldn’t see, he knew it was Sylvia. Why was she here?
She came into his line of sight a moment later and put a pistol to the blond man’s head. “All of you put down your weapons and line up over there or Hank’s brains are going to be scattered across the dock.”
“You won’t shoot me. You’re a cop,” the man Sylvia had called Hank said.
“You killed my friend. She was a good cop. I’m not.”
The men around Hank still had their weapons raised, but no longer aimed at Tim. He took advantage of this to raise his arms slightly. He armed the dart guns on each wrist, targeted the nearest gunman, and then fired. One dart hit a man in the neck while the other hit a different man in the thigh. Both went down seconds later; he only hoped they stayed down long enough, not sure what sort of tranquilizer Renee had purchased.
The gunmen turned back to face him while Sylvia wisely dragged Hank back. Tim got to his feet and wildly swung at the nearest gunman. His punch lacked the same grace and style of Emma’s, but it was effective enough to send the man flying off the dock. The others opened fire; the bullets pounded against the armor. The suit wasn’t really bulletproof, but the composite alloy Renee had purchased contained enough Kevlar to absorb the bullets safely.
At this point Tim wished he did have real guns in the suit so the fight might go quicker. Instead he had to rely on the dart guns and brute force. The suit was much too heavy for him to attempt any spin kicks or other martial arts moves, but flailing his arms around seemed to work well enough to knock the gunmen down one by one. As the last one fell, he turned to where Sylvia stood with Hank.
“Are you all right?” Tim asked.
“I’m fine. Now. Who are you?”
“I’m the Scarlet Knight,” he said. He hoped he sounded confident enough.
“Scarlet Knight? Looks more like Patchy Gray Knight to me.”
“I haven’t had a chance to paint it yet.”
“And you’re not going to.” She leveled her pistol at him. “Get out of that thing right now. I’m taking you in with the rest of these scumbags.”
“Taking me in?”
She wrapped her gun arm around Hank’s neck and reached into a pocket with her other hand. To Tim’s surprise, she held up a gold badge. Detective Sylvia Joubert. She was a police detective here?
“You’re going to arrest me? I saved you.”
“I could have handled it. But thanks for the distraction.” She put the badge away and took out a pair of handcuffs to slap around Hank’s wrists. With probably more force than was necessary, she shoved Hank to the ground. Then she put both hands on her pistol and aimed it at his head. “Now, are you coming quietly or loudly?”
Tim raised his hands. Though he supposed it violated superhero protocol, he opened the helmet so she could see his face. “Tim?”
“Yes, it’s me.”
“What the fuck are you doing?”
“It’s hard to explain.”
To his relief, she lowered the pistol. “You’d better get out of here. Backup’s on its way.”
“Not yet. Where are the weapons they were buying?”
“Probably in the ship. Why?”
“I need them.”
“You need them? For what?”
“I can’t say.”
“Those are evidence. You can’t—” she didn’t get to finish; she collapsed to the deck with a dart sticking out of her left breast. Tim caught her before she fell and eased her down the rest of the way to lie on her back.
“I’m sorry,” he said. Then he ran towards the ship. The gangplank held his weight as he stomped inside. It wasn’t long before some South American gunmen shouted at him and opened fire with their weapons. These had as little effect as the other men’s weapons. The narrow corridors of the ship favored Tim; it was easy to line up shots with his darts or just to run the men down.
In the hold he found bags of coffee. Had he gone to the wrong ship? From the presence of the armed men, he doubted this. He used the strength of the suit to push aside the bags of coffee beans and found what he wanted underneath these. He lifted up a door to a hidden compartment, inside which he found a half-dozen wooden crates. Tim doubted these were full of coffee beans as well.
The problem then became how to get the crates out of the ship. This problem was compounded when he heard footsteps pounding towards the cargo hold. They were probably the backup Sylvia had requested. He reached into the compartment for the crates and took three of them; he hoped that would be enough firepower for the Reds. He dumped the three of these into a cargo net to make it easier for him to drag the crates to one side of the hold.
“Hold it right there!” a uniformed cop said. He aimed a pistol at Tim.
“Sorry,” Tim said. “Got to go.”
He triggered the boosters and willed them to work. The boosters lifted him into the air; one hand carried the net full of crated weapons. As he landed on a catwalk, a shot pinged harmlessly over his shoulder. With the augmented strength of the armor, he smashed open a hole in the side of the ship. He widened this enough that he could fit through and then hit the boosters again.
