As she rolled to her feet, Emma saw Mr. Graves begin to move. He crawled into the Sanctuary and dragged his body along despite the claw that stuck out of his chest. She knew what he had in mind—the same thing that had gone through her own mind. If she could keep the Dragoon busy long enough, he might be able to do it.
She didn’t have any more time for thought as a pair of claws screamed towards her. Emma launched herself in a somersault to avoid the first of the claws. She quickly changed direction and cartwheeled away from the second claw.
She didn’t see the third claw.
The third claw tore through Emma’s left shoulder—the same shoulder the Dragoon had stabbed her through the last time they fought. She screamed with pain and dropped on her back to the ground. She tried to remove the claw, but it had embedded itself too deeply for her to remove with her right hand. With a groan she sagged back onto the ground and heard the Dragoon’s footsteps as he approached.
“A noble attempt, but it was doomed to failure, as was your entire pathetic crusade. There is no stopping me.” The Dragoon stood over her; his red eyes burned into her. There was nothing Emma could do but wait for death.
“Go ahead and finish it,” Emma said.
The Black Dragoon extended one claw to lengthen it into a spear. He gripped this with one hand and aimed it between Emma’s eyes. She braced herself for the downward arc that would end her life. She closed her eyes and was grateful that at least soon she would see her parents again.
Instead, the Dragoon cried out in pain. Emma opened her eyes to see the Sword of Justice whirl overhead. Emma seized control of it to bring it down in her hand. She pointed the sword at the Dragoon. Blood oozed from a wound to the Dragoon’s neck. He put a hand to the wound; his cry turned to a far more human wail. “You haven’t won yet,” he said in a weaker voice—an almost female voice.
The new Dragoon tore open the hatch to the sewers without the need to turn the knob. Before he dropped through the opening, the Dragoon said, “I left you a little housewarming present from my master.” The Dragoon touched the button on a remote that had appeared in his hand. From inside the Sanctuary came a loud hiss. A ball of fire shot through the opening of the Sanctuary to incinerate the still form of Percival Graves. The Dragoon tossed a mock salute before he dropped down the hatch.
Before the flames could engulf her, Emma managed to pick herself up and throw herself down the hatch after the Dragoon. She landed face-first in the fetid water, but didn’t have the strength even to roll over. She heard footsteps splashing towards her and braced herself for the end. As her lungs filled with sewage, she gave in to the darkness.
Chapter 16
It didn’t take long for Beaux to catch Marlin up on what she had been up to for the last four thousand years. She led her flock to the pasture to eat and drink before she took them back to a rough pen at the edge of the forest for the night. The highlight of her years came when she sheared the sheep or on rare occasions when she slaughtered one for dinner.
By comparison, Marlin’s position as Keeper of the Lore for the Order of the Scarlet Knight gave him a wealth of stories. As they walked along a path through the hills, he told her of the various Scarlet Knights he had met over the years. He frequently had to stop in his stories to explain unfamiliar terms and places. “France? What’s that?” she asked at one point.
“It’s a place far to the south, across a channel of water,” he explained patiently, glad to be the focus of attention. He went on to describe how the scarlet armor had gone from France, far across an ocean to the United States of America. Concepts like freedom and democracy required a separate explanation as Beaux was only familiar with two systems of government: tribal law and anarchy—she preferred the latter.
He went through Percival Graves’s tenure as the Scarlet Knight and then stopped at a tree to rest. “How much farther is it? We’ve been walking all day.”
“It’s up in the foothills, in a cave,” Beaux said. She sat down beside Marlin on a patch of moss. “Now we are up to that girl of yours?”
Marlin felt his cheeks turn warm, something that hadn’t happened in millennia. “There’s not much to tell. She’s a girl about your age who heard the Call and answered it. That’s all there is to it.”
“There must be more to it than that.” Beaux smiled at him. “You must really care for her the way your face has turned so red.”
