“So quit.”
“I am.” Donovan reached into her jacket for another cigarette; she shook her head as she lit it. “I’m retiring effective next month. I’ve got twenty-five years in and I’m still alive. I figure that’s a pretty good run.” She blew out a stream of smoke. “I figure there’s still time to move to some sleepy town out west or down south, where not much happens. No mobsters or crazy vigilantes burning down docks.”
“That wasn’t my fault.”
“They knocked over those drums and dropped their cigars because you were chasing them.”
“They were smuggling heroin in those drums. You think I should have let them go?”
“You could at least have been more careful. The last one wasn’t nearly so reckless.”
“She was too soft. The don would still be running the show if she were still around.”
“Don’t get delusions of grandeur. She still runs the show. Just from wherever she’s hiding herself instead of in plain sight.”
“Not anymore. Not after tonight.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m taking her down. Tonight.”
“How? Where? Let me get some units—”
“I’ll find you.”
“Goddamnit, you can’t tie her up and drop her in a patrol car like some goddamned purse snatcher! She’ll be right back on the streets again by lunchtime.”
“Maybe I’ll put her in the hospital first.”
“Are you out of your fucking mind? That’s only going to make things worse!”
“What do you care? You’ll be retired.”
Donovan stared at the Scarlet Knight’s visor for a moment and wished she could see the madwoman inside. She’d always heard that to be a Scarlet Knight you had to be good and noble or something like that. Apparently their standards were pretty low these days to let this thug have the armor. Donovan threw up her hands. “Fine! You want to go bust Vendetta’s legs, be my guest. See what good it does. Tomorrow I’m going into internal affairs and I’m giving them everything: emails, meeting places, the works. Maybe they’ll let me keep my pension.”
“I don’t need you. I don’t need anyone.”
“Yeah, whatever. You and your Clint Eastwood complex can go fuck themselves.”
Donovan stormed away; she didn’t bother to look back. She took out her phone and punched in Cielo’s number. “Al, this is Lottie. I need you to make an appointment with those AVTF assholes for me. Tomorrow morning. First thing. Thanks.”
Once she was in a cab and headed for the apartment she’d hardly used in the last twenty-five years, she let out a sigh of relief. For twenty-five years she’d been like one of those fish trying to swim against the current. She was too old and too tired to keep swimming. Now was the time to let the wave carry her away, out to sea, where it would be a lot more peaceful.
***
For the first seven years of her life as a crime fighter, Emma had never drawn any sort of line between herself and the Scarlet Knight. When she wore the armor, she was merely Dr. Emma Earl clad in magic armor, with the ability to jump higher, punch harder, and become invisible. Since she’d been let out of the psych ward, since she’d made her promise to Louise to clean up the city no matter what it took, the two halves of her life had begun to draw apart.
Dr. Richman would no doubt claim she had a mild case of schizophrenia. However illogical it might be, Emma blamed her hair. When it had turned white, she had been left with the choice to dye or leave it. She had decided to leave it, but the white hair seemed too conspicuous to leave visible, so she’d pinned it beneath her helmet. This subtle change had made her not only look different, but feel different as well. When she pinned up her hair, she felt as if she had become someone else.
The split personality became more noticeable during her conversations with Captain Donovan. The part that was purely Emma Earl wanted to apologize for inconveniencing the captain; the part that was the Scarlet Knight didn’t care if she stepped on a few toes so long as she got results. The part that was Emma Earl also grimaced at the thought of nearly crippling anyone, even criminals; the part that was the Scarlet Knight only sneered and said they got what they deserved. The part that was Emma Earl knew Donovan was right not to bring in Don Vendetta yet; the part that was the Scarlet Knight told the part that was Emma Earl to shut the fuck up and let her do her job.
The part that was the Scarlet Knight won out this time. She squatted on an overpass, with what looked like a pair of 3D glasses over her eyes beneath her visor. These glasses weren’t toys for watching movies; they let her watch a far more important program, that of Don Vendetta’s motorcade.