With the added weight of the crates he couldn’t get as high into the air as before, but it was enough. Tim managed to steer the suit onto another pier and again landed facedown. The crates came down behind him, but from what he could tell, they were safe. He pushed himself to his feet, gathered up the crates, and then set off again.
Before he left, he turned to look ba
ck towards the dock and hoped Sylvia was all right. Now that he had the suit and the weapons, he knew he would never see her again.
Chapter 14
Leslie waited for her again by the ticket counter. “Well, at least you remembered to cover up today,” she grumbled.
“Yes ma’am.” From the look on Leslie’s face, Emma supposed the old woman was disappointed Emma had shown up again—and on time.
Upstairs she found the store already open. Jim sat in the stockroom, hunched over a piece of paper. He jerked upright when she punched her time card. He turned around and to her relief, he smiled at her. “I thought you might not come,” he said.
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“Because this job sucks?”
“It’s the only one I’ve got.” She looked down at her feet. “Jim, I’m really sorry about last night. I didn’t mean to run out of there like that.”
“I guess it was a bad idea. I mean, you just got out of rehab.”
“It’s not your fault. You meant well.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
Silence lingered between them until Emma said, “I’d better get up front and count in.”
“OK.”
Things got off to as good of a start as the previous day, though this time she knew better what to expect. She made no attempt to try to control any little kids who ran around the store; she employed Jim’s strategy to simply clean up after they left. While she waited to ring up orders, she glanced towards the stockroom, but Jim didn’t appear all morning.
He was probably mad at her or embarrassed about what had happened. She wished there was some way she could explain it hadn’t been his fault. At least she hoped it wasn’t his fault. She still wasn’t sure if what she remembered about Megan and the shadow woman in her room were real or a hallucination. In any case, she didn’t want to explain it to Jim; he would probably think she was crazy.
When a customer came up to the register, Emma tried not to smile too broadly. She felt her teeth with her tongue to make sure there were no fangs like the night before. It was just a hallucination, she told herself. She was a perfectly normal human, not a vampire. But then why couldn’t she eat without feeling sick? Maybe she was pregnant; she couldn’t remember having sex with anyone, but Becky had said she had done it quite a few times already. She put a hand to her stomach and wondered if she should get checked. She doubted she had health insurance and from what Megan had said it didn’t sound like anyone would do it for free.
Near lunchtime, she finished cleaning up and there were no people in the store, so she could go into the stockroom. Again she found Jim hunched over a table. He turned to her, but kept whatever he was working on hidden with his body. “You need help?” he asked.
“No, I’m fine. I was just making sure you were all right back here.”
“I’m good.”
“Well, OK. I’m going to lunch in about a half-hour.”
“I got it.”
She went back up front and wondered what he was doing back there. She tried to speculate but couldn’t come up with anything viable. Jim wouldn’t be stupid enough to do anything illicit back there, not when Leslie could walk in at any moment. She wondered if she ought to say something about this to Leslie. No, she couldn’t do that to Jim.
A half-hour passed without incident. She punched out for lunch and found Jim still at work on whatever it was. “I’m going down to lunch now,” she said.
“Go ahead.”
“You’re sure you’re going to be all right by yourself?”
“I got it,” he snapped.
“Well, OK then,” she said. Downstairs she drank a can of Red Bull and found that this went down easily enough. The crackers she took from the condiments area did not; she again gagged the moment she put a saltine in her mouth. As with the bagel, she forced the crackers down. Maybe if she kept eating real food she wouldn’t feel the need for anything else.
An elderly couple sat at the table next to her. The old man’s neck was just inches away from her. So close she could bite him before he could even move. His blood would probably taste sour given his age, but it would sustain her. It would allow her to survive—
She shook these thoughts away and turned her gaze down to the table. She wasn’t a vampire. She was a normal person. She was completely normal.
She finished the can of Red Bull and then hurried out of the cafeteria. She tried not to look at anyone’s neck so the dark thoughts couldn’t enter her mind. She made it back upstairs to find Jim not at the front counter. A young woman with a baby carriage had a basket full of items to check out. “I’ve been waiting here for five minutes,” the woman said.
“I’m sorry, ma’am. I was at lunch.” She didn’t mention she was still at lunch and that her relief was back in the stockroom, doing who knew what. She rang up the items and gave the woman a member’s discount even though she didn’t have a card to help smooth things over. “I’m sorry again, ma’am. I hope you enjoy your day at the museum.”
