As she sat up, she realized her surroundings were too narrow and short to be a warehouse. It was the trailer of a big rig. For the umpteenth time, the questions of where she was and how she got there rose up in her mind. She supposed she would have to find out. She just hoped it wasn’t the hard way by having to make a quick getaway and interrogate someone for information.
Emma doubted this would be the case when she saw the padding someone had laid out for her to sleep on. If someone had taken her captive, she doubted they would be nice enough to provide her with a comfortable bed. As she replayed her last conscious moments in her own world and thought back to her stay with Joanna and Dr. Reed, Emma figured Tim had probably put her in here to keep her out of the sunlight.
She stepped over to the door and rapped on it; her vampire strength inadvertently caused her to dent the metal. If she wanted she could probably tear the doors off their hinges, but she didn’t see any need to cause that kind of property damage just yet. While she waited for someone to open the doors, she sat down on a crate labeled as containing baked beans. She knew better than to try to open one of the cans; she still wouldn’t be able to eat it.
The door finally yawned open. It wasn’t Tim who peeked inside but Akako. “I thought you were gone,” Emma said.
“I came back,” Akako said. She hopped up into the trailer and closed the door behind her. Emma noted that Akako carried what looked like a blowgun.
“You don’t have to worry. It’s me,” Emma said. “The real me.”
“I figured as much. The old you wouldn’t bother knocking.”
“Old me?”
“When Tim brought you here, you looked about a hundred years old and as mean as a rabid dog.”
“Oh. Did I hurt anyone?”
“You gave me a nice bruise on my backside.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Now I know it’s really you. Only you would apologize for that.”
For the first time, Emma noticed a bandage on Akako’s left hand. “Did I do that too?”
“Sort of. Like I said, when you came here you looked a hundred years old. So I gave you some blood.”
“I see. Thank you for that.” Emma looked down at the floor of the trailer and thought of the transfusion Jim had given her in the old sausage plant. He was dead—again. She supposed the man she’d worked with in the gift shop—the man she loved—had never been the real Jim to start with. Just another of Isis’s tricks.
She felt Akako’s hand on her shoulder and then felt Akako sit down on a crate beside her. “Joanna wants you to know she’s safe. She’s a little tired, but she’ll make it.”
“At least for now.”
“She’s a brave little girl. Sort of like someone else I know.”
“Don’t sell yourself short. You’re pretty brave too with all you’ve been through.”
“You don’t know the half of it.” Akako told her about being forced through a dimensional rift, one that had taken her back in time to when she was just thirteen.
“I’m so sorry,” Emma said and hugged Akako.
“In a way it was nice. I got to see him again and tell him I love him and make love to him. I hadn’t forgotten, but after being with Agnes and having Renee it had lost some of the immediacy, you know?”
“I know,” Emma said, thinking of her brief time with the Jim Isis had created. She had lost him again, but in a way she was glad that she could be with him again, if for however short of a time. “But now you’re back and so am I. Where’s Tim at?”
“He and Old Coyote are out collecting firewood.”
“Old Coyote?”
“He’s our new friend. This is his truck. He’s a nice man.” Akako’s cheeks turned rosy. “I think he has a crush on me.”
“Does he know about you and Agnes?”
“I think that only makes him like me more.” They both giggled at this and for a moment, despite the fangs in her mouth, Emma felt normal.
***
When she stuck her arm out of the trailer and felt it burn, Emma decided she should stay inside until nightfall. She saw the skin had blistered as if someone had dumped scalding water on it. “That’s odd. I could go out in sunlight before,” she said.
“Probably because that was Isis’s world.”
“I guess so.” She shook her head. “She wouldn’t want me not to be able to work at the museum.” That she knew had been another of Isis’s perverse jokes, to give her a menial job at the museum as a gift shop cashier and force her to endure Leslie’s scorn and hordes of obnoxious kids.
