Tales of the Scarlet Knight Collection: The Wrath of Isis

by P. T. Dilloway

  She didn’t care about these problems. Jim was trapped or possibly even dead. While most of Rampart City wouldn’t shed a tear for the demise of the Sewer Rat, Emma had come to value him as a friend in the last two years. He had saved her life when the Black Dragoon had destroyed the Sanctuary with a bomb. If not for the Sewer Rat she would almost certainly have died then. He had also helped her to stop a renegade alien explorer known as Koschei, not to mention he allowed her to use the sewers to easily travel through the city. Because of all that, she couldn’t leave him to die now.

  From what Pepe said, Jim had been in his workshop, an abandoned pipe where he worked on sculptures made out of trash, when some of the other rats had reported an intruder. Jim, along with Pepe and some of the older and larger rats, went to investigate. Jim had been caught in the explosion, cut off from the others by debris.

  The debris was too thick to allow the rats to communicate with their leader, so Pepe couldn’t be sure if Jim had survived or not. The only way to find out would be for Emma to go down there and use the armor to dig through the rubble. On the surface this seemed easy enough to accomplish.

  Then she saw the lights ahead of her. There were the traditional blue and red lights of the police department, but also yellow lights of city workers. Emma slowed the motorcycle; she knew it wouldn’t do any good to barrel into a crowd of city employees, especially without the armor.

  She pulled off to the sidewalk and eased the bike into one of Rampart City’s many alleys. While her second motorcycle didn’t have as powerful of an engine, it did have the same security features; a jolt of 5,000 volts would run through anyone who tried to steal the bike. Pepe hopped down to the ground to allow Emma to get off. She sprinted to the end of the alley, where she figured it would be safe to summon the armor again.

  Over the last seven years she had gotten the process to don the armor down to a science. Still, it seemed to take forever for her this time. When she finally dropped the helmet over her head, she bolted towards the end of the alley. She didn’t bother with the cape; she didn’t care at the moment who saw her. Instead, she dashed into the road and headed for the nearest manhole cover. Around her cars skidded to a halt, but she paid them little mind.

  The armor enhanced her muscles enough that she was able to pick up the manhole cover like a dinner plate and then push it aside. With time being of the essence, she dropped herself through the opening, into the sewage below. Some of Pepe’s relatives squealed in surprise at her sudden landing. “Don’t be afraid,” she hissed at them in ratspeak.

  Then she ran.

  ***

  She didn’t get far before she saw the first of the city workers. They wore yellow rubber suits so that they resembled longshoremen as they waded through the sewage. “Jesus, do you smell that?” one said.

  “What the hell do you expect? It’s a goddamned sewer.”

  “Yeah, but still.”

  Emma followed behind the two men, her cape wrapped tightly around her. She paused at the opening where they had come in. Above, she could make out the colored lights of the lights from the police cars and city vehicles. She wondered if Captain Donovan would show up for this or if she would leave this to her subordinates.

  Then Emma plunged on ahead. She flattened herself against one wall of the sewer pipe to ease herself around the two city workers, who discussed the stench of the sewage in various neighborhoods. Emma had gotten to know these odors quite well herself, to the point where she could have found her way around simply by the smell.

  “Christ, did you see the size of that?” one worker shouted.

  “Probably some kind of mutant,” the other said.

  Pepe came up beside Emma a moment later. He was large for an ordinary rat, but not as big as some of his brethren in the Rampart City sewers.

  She didn’t have time to consider this at the moment. She allowed Pepe to get in front of her, to lead her to the site of the accident. The city workers fell farther and farther behind; clearly they had no stomach for this late-night exploration of the city’s underground. She couldn’t blame them, as she had often enough felt queasy down here even with the armor. That was at least until her time in Jim’s care.

  She didn’t see the object until she kicked it with her boot. The visor of her helmet allowed her to see where the object splashed down in the sewage. It was probably something worthless, but then again it might be something Jim had left behind.