A little over two years ago, Cecelia Romeau had raided the don’s main place of business, the Plastic Hippo strip club. Cecelia had slaughtered Don Vendetta’s most trusted lieutenants to lure Emma into a trap so she could get the armor. Since that time, the don had gone to ground. Like Hitler or Saddam she burrowed into a hole somewhere and rarely emerged. Her absences became more pronounced as the Scarlet Knight chipped away at her businesses and threw a majority of her organization into jail—with a stop in the hospital first.
Of course the don didn’t realize the Scarlet Knight had a ghost who could keep track of her movements no matter how many times she tried to change vehicles. Marlin, the ghost of Merlin’s assistant, floated up to where she lurked. “She’s still in the third car. A double is in the second.”
“You’re sure about that?”
“Of course I’m bloody sure. I should think I’d know what the wench looks like by now.”
“Fine.” The Scarlet Knight reached to a pouch on her belt, inside which was an object that looked like an ordinary housefly. Only if someone cut it open would they see the circuits inside, the miniature cameras in the eyes, and the microphones on the belly. This was the Flying Listening Intelligence or FLI she had constructed over two years ago.
The Scarlet Knight tossed it into the air and watched as the FLI buzzed down towards the third car in the motorcade. The images from the FLI’s cameras appeared in her glasses, a far more elegant solution than to carry her netbook inside her armor. The FLI had enough intelligence in its microprocessors that it could steer itself into the car without any guidance. If it got stuck, she had a sensor attached to her left hand she could use to control it.
As Marlin had said, Don Lydia Vendetta rode in the back of the black Chrysler 300; the more ordinary sedan supposed to be harder for the Scarlet Knight to track. This is going to be far too easy, she thought. The Scarlet Knight prepared herself to leap off the overpass, onto the car, when the FLI’s microphones began to transmit to her earpiece.
“I don’t know why we should believe these clowns,” said the don’s lieutenant—promoted two weeks ago when the Scarlet Knight put the previous one in traction. “We don’t even know who they are.”
“I’m sick of that bitch thinking she can push us around,” the don said, her voice icy. “If those idiot cops aren’t going to put her down then we will.”
“But we’re giving them the whole east side.”
“For now. All alliances end at some point.”
The lieutenant smiled as she finally understood; the Scarlet Knight’s war on the Vendetta organization had eliminated most of its best minds, except for the don herself. “So we’re going to play along and then stab them in the back?”
“Exactly. Once they’ve gotten rid of that red menace and we’ve recovered our strength, we’ll take back what belongs to us.”
The Scarlet Knight smiled to herself. She turned to Marlin and said, “Keep an eye on that car. Let me know when it stops.”
“Why don’t you use your bug?”
“Just make sure, will you?”
“Fine,” Marlin said with a huff. Relations with the ghost hadn’t improved in the last two years. The difference was that before Marlin had complained she was too soft. Now he whined she made him work too hard. The Scarlet Knight and Emma Earl were in agreement th
at Marlin liked to complain; Dr. Richman would probably claim it was the ghost’s coping mechanism.
The Scarlet Knight hopped on her motorcycle and kicked it to life. She kept the headlight off as she rolled down the overpass, onto Hengelbrock Parkway. The parkway skirted the southern edge of the city to wind up in the old industrial area. Any one of those factories—all but a few abandoned now—would make a good meeting spot. The Scarlet Knight had flushed out quite a few meetings in that neighborhood already and put quite a few of Don Vendetta’s employees in the hospital.
With Marlin and the FLI tracking the don’s movements, the Scarlet Knight could afford to stay back to make sure no one saw her. Once she’d learned thanks to Marlin that Don Vendetta had emerged, the Scarlet Knight had made a simple plan: she would cut the don off at the pass and take her down. But when she heard the conversation in the car, she decided to let the don make the meeting so she could find out who had reached out to Don Vendetta.