The woman grunted her thanks before she pushed the carriage from the gift shop. Emma waited until the woman had gone before she stomped back to the stockroom. “Jim, you’re supposed to be up front—”
She stopped as he turned his back to finally let her see what he was doing. He had made a sculpture of her. The head was that of one of the china dolls, except he’d plucked off the doll’s black hair and replaced it with orange hair harvested from a stuffed orangutan. The chest was that of a teddy bear, complete with dark blue Plaine Museum T-shirt. Somehow he’d glued the hands of the china doll to the ends of the T-shirt. Since the pants were the same color as Jim’s, she assumed he must have cut some material from them and then stuffed it. At the end of the pants he’d attached a pair of pink baby shoes. The whole thing was out of proportion, looked really nothing like her—and was so beautiful Emma’s chest ached.
“You made that for me?”
“I’m sorry about the shoes. We didn’t have any brown paint.”
“I don’t care about that. It’s wonderful.” She darted across the room to wrap him in a hug and then kiss his cheek. The same horrible thoughts came to her mind as in the train station. She fought against these and kept her lips away from his neck.
“I was thinking maybe later we could go out—not a party this time. Maybe just a cup of coffee?”
“I’d love that,” she said. She barely held back from saying, “I love you.” But she knew that in her heart she did love Jim. No matter what happened, she would never hurt him.
***
They agreed to meet at nine o’clock at a coffee shop near Emma’s apartment. Before they parted, Jim put his sculpture into a plastic bag and handed it to her. “You keep it,” he said.
“I couldn’t.”
“I made it for you.”
“Thank you,” she said. She took the bag and clutched it to her chest. They’d kept the sculpture from Leslie; Jim hid the evidence of the items he’d mangled in order to make it. He listed these on a log of damaged goods that were easily attributable to the hordes of little kids who tramped through the gift shop.
Becky again met Emma on the steps. She glared at Jim before he left. “What’s that?” she asked. She pointed to the bag.
“It’s just something he bought me.”
“You seeing him again tonight?”
“Yes, but just for coffee.”
“Right.”
“Becky, please, I really like him. And he really likes me. Can’t you be happy for us?”
“I’d be happier if he didn’t work at a gift shop and looked like he just crawled out of the sewer.”
“He doesn’t look like he crawled out of the sewer. He’s very handsome—in his own way.”
“Christ, you’re in love with him, aren’t you?”
“No.”
“You’ve only known him for two days.”
“So?”
Becky pulled Emma into one of the city’s many alleys. Emma checked to make sure Megan wasn’t arou
nd. “Look, kid, I know how it is: you just got out of rehab, you’re lonely and vulnerable. That’s what he’s preying on. He’s using you.”
“Using me? For what? He took me to a party and asked me out for coffee. That’s all.”
“Emma, don’t do this. Don’t fall for this guy. Give yourself some time.”
“I told you already: we really like each other. You can either be happy for us or you can get out of the way.”
“Emma—”
She pushed Becky away as if Becky weighed nothing. She fought down the voices that told her how easy it would be to bite Becky, to suck out her blood in this alley. No one would notice or come to Becky’s aid. She could get away with it scot-free. “I’m sorry, Becky. I have to go. I’ll see you back at home later.”
She didn’t go to the coffee shop to wait for Jim. Instead, she took the bus to the main branch of the public library. She made her way over to the computers. She brought up the library catalog and then typed in “vampires.”
The moment the results came up, she knew this would be fruitless. The first fifty results were for Twilight books, movies, and CDs. Then came Dracula, Interview With the Vampire, and dozens of other books, movies, graphic novels, and so forth. The common thread was that all of them were fiction. She didn’t need fiction—she needed reality.
After she scrolled through eight screens, she finally came to an old nonfiction book—History of Vampire Folklore. She wrote down its location and then wandered along the shelves of nonfiction books to find it. To her disappointment the book wasn’t very big, just a worn black hardcover of two hundred pages. She took it off the shelf and retreated to a cubicle to read it.
As in the stockroom with the book on whales, she had difficulty with the book. She had to keep her finger on the page to trace the words; she stopped frequently for words she didn’t recognize. To read ten pages in this fashion took over an hour, to the point where she began to cry. She knew this wasn’t right. She wasn’t stupid.
“Are you all right, young lady?” a woman asked.
Emma looked up to see an elderly woman, her white hair yellowed from age. “I’m sorry. I’m just having trouble with this.”
Tales of the Scarlet Knight Collection: The Wrath of Isis Page 156