  She fished around with her glove until she found it. She saw it wasn’t something that belonged to Jim, but it wasn’t worthless either. It was a remote control, not unlike the type a child might use for a toy car. She doubted in this case that was what it had been used for; more likely it had been used as a detonator.

  Emma studied the remote for a moment before she tucked it into a pouch on her belt. She would have to examine it later, though she doubted it would provide any solid leads. It did tell her someone might have tried to kill Jim. If not directly then indirectly at least.

  Pepe let out a squeak of joy and pointed with his snout at the way ahead. Through the visor, Emma could see the rubble of the sewage pipe that blocked the way. “Stay back,” she said to Pepe. Then she pulled the Sword of Justice from its scabbard. The blade glowed with a dim yellow light, which told Emma that if someone had used the remote to trigger an explosion, that person had long since gone or else surely the blade would have glowed brighter in the presence of evil.

  She took a few cautious swipes at the rubble; the blade sliced through the cement and metal is if it were butter. This loosened things enough that she could easily sweep aside more of the rubble, enough to get her head through the opening.

  On the other side was Jim.

  ***

  He lay on his back in the sewage, his arms and legs spread-eagled. “Jim,” she whispered. He didn’t move. “Jim!” she said louder. He still didn’t move.

  Unbidden, Pepe crawled over Emma to drop through the opening. The rat swam over to his leader’s side and poked at Jim’s rat fur coat with his snout. Jim still didn’t move. Pepe looked up at Emma with concern but indicated Jim was still alive.

  “See if you can push him back a little. I don’t want anything falling on him.”

  With the Sword of Justice she began to chop up more of the rubble and then used her hands to clear it away. Despite the magic sword and armor, this still took a few minutes, which to Emma seemed like separate eternities. Behind her, she could hear the voices of the city workers echo through the tunnel. It wouldn’t be long until they got here. If they found Jim, they would turn him over to the police, who would in turn hand him over to a mental hospital or prison. There was no way Jim could survive in either place.

  She wouldn’t let that happen. She flung more rubble away, enough for her to squeeze through. Then she reached through the opening to pile some of the rubble back up to make it more difficult for the city workers to reach her and Jim. It wouldn’t hold them long, but it would be long enough for her to get Jim to safety.

  With the flimsy blockade in place, she knelt down beside Jim. As Pepe had indicated, he was still alive. She dragged him out of the sewage to one of the cement embankments. There she brushed aside his coat to examine his wounds.

  Blood oozed from a wound in his right side, just above his kidney. It didn’t look deep enough to have done any serious damage. More troublesome at the moment was the shrapnel in his right leg. These wounds were far deeper, almost to the bone and bled much more seriously. If she didn’t get him help soon, he might lose the leg—if not his life.

  As if he sensed her thoughts, his eyes snapped open. “No doctor,” he said.

  “Jim, I have to. You’re hurt. Badly.”

  “No!” he said. He tried to sit up but then winced with pain and sagged back down. “No hospital.”

  She heard the city workers begin to claw at the rubble that blocked the tunnel. It wouldn’t be long before they broke through her pathetic barricade to find her and Jim. “We don’t have time to
argue,” she said. Without another word she heaved Jim over her shoulder in a fireman’s carry.

  She took off through the sewer; the armor made Jim seem to weigh nothing. Pepe scurried ahead of her to scout for any trouble. At this point she was as worried about the phantom saboteur as the city workers or police. He—or she—might have left traps behind to discourage any pursuit.

  “No doctor,” Jim said again.

  “I have to, Jim.”

  “No,” he said again, more weakly this time. “Please. No.”

  Emma didn’t stop, but she felt a pang of sadness from the desperation in Jim’s voice. He had spent the last twenty years in Rampart City’s sewers to avoid people. She had never found out exactly what had driven him down here, but she knew it was something terrible. To take him to a hospital would be just as bad as if she handed him over to the police.

  “All right,” she said. “No hospital.”

  Chapter 5

  Jim couldn’t sit on the back of the motorcycle and there was no way for her to drive with him over her shoulder, so she had to abandon the bike in the alley. Even without the armor she didn’t want to try a cab or a bus. That left her to carry Jim over her shoulder while she bounced from rooftop to rooftop in the red armor.