The Scarlet Knight had always known someone else would eventually try to move in on Vendetta’s turf. That was the nature of organized crime. She’d intercepted lead elements from cities like New York, Los Angeles, and Detroit and sent them away with the warning that they would not be welcome in her town. That was part of the promise she’d made to Louise, that Rampart City would no longer belong to the criminals. It was probably a crazy dream, but she didn’t care. She had played by the rules for seven years and it hadn’t gotten her very far, just as it hadn’t gotten Percival Graves very far. Not anymore.
Tonight she would take in Don Vendetta—and any of the don’s friends. The Scarlet Knight twisted the throttle on the bike to narrow the gap between her and her enemies.
***
Over her long career, the Scarlet Knight had discovered that factories made for great meeting places—for her. There were always catwalks and crisscrossing beams she could use to move about without anyone noticing her. She wondered why the criminals continued to use these places when it was so obvious they were bad spots. They should conduct their business in cramped one bedroom apartments in the Trenches where there would be far less room.
The Scarlet Knight crouched on a catwalk in the old Harmon-Farmer plant, where long ago bicycles—and for a short time B-24 bombers—had been manufactured. She concentrated on the don’s car parked at one end of the abandoned factory floor. The FLI reported the don was still inside. Marlin swept the other end of the floor, where the other group waited.
The Scarlet Knight would have liked to take a look at them herself, but she wanted to keep the FLI on the don and she didn’t want to expose her position. Even with the golden cape wrapped around her body, she could still be seen by anyone clever enough to wear night vision or infrared goggles. So she waited on the catwalk for her chance to strike, to end things.
Marlin floated up to her position and shook his head. “A half-dozen of them. Real, professional-looking blokes. One of them seems familiar for some reason.”
This reason became clear as the don got out of the car and walked into the center of the floor. The other group followed suit; neither one paid attention to the FLI that hovered in the air. With her left hand, the Scarlet Knight guided the FLI to get a better look at the head of the delegation to meet the don. The blond crew cut and blue eyes weren’t that recognizable. What was far more identifiable was the prosthetic hand. When he opened his mouth to speak, the FLI gave the Scarlet Knight a good view of teeth that looked slightly too big to fit properly.
She knew this was because he wore false teeth. His name was Sasha and he’d lost both his original teeth and hand thanks to the Scarlet Knight. Not Emma Earl as the Scarlet Knight but during the brief period when Becky had served as the Scarlet Knight while she inhabited Emma’s body. Sasha had taken Emma—in Becky’s body—hostage along with Dan Dreyfus to find a meteor for his employer, Sergei Bykov, who was to Russia what Don Vendetta was to Rampart City.
“You’re the ones who are going to kill that bitch for me?”
“No. I am middleman, as you say,” Sasha said.
“I didn’t come all this way to meet a middleman.”
“You not listen, then she will find you. It is inevitable.”
The don’s lieutenant jumped in and pulled a pistol from her shoulder holster. “Listen, asshole, we don’t need no help from some smug Russian—”
The don silenced her with a glare. “We might as well at least hear what the boy has to say. What services will your employer render to me?”
“They will kill Scarlet Knight for you. In return for shelter.”
“Shelter for what?”
“For what they must do.”
“How do I know they’ll do what you say?”
“My employer vouches for them.”
Don Vendetta nodded; no doubt she already knew who Sasha worked for. “Can I assume your employer will be using this ‘shelter’ as well?”
“Perhaps.”
“Lydia—” the lieutenant didn’t get any farther as the don slapped her across the face.
“Don’t interrupt.” Don Vendetta turned back to Sasha while the lieutenant rubbed her jaw. “So I get rid of the Scarlet Knight and I get a bunch of Reds moving in on me. Doesn’t sound like much of a deal.”
“That or you wait for her to find you.”
The Scarlet Knight took this as her cue to launch herself from the catwalk. She kept the cape around her body until the last possible moment, when she threw it back to slow her descent. She came down right between Don Vendetta’s group and Sasha’s group. “My ears are burning,” she said.