“It’s not her I care about.”
“Oh really?”
“I don’t care about her in that way.” He cleared his throat to summon some intestinal fortitude now that he had intestines. “There’s been no one else since you—and not just because I’ve been dead.”
“No one at all?”
“No.”
“That’s very sweet.”
Marlin readied himself for a kiss or perhaps even another roll in the grass, but she got to her feet instead. “We’d better get going if we’re going to make it by nightfall.”
The walk became more difficult as they started to go up, into the foothills of the great mountain where the master surely waited. They lapsed into silence as Marlin focused on getting air into his lungs. In a way this was a blessing as it meant he didn’t have to further discuss his time with Emma Earl. Not that anything had ever happened with Emma or that he had ever felt those kind of feelings, but he knew even from his dated experiences that a woman never liked a discussion of a potential rival.
They stopped at a cluster of boulders for Marlin to rest again. He stared up at the mountain that loomed over them. It would be a lot easier to reach the top if he were a ghost again. Then he could simply float around to find his master. He wouldn’t have to worry about oxygen in his lungs or that he might splatter himself on rocks like the one he rested against.
“Let’s go,” Beaux said. She wasn’t winded at all, which Marlin attributed to her being acclimated not just to the mountain air, but to breathing in general. She wasn’t four thousand years out of practice with the organic processes of her body.
“Right,” Marlin said, though he wanted to remain by the rocks for a while longer—a couple of days would do it. Instead, he trudged after her and let Beaux navigate the narrow path through the foothills.
She stopped at the mouth of a cave and waited for him to catch up. “Here it is. Inside is the one who will help us.”
“Great. Isn’t this place a little remote for a sporting goods store?”
Beaux said nothing to this; she ducked inside the cave. He followed after her and wished he had brought a torch so he could see his way in the dark. Beaux didn’t have any problem with the darkness; she walked confidently through the cave. She seized his hand to lead him around rocks and puddles he would have run into on his own.
“How much farther is it?” he asked.
“Not much farther.”
Indeed it wasn’t as they went only a few more feet before Beaux came to a halt. “This is it,” she said. In a louder voice she said, “Greetha? It’s Beaux. I have brought him.”
“Greetha? That’s who you’ve brought us to see? What’s she going to do, make a charm out of some chicken bones?”
“Not exactly.” Beaux reached into the belt around the waist of her pelt. Marlin didn’t see what she took out from there until the stone dagger was already plunged into his chest.
“What the hell are you doing?” he shouted. His head began to spin and his legs felt unsteadier than when he had first come to the astral plane. He tottered forward a few steps before he collapsed to his knees on the cold stone of the cave.
“I’m sorry, but this is the only way.”
“Only way for what?”
She didn’t have time to answer as a vaguely female biped emerged from the depths of the cave. This creature could have given the Sewer Rat a run for the money in both looks and smell. It wore a mask fashioned from the skull of an ox splattered with blood and other fluids. From what Marlin could smell, it had dung smeared in the hair beneath the skull and in the mattered
fur of the bear pelt it wore. In one clawed hand it carried a rough staff topped by a lamb’s skull, pig’s feet, and wolf tails.
This was Greetha, an old priestess in the village. She was ostensibly female, although few ever saw her without the accoutrements of her trade. No one, not even Marlin’s master, ever dared try to sleep with her to determine her actual gender.
Priestesses of “Mother Earth” had their usefulness even to those like the master. The priestesses fashioned potions and salves from various herbs and animal body parts that sometimes cured various minor ailments. They also worked as midwives, their skull-covered faces the first thing many infants saw, which Marlin always thought explained why newborns cried so loudly. These duties freed a real sorcerer to focus on his craft so he didn’t have to rush out in the middle of the night to whelp some bastard.