  In her early tenure as the Scarlet Knight, she had struggled with her landings; she usually ended up flat on her face after a jump. After seven years, she’d honed her technique enough to where she would at least land on her side. As she hopped from the rooftop of an apartment building to another one, she adjusted herself to come down on the shoulder not carrying Jim so as not to injure him even worse.

  He had passed out early in the trip, though occasionally he would mutter, “No doctor.” As for Pepe, he would follow them from the ground to their ultimate destination.

  Emma wondered again about her promise not to take Jim to the hospital. She knew all too well about his phobia of going to the surface and of people in general. Still, in this case she worried she might be wasting too much time to abide by his wishes. By the time she reached her destination, he might have lost too much blood or he might have picked up an infection that would cause him to lose the leg.

  She reminded herself she couldn’t drop the Sewer Rat off at Rampart General like an ordinary patient. Once the police found out, they would take him into custody. Like the Scarlet Knight, the Sewer Rat was technically an outlaw, though no one had bothered with a task force to hunt him down; no task force had the stomach to search for him in the sewers. She could put in a good word with Captain Donovan, but there would be nothing the captain could do, not after the police had Jim.

  There was only one solution.

  She wasn’t surprised to find the door ajar when she landed on Aggie’s doorstep. “Bring him inside, dear,” Aggie called out from inside. Anyone who didn’t know her would have expected to find an old woman, not a blond girl as old as most of Emma’s students.

  At one point Agnes Chiostro had been an old woman. A near-death experience had convinced her to embrace the pleasures of youth. Since she’d fallen in love with a young woman named Akako, Agnes—Aggie to her friends—had remained young, about the same age as Emma.

  Despite this, Aggie still projected the authority of an old woman. She waited for Emma in the parlor and said, “Put him down on the couch so I can take a look at him.”

  Emma set Jim down on the couch and used a throw pillow to prop up his injured leg so Aggie could have a better look at it. “There was an explosion down in the sewers,” Emma explained. “He got caught in the blast.”

  “Oh my.” Aggie bent down to examine the chunks of metal and cement that stuck out of his leg like a pincushion. “This certainly is serious. Perhaps you should have taken him to a hospital.”

  “He wouldn’t go to a doctor.” Emma took off the helmet so she could look Aggie in the eye. “Can you help him?”

  “I should think so, dear. First we’ll have to take out all the junk in his leg. Go in the kitchen and fetch me a bowl along with a damp rag.”

  When she returned with the bowl and rag, Emma found Aggie had taken Jim’s coat off and was using a pair of scissors to cut away his pants and shirt like a paramedic. “They’re practically molded to him,” Aggie said.

  “I don’t think he cares much for fashion down there.”

  “I suppose not.” Aggie took the bowl and then began to pluck out shrapnel with a pair of tweezers. There was nothing Emma could do at the moment but stand back, watch, and pray. If Jim didn’t make it or if he lost his leg, she would blame herself.

  She was so engrossed in these worries that she didn’t hear Aggie speaking to her until the witch snapped her fingers. “Emma, are you all right, dear?”

  “What? Oh, I’m fine.”

  “I need you to go downstairs to the vault. On the third shelf on the left there’s a dark gray stone bottle. I need you to bring that to me.”

  “Sure. I’ll get it.” Emma scurried away like one of Jim’s rats; she felt the sting of guilt and her own helplessness. She went downstairs to the basement and turned on the light. She hurried past the rows of weapons Sylvia had left, as well as Sylvia’s old barber chair, which she had not taken to her new salon.

  In the center of the basement was a metal vault like something a bank would use. Emma dialed in the combination—the birthday of Aggie and Sylvia’s dead sister—and then yanked open the door. She found the third shelf on the left. There were numerous little bottles that contained all sorts of magic potions. She had used one of these to erase Dan Dreyfus’s memory of their time together seven years ago. After the pain and heartache caused by that, she had learned not to fool with magic potions.