The decision became which group she should go after first. She had a score to settle with both of them, though hers with Don Vendetta was far older. She decided to go based on who carried more firepower, which at the moment was Sasha and his crew. The fight didn’t take long, as they had armed themselves with only machine guns and other conventional armaments that might scare the don’s thugs, but couldn’t hurt her with the magic armor on.
The Scarlet Knight didn’t even need her best moves to quickly cripple Sasha’s men. She saved him for last; she caught up with him as he tried to flee. She bounced on the heels of her boots to launch herself through the air and come down in front of him. She laid Sasha out with a right cross, which knocked the false teeth out of his mouth.
“I thought I told you to stay out of here. This is my city.”
“Not for long,” Sasha said.
“We’ll see about that.” She knocked him out with another punch and broke his nose in the process. She used a pair of zip cuffs from his equipment to tie his hands for the police to take him into custody later.
Once the don had tried to flee from her in a two-ton army surplus truck, which the Scarlet Knight had disabled with the Sword of Justice. The don this time used only her feet. She had kicked off her stiletto pumps to run along the abandoned street barefoot; she soon outpaced her slow-witted lieutenant.
The Scarlet Knight needed only three good bounces to catch up to the most feared woman in all of Rampart City. On the third bounce she came down in front of the don as she had Sasha a few minutes earlier. Instead of a right cross, she grabbed the front of Don Vendetta’s silk blouse and then easily flipped the mobster over her shoulder. The don cried out as she landed on her back on the pavement.
The Scarlet Knight knelt down beside her and wished she could open her visor so the don could see her smile. “It’s over for you,” she said.
Chapter 3
To get Cecelia up the stairs without ruining the party proved to be Aggie’s first challenge. She could have easily vanished her niece upstairs, but she didn’t want to risk that Dan or Megan, who didn’t know she was a witch, might see this. She could at least use a lighter than air spell to make Cecelia’s taller, slightly heavier body light as a feather—so light that she had to keep an arm around the girl’s waist so she wouldn’t float up to the ceiling like one of the balloons in the dining room.
“Agnes, are you all right?” A
kako called from the dining room.
“I’m fine. I’m going upstairs for a moment.”
As she started up the stairs with Cecelia, Aggie braced herself for Emma or Rebecca or Akako to check up on her. While they all knew about Cecelia, she would rather not ruin the party for them if she could help it. At the top of the stairs, she breathed a sigh of relief that no one disturbed her; maybe they thought she was using the bathroom.
Cecelia remained unconscious as Aggie laid her down on the bed and tucked in the covers to keep her niece pinned down until the spell wore off. Aggie inspected the girl’s wounds, but none looked life threatening at the moment. Later, once everyone was gone, she’d go downstairs for a restoration potion to help Cecelia recover. In the meantime, her niece was a strong girl, strong enough to get all the way here with her injuries at least.
“I’ll be back in a little bit, dear,” Aggie whispered.
Downstairs she found everyone waiting for her; the candle on Renee’s cake had begun to drip wax onto the pink frosting. The baby fidgeted in her high chair and tried to reach the candle with her pudgy limbs. “Renee, sweetie, you don’t want to touch the candle,” Akako cooed. “It’s very hot.”
In her day, Aggie would have simply smacked the girl on the wrist with a spoon and told her no. Akako was a far more permissive parent, to the point where Aggie feared she would spoil Renee. Whenever Aggie thought to mention this, she saw how much Akako loved the little girl and couldn’t bring herself to do it.
“I think we’d best let her blow that out,” Aggie said instead.
“Who was at the door?” Emma asked.
“That? Oh, just someone needing directions,” Aggie said. She sat at the foot of the table, and mouthed the words to “Happy Birthday to You” while everyone else sang. This singing seemed to disturb little Renee, who began to squirm in her high chair.
Tales of the Scarlet Knight Collection: The Wrath of Isis Page 108