Akako fetched a mirror from inside the truck, but Emma couldn’t see her reflection in the glass; apparently now that she was outside of Isis’s influence she was a far more traditional vampire. She wondered if she would have to fear garlic and crosses now. At least for as long as she was still here. That was what she needed to talk with the others about. She would need their help, but she knew they wouldn’t want to go through with it.
While Emma waited for it to get dark, she told Akako what she had gone through first in Isis’s world and then in Joanna’s world. This included telling Akako what Dr. Reed had said about Joanna’s conception—and that of all the Reds. “You mean I’m actually Randall Reed?”
“If he were born in a world dominated by the Japanese, yes. And the one you replaced here was if he had been born a few years later. And so on.”
“That’s amazing.” Akako smiled slightly. “Now all the others will know too. Isn’t it weird to think that in this other universe you and I were married?”
“I hadn’t really thought about it like that. Maybe that’s why we’re friends here.”
“Maybe. Though I guess we wouldn’t be if it weren’t for Agnes.”
Emma said nothing for a moment; she debated whether she should say anything. Akako must have seen the look on her face. “Did you see her in the city?”
“No, but I think I saw her in a dream—a vision really.” She told Akako about the nursery where she had seen Agnes with another little girl, but left out the part about how mean they’d been to her. “There were others there too: Megan, Becky, a girl who looked like Sylvia or Cecelia—”
“It’s Sylvia.”
“But she’s dead.”
“Not our Sylvia. From the other universe, the one where Tim went. It might make more sense if he told you about that.”
“Louise was there too. She…she thinks Isis is her mother.”
Akako squeezed Emma’s shoulder. “I’m sorry. But we’ll get her back. Once Isis is gone, she’ll go back to normal.”
“I hope so.”
There was silence for a moment and then Akako asked, “Were there other children there with Agnes and Louise and the others?”
“Yes. A couple dozen at least.”
Akako buried her face in her hands. “It’s just what Glenda warned us about. She told us this would happen and we didn’t listen.”
“Akako, what is it?”
“Renee did that to Agnes and Sylvia and the others. She’s taken their power and she made them like that. She’s evil, Emma. My sweet little baby is like Isis now. She is an abomination.” Akako began to sob uncontrollably. Emma put a hand on her back to try to comfort her.
“It’s not really her. It’s Isis. If we get rid of her—”
“Even if she goes back to normal, becomes my little baby again, the coven is going to hunt her down. They’ll make sure this doesn’t happen again.”
“Glenda wouldn’t do that to you and Agnes.”
“She would, to protect the coven.” Akako shook her head. “Regina and some of the others already wanted to kill her. Now they’ll have all the proof they need. And with Hisae gone, Agnes and I will be alone.”
“No you won’t. I’ll help you. And I’m sure Tim and Becky and everyone else will too.”
“Thanks, but I’m not sure it will help. There’s nowhere we can hide, not from the coven.”
“We’ll figure something out.”
“Maybe.” Akako looked up at her and smiled. “I’ve missed you so much. Back in my world I didn’t have a friend like you. There was no one I could talk to like this, not after Hisae died.”
“I didn’t have a friend like you where I was either.” Emma looked down at the floor. “Jim was my only real friend there.”
From outside the trailer Tim’s voice called Akako’s name. “I’ll go tell him you’re awake—and that you’re you again. Wait here a minute.”
“Where am I going to go?” Emma said. She looked down at her scorched arm. The skin had turned raw pink, but it still burned. She made sure to scoot back when Akako opened the door so no sunlight touched her. From what she could see, the sun was going down; soon she would be able to come out.
***
As night fell, Emma finally stepped out of the trailer. Akako led her over to a fire, where Tim sat on one side; next to him sat a man with a gray mustache who wore a cowboy hat—this Old Coyote Akako had mentioned. “Hello,” she said and held out a hand for him to shake. She didn’t smile, so he wouldn’t see her fangs. “I’m Dr. Emma Earl.”
“My name’s Sam but most folks call me Old Coyote,” he said. “So you must be Tim’s sick sister.”
