Tales of the Scarlet Knight Collection: The Call

by P. T. Dilloway

  She walked through the main gallery and used the night vision of the visor to help her see in the dark. She couldn’t see the Dragoon anywhere. Had he gone upstairs? Or maybe he had gone down into the basement or even the subbasement to try and escape. If so, she would have to find a way to flush him out.

  “He’s behind the mammoth,” Marlin hissed in her ear.

  “Mastodon,” Emma whispered automatically.

  “Whatever,” Marlin said. “Be careful. It’s probably a trap.”

  “Probably,” Emma agreed. At the very least, behind Alex would be a good defensive position; the mastodon’s skeleton would make it difficult for her to get the Sword of Justice in there. In such tight quarters the Dragoon’s claws would have the advantage.

  She reached for another of the smoke grenades. She rolled it across the floor so that it went off behind the Dragoon. Once the smoke began to hiss out of the grenade, Emma used her boots to catapult herself onto Alex’s head. Support cables held the mastodon up and also meant that as long as she didn’t linger too long, it could hold her up as well.

  She nearly didn’t make the landing, almost slipping off Alex’s skull. She used the gloves to latch onto the skull and then pull herself upright. She raced along Alex’s spine and tried not to think about what she was doing. As she ran, she pulled the Sword of Justice out to drop onto the Dragoon once she was close enough.

  As she neared the tailbone, she heard Marlin shout, “Look out!”

  The Dragoon had anticipated what she was going to do. Either that or she had made too much noise in her landing. No matter which it was, the Dragoon had known she was up on the mastodon and used another spear to break Alex’s back leg bones. The entire rear of the mastodon shifted; it dumped Emma onto the floor of the museum. The Sword of Justice clattered to the floor a few feet away.

  She rolled blindly to her left, in time for the Dragoon to bring the spear down on her shoulder. Emma screamed in pain at this and then again when the Dragoon twisted the spear. His red eyes glowed as he stared down at her.

  “You poor fool. Your feeble plan has failed.”

  “Not yet,” she said through the pain. The Sword of Justice flew like a dart, into the Dragoon’s left thigh. It was the Dragoon’s turn to howl with pain while Emma used her right arm to free the spear from her shoulder. She managed to roll again to her left before the Dragoon could fire a pair of claws where her head had been.

  She used the Dragoon’s own spear to sweep his legs out from beneath him. He fell backwards to the floor while she groaned with pain as she pushed herself back up. With her good hand she snatched the Sword of Justice from the Dragoon’s leg. She dove to the floor as he fired another pair of claws.

  She rolled back to her feet, put the Sword of Justice away, and then tossed another smoke grenade to cover her escape. She didn’t plan on going very far, just far enough to set a trap of her own.

  She opened the door to Dan’s Karlak II exhibit. For a moment she looked around in awe at the completed exhibit, which looked almost exactly like an Egyptian tomb, except for the signs and video screens put up for the visitors. Emma took the Sword of Justice from its sheath and tossed it into the air. She held it up with her mind over the doorway while she concealed herself behind Karlak II’s sarcophagus.

  As expected, the Dragoon pursued her. “Come out, girl, and I’ll make your death swift and relatively painless.”

  She braced herself behind the sarcophagus to wait for the Dragoon to appear in the doorway. If he decided not to come into the exhibit, then she would have to think of something else. Or maybe she should think about a strategic withdrawal before he stabbed her somewhere worse than the shoulder.

  The Dragoon’s dark silhouette filled the doorway, his eyes glowing red. “You foolish child,” he said. “You can’t hide from me forever.”

  Emma counted down the seconds as the Dragoon came forward. Just as the Dragoon stepped beneath the Sword of Justice, she brought the golden blade down. The sword plunged into the Dragoon’s right collarbone. As the Dragoon screamed with pain, Emma hurried forward as much as possible with the cape around her body.

  Once she was near the Dragoon, Emma let the cape drop. This time she delivered a roundhouse kick to the Dragoon’s midsection that knocked him back into the wall. She ducked as he tried to shoot a spike from his right foot at her. He managed to get his left hand up to fire all four claws. Emma flattened herself on the ground to let these go overhead.