Greetha was the oldest known priestess in Britain; she had already been plying her trade when Merlin arrived in the village. As such, she thought her charms and potions superior to Merlin’s magic, which prompted her to shriek challenges at the master whenever they came within earshot of each other. He had humiliated her one time with a wave of his hand that had thrown her a good twenty feet.
As Marlin bled on the stone, Greetha pranced around him and chanted her supposedly magic words while she shook her silly stick. Marlin had no idea what she was saying, nor did he care at this point; he turned his eyes to Beaux, who knelt down next to him. She took his hand and then leaned over him so he could look her in the eye. “Why?” he asked.
“You’re never going to get up that mountain otherwise. Greetha can help you.”
“How?”
“She’s putting a curse on you.”
“A curse?”
“So that your spirit lingers here. You’ll be a ghost, just like back in that city of yours.”
Marlin considered this for a moment. It was feasible, if the curse worked. Curses were another area where priestesses like Greetha excelled, though Marlin thought those were usually a self-fulfilling prophecy; the victim caused bad things to happen because he or she believed in the curse. Marlin did not believe in curses, but that didn’t mean all these phony words and skulls couldn’t do something.
Even if he had the strength to argue, Marlin couldn’t have brought himself to do it at this moment. Beaux was right that he would never climb up that mountain in his physical form. The only way for him to get up there would be as a spirit. It was the only way for his mission here to succeed. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” As Marlin began to cough, Beaux kissed his cheek. “Just a little longer and then it’ll be done.”
Greetha’s chants became louder and more violent while the life drained from Marlin’s body. As he took his last breath, the priestess hoisted her staff into the air and then let out a scream loud enough to bring the entire mountain down on top of them. Marlin paid no attention to this; he was too fixed on Beaux. There were no tears in her eyes, only a look of sadness for what she had given up, because once he died here, his physical being would be gone forever. They would never be able to kiss or make love or even hold hands again.
She bent down to kiss him and kept her lips there until the last breath rattled out of him.
Marlin was dead—again.
***
For three days they had vanished themselves all over the world. Mrs. Chiostro and Sylvia had been to every continent except Antarctica to seek out their sisters in the coven. They had some polite conversations, but no one seemed very interested to help them. It took some arm-twisting to arrange a meeting of the entire coven to discuss the issue.
That meeting wouldn’t be held for a few more hours. Before that, Mrs. Chiostro wanted to talk privately with the head of the coven. For that reason, she and Sylvia vanished to Glasgow, which Sylvia had once used as a base of operations for her arms business before she came to the New World.
Mrs. Chiostro had not been to the city before, so she had to follow her sister through the streets, to a ramshackle tavern. Sylvia pushed her way through the crowd of drinkers and dart players and went up to the bar. “I’m Miss Joubert,” she said. “Is my table ready?”
“Just a moment ma’am. I’ll have someone wipe it down for you. In the meantime, is there anything I can get you?”
“A pint for me. Club soda for my sister.” After the bartender left, Sylvia shook her head. “I don’t know why I even brought you.”
“Now, Sylvia, you know there’s more to do at bars than get drunk,” Mrs. Chiostro said. She had given up liquor during Prohibition and found she didn’t really miss it. She had rarely drank more than wine in any case, except for the occasional pint of ale bought by a handsome young man back in her early days.
“Yeah, but getting drunk makes it more fun.” The bartender indicated Sylvia’s table was ready, so they took their drinks over to the table in the corner. This table fit Sylvia perfectly: old, scarred, and shrouded in perpetual gloom. Mrs. Chiostro sipped her club soda while her sister drained her beer in two gulps.
Sylvia was on her third beer when an old woman appeared at their table. Despite her baggy floral dress and barely combed white hair, she had the bearing and haughtiness of royalty. “Hello, young ladies. You mind if an old woman takes a load off?” she asked, her voice disingenuously weary. She was the only one who could call Mrs. Chiostro and Sylvia “young ladies,” since she was over three millennia older than them.