“Sister?”
Tim’s face reddened a little. “I thought it would be a more sympathetic story.”
She shook his hand next. “I guess I’ve got you to thank for getting me out of there.”
“I didn’t do that much. It was mostly him.”
Emma gasped as the rat scurried out of the brush. “Pepe! You’re alive!” In ratspeak she added, “I’m sorry I tried to eat you.” Pepe squeaked back that he had no hard feelings; even he seemed to know about Isis.
“Well now here I thought I’d darned near seen everything, but I ain’t never seen anyone who could talk to rats before. You some kind of Dr. Doolittle or something?”
“A friend taught me,” Emma said. She looked down as she thought of Jim. Emma’s stomach abruptly cramped to remind her of why she had come out of the trailer. She sat down on a rock and Pepe climbed up onto her lap, unworried she might try to eat him again.
“I suppose Akako told you most of what happened to me. I guess what I’d like to know first is what happened to you.”
Tim told her about how Joanna had prompted him to come here, thanks to a lift from Old Coyote. Akako had fallen from the sky—more of Joanna’s work—to deliver the spell that could open a gateway to a parallel world for him. It was the same world Akako and Aggie had visited, the one Harry Ward had used to build the vault to contain the Scarlet Knight’s armor.
There, with the help of young Renee Kim, Tim had built his own suit of armor. Except before he could go back, Sylvia—a police detective there—had found out and come with him into this world. He had left her with Akako and Old Coyote while he went into the city to find her, but Sylvia had escaped and followed him. That was how she ended up in the nursery as a baby playing with blocks.
With Pepe’s help he’d tracked Emma down. He caught up to her on the rooftop of the police precinct and stopped her before she could bite Renee. Once Emma was unconscious, he had taken her back here by threatening to kill her if Isis didn’t let them go. “That’s pretty much it,” Tim said.
“That’s an amazing story,” Emma said. She saw his suit of armor piled up beside the truck. It was hard to believe he and an eleven-year-old girl had made something like that in just a couple of days. But then she had already seen what Tim could accomplish with enough motivation. She tasted a bitter tang in her mouth as she thought of that parole hearing where they had banned him from engineering work. She had compared him to Mozart and Shakespeare—maybe she had underestimated him. “I owe you my life. I owe all of you my life—or what passes for it right now.”
Emma took a deep breath. Now was the time to drop the hammer. “That’s why it’s so hard to say this. You have to kill me.”
Tim looked up from the fire and gaped at her; Akako gasped in shock; and even Pepe squeaked in surprise. It was Old Coyote who spoke, though. “Now see here, little lady, I don’t think any of us wants to do that, even with those teeth of yours.”
Akako reached over to put a hand on her arm. “We know you aren’t going to hurt us, Emma. Even if you’re a vampire, you’re still our friend.”
“It’s not that. Merlin spoke to Joanna and she told me he needs to see me to help me prepare to face Isis.”
“Can’t this Merlin fellow come to you?” Old Coyote asked.
“No. If he comes here, there will be dire consequences. Basically it would mean the end of the world.”
“Jesus H. Christ. I reckon this just keeps getting weirder.”
“Can’t Joanna take you to him?” Akako said. “If she went there—”
“She only went there when she died for a minute. The only way for me to get there is to die.” She stopped and put a hand to her fangs. “One of you has to drive a stake through my heart. That’s the only way.”
“Emma, no,” Akako said. “We’ll find another way.”
“There isn’t another way. I could go out in the sun but then I’d turn to ash and I might not be able to get back. The stake is the only way to do it.”
There was silence over the campsite for a couple of minutes. Finally an owl hooted in the distance. Tim let out a sigh. “I’ll do it.”
Akako looked up at him. “Tim, you can’t—”
“No, she’s right. I mean, if Merlin or Joanna could have brought her there, Joanna wouldn’t have sent her back here, right? And like Emma said, if she goes out in the sun she’ll burn up. At least this way she’ll still be whole.”