  As she did, the Dragoon got to his feet. His right arm dangled uselessly at his side as he ran from the Egyptian exhibit. She got up to go after him, but had to hit the deck again as he used his left hand to bring his right up enough to fire the claws there.

  The Dragoon roared with pain again, this time from the Sword of Justice as he ripped it out of his shoulder. Emma took off after him; she called the sword back to her right hand. With his left leg injured, he couldn’t run faster than her. He must have sensed this, but he had an escape plan ready.

  The Dragoon reached underneath the ticket counter to produce one of the security guards. The guard was still alive, his hands bound and a gag in his mouth. The Dragoon raised a claw and then ran it across the man’s left leg. If he’d wanted to, the Dragoon could have taken the leg off entirely. Instead, he merely cut it deeply, blood gushing from the wound. The security guard screamed against his gag as the Dragoon tossed the guard to Emma.

  She caught the man and set him gently on the floor. As the Dragoon fled, Emma called out, “Marlin, follow him!”

  She looked down at the man then and raised the visor so he could see her face. She hoped he wouldn’t be able to identify her from that; he was probably in too much pain to remember it in any case. “I’m going to help you,” she said. “I’m not going to let you die.”

  She tore the man’s pant leg off to expose the wound. Then she used the material from the pant leg to tie a tourniquet around the man’s leg. The armor’s strength helped her to tie it off enough that the blood flow would stop. That wouldn’t be a long-term solution, but it should keep him safe until he got to a hospital.

  She kept the gag in his mouth to muffle his screams and then said, “I’m going to call for help now. The paramedics should be here soon.”

  Through his screams and the gag, she was pretty sure she heard the man say, “Thank you.”

  ***

  As a city of millions, Rampart City had hundreds of cemeteries, ranging from the tiny old church ones to the sprawling Fontenot Cemetery. Fontenot was named after the original village that had sprung up there, a village that had over time become the cemetery. From the original church cemetery in the village, it had expanded to over one hundred acres dedicated to burying Rampart City’s dead.

  Emma stood at the gates of the cemetery, which had been knocked off their hinges by the Dragoon. Marlin floated behind her, but his face looked embarrassed. “I followed him this far, but I can’t go any farther,” he said.

  “Scared of corpses?” she asked.

  “Psychic interference,” he said. “I’m not the only ghost in the world, you know.”

  “I see,” she said. As a scientist who had graduated at the top of every class, she thought she had known how things worked. But ever since Dan had brought that black box into her office, she realized there was a lot she still didn’t understand.

  She knew where the Dragoon was going. Like with the museum, it was still Ian in the suit. There was one place Ian would go to make his last stand: the place where his loved ones resided. But with the cemetery covering so much ground, it might take her a while to find Sarah and Thomas MacGregor’s graves.

  That was until she saw a familiar face crawl out of the cemetery. It was the rat with the silver stripe. He pressed his snout against her leg and then turned towards the cemetery.

  “I think he wants me to follow him,” Emma said.

  “Are you serious? He’ll probably lead you to a dead bird, or pile of trash,” Marlin said.

  “He helpe
d to find Ian at the sausage plant,” she said.

  “Fine. Go ahead and follow the bloody pest.”

  “If you want to do something useful, you could go find Mrs. Chiostro. If I can get Ian to surrender, he might need one of her potions for his injuries.”

  “Sounds like a barrel of laughs,” Marlin said and disappeared.

  Emma looked down at the rat and said, “Lead on.”

  The rat seemed confident in its sense of direction; it didn’t hesitate at the various intersections throughout the cemetery. Emma kept her good hand on the Sword of Justice’s hilt so she could pull it out when needed. The rat continued to creep along in front of her; it showed no signs of fatigue as they waded deeper into the cemetery.

  The tombstone dates became more recent the farther they went. Near the entrance were the oldest tombstones from the 17th Century, when Fontenot had been a Dutch trading post. After half an hour of following the rat, Emma saw dates from the last decade. It wouldn’t be long until they came to where Sarah and Thomas MacGregor lay.