“Of course not,” Mrs. Chiostro said. She slid her chair over to give Glenda, the head of the coven, more room.
Glenda waited until she had a pint of beer in front of her before she said, “I hear you two have been making friends recently.”
“Something wrong with that?” Sylvia growled.
“It is when one of those friends is with the Order. You know I don’t like us associating with them unless necessary.”
“It was necessary,” Mrs. Chiostro said, though her voice was far more pleading than she intended. Only Glenda could make her feel like a child again. “If we hadn’t helped her, we would have had to destroy her.”
“Yes, she does seem to excel at getting herself into trouble,” Glenda said. “Like when she almost unraveled the space-time continuum.”
“That wasn’t her fault,” Mrs. Chiostro said. “And in the end she did the right thing.”
“She needed some sense knocked into her,” Sylvia said. She finished her third beer and then signaled for another. “Emma’s a good kid. She’s just unlucky.”
“And now I suppose you want us to bail her out again.”
“It’s not just her,” Mrs. Chiostro said. “It’s the whole world.” She lowered her voice before she added, “We think the dark one has returned.”
“Really? How interesting.”
“You probably already know about it,” Sylvia said. “Probably could have stopped it too, but you didn’t want to interfere, right?”
“You’re getting smart in your old age—finally.” Glenda took a pull of her beer before she continued, “If this really is the dark one, there’s nothing we can do about it. Her magic is too strong for us. Merlin should have finished her off years ago instead of letting her linger.”
Mrs. Chiostro had never met Merlin—not even Glenda had in person—but now she could understand why Merlin’s armor had chosen Emma. She had the same principles when it came to killing her enemies. Poor Emma, whom they had left to fend for herself against this terrible threat. Mrs. Chiostro shivered, feeling that something had gone wrong. “We can at least help Emma. She doesn’t understand what she’s up against.”
“Isn’t that why she has the ghost?”
“He’s gone,” Sylvia said. “We banished him to the astral plane.”
“Now why would you go and do a thing like that?”
“Because he asked us to,” Mrs. Chiostro said. “He thinks his master will come back to help.”
“He won’t come back. Not until he needs to.”
“You could have mentioned that,” Sylvi
a said. “I’m sure you have someone or something spying on us.”
“I don’t spy on anyone.”
“Right.”
“I do like to stay well-informed. But no I didn’t know that you were sending the ghost away. If we’re lucky he won’t come back.”
“Marlin is unpleasant at times, but he’s not that bad,” Mrs. Chiostro said. “Anyway, I think he’s softening now. The girl is rubbing off on him.”
“Yes, she is a sweet young thing,” Glenda said. “Like a lost little lamb, which I suppose is why even this old goat has taken a liking to her.”
“Who are you calling an old goat?” Sylvia said, though with a twinkle in her eye. “You’re older than any of us.”
“At least I can still maintain the proper perspective,” Glenda said. “You both should realize she’s not your daughter or your granddaughter. She’s just another mortal woman. That’s how the coven is going to see it.”
“You mean how you’re going to see it,” Sylvia said.
“Not only me.” Glenda finished the rest of her beer and signaled for another. “If you go through with this, you’re not going to find much support. The others share my opinion that we should butt out of the Order’s business. Not to mention most of them still aren’t very happy with you two for flouting the coven’s rules—especially you, Mrs. Chiostro.”
“This doesn’t have anything to do with me marrying Alejandro. This is far more important than petty grudges. The dark one could take over the whole world. What are you and the others going to do then?”
“There’s no sense getting angry with me, Agnes. I’m only telling you what to expect.” Glenda brushed back a sleeve to check a gold watch. “We still have a couple of hours before the meeting. Plenty of time to drink your sister under the table.”
“Bring it on, old woman.”
Mrs. Chiostro sighed. She left the two other witches to guzzle beer while she went up to the bar. “Could I get a glass of white wine please?”
Tales of the Scarlet Knight Collection: The Call Page 69