  She finally found the dark gray bottle Aggie had mentioned. The label was written in French in Aggie’s curly, old-fashioned script. “Restoration,” the label read. Emma thought that sounded more like the name of a perfume, but at this point she would try anything.

  Upstairs, Aggie dabbed at Jim’s leg and side with the damp rag, which had turned red from blood. “Here it is,” Emma said.

  “I just hope it’s not too late,” Aggie said. She opened the bottle and then splashed a few drops onto the rag. Emma again could only watch as Aggie pressed the rag to Jim’s wound. Emma had hoped the wound would instantly heal itself like in a movie, but it didn’t. Nothing happened, at least nothing she could perceive.

  “Is it doing anything?” she asked.

  “We won’t know until the morning.” Aggie ran the rag along Jim’s leg, but still nothing happened. The witch stood up and then tossed the bloody rag into the fireplace. “Can you carry him up into the guest room, dear?”

  “Sure.” She knew her way to the guest bedroom; she had lived there for a few weeks a year earlier. The room hadn’t changed since then, the bed as neat as the one in Megan Putnam’s dorm. Aggie followed her up and pushed aside the covers so Emma could set Jim down.

  She had never seen Jim naked before—or nearly naked as Aggie had left his underwear on. She supposed she shouldn’t be surprised that he was thin to the point of his ribs being visible; life in the sewer didn’t provide much of a healthy diet. That he had survived as long as he had was a testament to his strength.

  Aggie put a hand on Emma’s shoulder. “I’ll dress his wounds and tomorrow morning we’ll see what we’ve got. In the meantime, you should get some rest.”

  “Can I stay in here? If he wakes up and I’m not around—”

  “Yes, of course you can, dear. But I think you’ll be more comfortable without that armor.” Emma blushed and then nodded. She began to strip off the armor while Aggie went to the bathroom to fetch some gauze to wrap Jim’s wounds with. They would have to wait until the morning to see what would happen.

  Emma heard a squeak at the door. She wasn’t surprised Pepe had managed to find them. The rat was more than intelligent enough to find a way into Aggie’s house and climb up the steps. Aggie didn’t show any surprise at the sight of the huge animal.

  “He’s going
to be fine,” Emma told Pepe in ratspeak. “He just needs some rest.”

  The rat didn’t believe her. He climbed up the side of the bed to sniff at Jim’s wounds. Then he voiced his doubts. “Ms. Chiostro knows what she’s doing,” Emma said. “She’s a witch. Tomorrow morning he’ll be good as new.”

  Pepe grunted skeptically at this and then crawled up onto the bed. He burrowed beneath the crook of Jim’s arm so that his snout rested against Jim’s shoulder. Though Jim was unconscious, Emma saw him smile at this.

  ***

  Sylvia rolled over in bed to check the clock. It was four in the morning and she was still alone. With an irritated sigh, she climbed out of bed. Tim’s apartment was only a single bedroom one, so it didn’t take her long to discover he was not at home. Still. She had fallen asleep two hours ago while she waited for him.

  Since she’d moved into Tim’s apartment three months earlier, she had become used to his odd hours. Sometimes he stayed at TriTech until eleven o’clock at night or even midnight before he returned to work at six in the morning. She would usually be in bed, where she’d pretend to sleep as he came in and sank down next to her. She would wait until he was settled comfortably next to her before she turned to him in the dark and asked, “What took you so long?”

  “Just a lot of work to do,” he would say.

  “You trying to avoid me?” she would ask playfully.

  “Never.” Then they would kiss and usually do more than that.

  Not tonight. Tonight he hadn’t come home at midnight. She had tried his phone, both his cell phone and office phone. She left him a string of messages, each angrier than the last. She picked up the phone again and was again sent to voice mail. “If you aren’t here in twenty minutes you’d better not bother coming home at all,” she growled before she slammed down the receiver.

  If she were an ordinary woman she would have needed to wait all night for answers. Since she was a witch, she had an easy solution to the problem. She didn’t have an actual crystal ball, but she didn’t need one. Tim’s fish bowl—empty after his goldfish died two weeks ago when she overfed it—would do nicely.