  The rat squeaked as one of the Dragoon’s claws hurtled towards her. Emma dropped down and pulled the Sword of Justice out. She reached into the olive bag and took out the last smoke grenade Sylvia had given to her. She hurled this far enough that it landed at the Dragoon’s feet.

  As the smoke spewed into the air, Emma bounced towards the grave. The Dragoon launched the claws on his left hand; one of these nicked Emma’s right leg, so that she landed heavily in front of the Dragoon. He used his good arm to try and bring his other arm around to fire the claws into her body. Emma got to her knees and with a war cry swept the Sword of Justice around to slice the tips from the Dragoon’s gauntlets. The claws fell harmlessly to the ground.

  Before the claws on the Dragoon’s other hand could regenerate, she swept the sword across it. With a roar of pain, he sagged to the ground. Emma got to her feet and held the Sword of Justice at his throat. “It’s over, Ian. Surrender the armor and let me get you some help.”

  “It isn’t over,” the Dragoon hissed. “You can kill this host, but another will take its place. The ghost surely told you that.”

  “That doesn’t mean Ian has to die.”

  “What difference does his life make to you?”

  Emma took her hand off the Sword of Justice; she kept it in the air with her mind while she took off the helmet. She dropped the helmet to the ground and then brushed sweaty hair back from her face. “Ian, it’s Emma. I know you can hear me in there. I know what it told you. It promised to tell you who killed your wife and child. It promised you justice.”

  She let this sink in for a moment before she continued, “But look around. What has this justice cost you? Your freedom, your soul and maybe even your life. And your wife and son are still dead. Was it really worth it?”

  “Yes.” She wasn’t sure if the Dragoon or Ian had said this.

  “Ian, I know what you’re going through. After my parents died, I spent years in pain. I threw myself into schoolwork so I wouldn’t have time to think about it. I never dealt with the pain, the hurt of losing them.

  “I avoided thinking about what happened for so long, but I couldn’t forget about it. When you triggered those awful memories, it let me face those demons again. This time I couldn’t run from it. I had to face it and realize what happened wasn’t my fault.”

  She reached out towards the Dragoon with her good hand. “I want to help you, Ian. I want to help you face this. Take off the armor and we can face this together. Please, Ian. You’ve been a good friend to me. I don’t want to lose you.”

  The Dragoon reached up with one hand and took off the helmet. As expected, it was Ian beneath the mask, his hair matted with sweat. He stared at her for a moment and then down at himself. Tears came to his eyes. “What have I done?” he said.

  She pulled the Sword of Justice back and took it with her hand to put back into its sheath. “It’s all right, Ian. We’ll find a way to get you through this.”

  He shook his head. “I’m sorry, lass. There’s no helping me. Not now.”

  Emma had cut the claws off of the Dragoon’s hands, but not the spikes on his feet. She realized too late that as she had pleaded with him, he had been growing the spike on his left foot into a spear. She only had time to scream for him to stop as he broke it off and stabbed himself through the throat with it.

  “Ian!”

  With the last of his strength, Ian turned. He embraced the tombstone of his wife. Emma sank to her knees and buried her face in her hands to cry for the friend she had lost.

  Epilogue

  The armor sped the healing of Emma’s shoulder so by the next Monday she no longer needed to have it in a sling. She had taken the rest of that week off as much so she wouldn’t see Dan as to recover from her shoulder wound. With the armor around her shoulder, she spent most of her time in bed, glad to let Becky mother her this time.

  She did go to Ian’s funeral, where her eulogy became a ramble after her tears destroyed the speech she had written. She had virtually repeated the words she had said at his wife’s grave. “I didn’t know him long, but he was a good friend to me and I’m so sorry that he’s gone.”

  Dan was there, but Becky and Mrs. Chiostro were quick to hustle Emma out of the funeral home and back to bed. She thought of trying to call him at the museum or get his home number, but she didn’t want to hear him talk to her like she was a stranger. So she had stayed in bed, where she read with one hand while she hoped that when she came back he would be gone. It was cowardly on her part, but she didn’t care.