“But you can’t kill her! What if she can’t come back?” Akako said.
“Akako, this is the way it has to be. It might be our only hope to stop Isis, to rescue Agnes and Renee and everyone else.”
Akako said nothing for a moment and then finally nodded. “I guess so. I just wish you didn’t have to go so soon.”
“I know, but I’ll come back. I promise.”
They were fortunate that there was an old oak tree nearby. Since he’d already made an advanced robotic suit of armor, Tim didn’t have much trouble to fashion a stake from a branch of the tree. The real problem came in him working up the nerve to kill her.
Emma lay on the cold ground, her eyes open as she waited. Old Coyote had wisely taken Akako into the trailer so she wouldn’t have to witness the grisly sight of her friend having a stake pounded through her heart. As for Pepe, he snuggled up next to her so she could stroke his coarse fur as she prepared for the final blow.
Tim knelt down beside her, his face drawn. “You’re sure about this?”
“Yes. You’ll be doing me a favor. Trust me.” Her bloodlust didn’t feel as strong yet out here, surrounded by her friends, but it was only a matter of time before she would feel the need to feed, before the beast would begin to claw at her again.
“I’m sorry about this,” Tim said as he planted the tip of the stake over her heart. She closed her eyes, more so he wouldn’t have to look her in the eye as he killed her than because she couldn’t watch him do it. Pepe’s shriek told her that the hammer was coming down.
She felt the stake tear through her breast. She screamed in agony and opened her eyes to see Tim stared at her in shock. “It’s all right,” she whispered as she faded away. “I’ll come back soon.”
Chapter 30
Something soft tickled her cheek. She reached out with a hand only to feel a flower of some sort. As she ran her hand along its stem, she decided it must be a daisy. She opened her eyes and saw she was right.
She sat in a field of daisies that stretched as far as she could see. Daisies had always been her mother’s favorite flower and hers as well. They were so soft and gentle and beautiful without the harsh thorns of roses. And strangely they were the only flower she wasn’t allergic to. Emma bent down enough so she could smell the flower. As she did, she ran the last moments of her life through her mind.
So, it had worked. She was back on the astral plane, Merlin’s realm suspended between life and the afterlife. It wasn’t like the Catholic idea of Purgatory, a state of nothingness or limbo. Merlin had shaped his world to mimic the ancient Britain where he had once lived, except of course for the enormous mountain where he kept his cabin. That’s where Emma would have to go so she could talk with him.
Last time she had come here was when she had given her heart to Isis. Merlin had brought her to him and offered her the choice between going to the afterlife or coming back to the mortal world. There had been times when she had regretted that decision, especially after she thought Louise had died. Now she was glad she had come back, so she could finish what she had started the last time and destroy Isis.
She went through the same procedure as in the trailer earlier to verify her identity. The fangs were gone while her hair was less greasy and had reverted to the white it had been. Instead of the dirty, tattered Plaine Museum gift shop uniform, she wore a simple white gown, just like the last time she’d come here.
She got to her feet and walked through the field of daisies. Since there was no time in this place, she stopped to pick a bouquet of flowers to bring to Percival and Beaux, provided they were still here. By now they might have finally decided to go on to the afterlife, though she was fairly certain Beaux was waiting for Marlin.
Near the end of the field, she saw Marlin waited for her. He stood on the dirt path beside the field, dressed in his robe and pointed hat. The main difference was that here he had legs and she couldn’t see through him. His attitude hadn’t changed at all, though.
“Well, I see you finally located your marbles,” he said. “Or at least some of them.”
“What do you mean?”
“I stand corrected.” When he huffed, his breath smelled salty. Her nose wrinkled at this; as a ghost he didn’t have any smell at all. “So you don’t need me to run through your life story for you again?”
“No.”
“Well, just to make sure, you are Dr. Emma Jane Earl, PhD? Work at the Plaine Museum, yeah?”
Tales of the Scarlet Knight Collection: The Wrath of Isis Page 171