  When Monday came and the wound in her shoulder had become an angry red scar, she knew it was time to go back to work. Becky waited for her in the living room, dressed in her work clothes. “Are you going to an interview?” Emma asked.

  “Actually, I have a new job. Councilwoman Napier’s office called. They want me to work for her campaign. I’ll get to keep my credits after all.”

  “That’s great,” Emma said.

  “I’m wondering how they knew about all that.” Becky glared at Emma, who wilted under the intensity of this.

  “She wanted to talk to me about solving the city’s problems,” Emma said. “I told her I didn’t really know anything about politics, but I knew someone who did.”

  Becky wrapped Emma in a hug, careful to hug Emma’s good shoulder. “God, kid, I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

  “It’s all right. You’d do the same for me.”

  Becky wiped at the tears staining her cheeks. “Yeah, I would.” She let Emma go. “Come on, we better get going.”

  Emma managed to get down to her office in the subbasement without running into Dan. She would have to make sure not to go outside when he would be jogging. So long as he was still here, she supposed it was inevitable that they would run into each other; she hoped to put it off as long as possible.

  She was down there only an hour before her phone rang. It was Ian’s secretary, Leslie. “Excuse me, Dr. Earl. The director requested to see you in her office immediately.”

  “Oh,” Emma said. She nearly dropped the phone. “I’ll be right there. Thanks.”

  On the elevator ride up to the fourth floor, Emma shifted nervously from one foot to another. Had the director found out she was the Scarlet Knight? Had she decided to fire Emma because of her relationship with Dan? Had the security guard recognized her and said something? All of these possibilities ran through her mind as she stepped into the director’s office.

  As befitted her position, the director’s office was the largest in the building with the best view, one of Executive Plaza; Emma saw the blinking yellow lights from where crews were repairing the damage from the Dragoon’s landing. The director sat behind her desk; she leaned forward a little and tented her fingers. “Hello, Dr. Earl. Have a seat, won’t you?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Emma squeaked. She felt as if she were a little girl in the principal’s office.

  “As you are aware of, Dr. MacGregor rece
ntly committed suicide. It’s a terrible tragedy for the entire Plaine Museum family.” The director had said almost those exact words at Ian’s funeral. “This coupled with the death of Dr. Brighton has left us with some holes to fill.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Emma said again.

  “I received Dr. MacGregor’s request to make you interim head of the exogeology division. I’ve denied this request. The exogeology division will be phased out within the next two weeks.”

  “Oh, I see,” Emma said. She was being fired. What reason would the director use to terminate her position? Her age, her inexperience, her relationship to Dan, her second career as the Scarlet Knight? Those were all valid. “It’s been a pleasure working here, ma’am, even for a short time. It’s fulfilled my childhood dream—”

  “That dream isn’t over yet, young lady. I said I am phasing out the exogeology division. I am not phasing you out.”

  Emma looked up at the director, whose face betrayed nothing. “I don’t understand.”

  “It’s simple. I’m promoting you to Dr. MacGregor’s position. As soon as we’ve cleared up the red tape, you’ll be the new director of the geology department.”

  “Me? But—”

  “You’re too young? Too inexperienced?” The director waved her hand dismissively. “I don’t see those as deciding factors.”

  “You don’t?”

  “With the rebuilding of the museum after the explosion and fundraising set to begin for a satellite museum in Westfield, we are going to need the best and brightest at the forefront. I don’t think there’s anyone here brighter than you.”

  “But won’t everyone else be upset?” Emma said. She thought of Dr. Lemieux and Dr. Stevens, both of whom were far more qualified than her to run the department.

  “That shouldn’t be a problem,” the director said. “I’m not sure you quite understand the opportunity I’m offering. To be a department head at your age is unprecedented.”

  “Yes, I understand that. I’m concerned—”

  “You shouldn’t worry about that, young lady. I’ve seen your work. I’ve also seen the equipment request Dr. MacGregor passed along. That you were able to get that from dear old Dr. Brighton tells me you’re much stronger than you look when it comes to dealing with people.”