The Night's Legacy (10 page)

She landed delicately in front of him and put one hand on the sword still in its sheath.  “You’re under arrest,” she said without preamble.

He didn’t bother going for his gun, knowing that would be futile.  Instead, he dropped his roll of Tums and raised his hands.  “You know this is pointless.  Even if you arrest me, I have the best lawyers in the world.  They’ll get me out before lunchtime.”

“Maybe you won’t make it to the station.”

“You’re not going to kill me.  You’re too good for that.  Unless you plan to turn me over to your friend.”

“I might.”

From the corner of his eye, Rahnasto saw the exhibit doors open.  The woman saw it as well.  She reached to her belt for the sword that glittered as if it were made of diamond.  Rahnasto used this opening to dive behind a bench for cover.

The contact was wearing the dog headdress now, its eyes glowing as red as those of the staff.  As it had in the exhibit, the dog’s head at the end of the staff fired a bolt of lightning.  Rahnasto watched with awe as the Silver Seraph went flying backwards, over his bench.  He smelled the same roasted flesh as before.  Turning, he saw a black hole in the abdomen of her armor. 

She got onto her knees and then winked out of his vision as she wrapped the cape over her body.  The man in the dog headdress took a few steps forward.  He raised the staff again, its eyes glowing.  “You can’t hide from me,” he growled.  “I am Set, God of Chaos.  You will bow to me or be destroyed.”

He fired another bolt from the staff.  To Rahnasto’s surprise it hit the mark.  Again the woman went flying back, this time into a wall.  Her sword lay on the floor, close enough for Rahnasto to touch it.  The sword’s hilt glowed red at his touch.

The sword began trembling and then rose into the air a few inches.  It arced towards the man calling himself Set.  He used the gold staff to deflect it into a corner.  Then he leveled the staff at the Silver Seraph, who had managed to get herself into a standing position.  “Your time is over, fool.  This is my world now.”

Rahnasto had always thought he would enjoy the woman’s death.  Yet he found it a sobering moment as she screamed, the lightning bolt hitting her right between the breasts.  When she pitched forward, Rahnasto found it to be more pitiful than exciting.  Even more pitiful, the armor disappeared to reveal an old woman in the charred remains of a business suit.  She lay unmoving on the floor, but he could hear her breath still rattling from her chest.

Set turned to him, his eyes glowing red.  “You may finish her now.  She will be of no more trouble to you.”

Rahnasto didn’t know what to say.  He reached into his jacket for his pistol.  This was the moment he had dreamed of for years, when he would be rid of the annoying do-gooder.  Yet as he crossed the great hall to her, he still didn’t feel any triumph.  Perhaps it was because this Set had done all the work or perhaps it was disheartening to see that his adversary was nothing more than an ordinary old woman.

As he came closer, he saw enough of her face to recognize her.  Now he understood why the museum director had been so adamant about rejecting his donation—the museum director was the Silver Seraph!  Her eyes were tightly closed, but she kept whispering one word over and over again:  Lois.

“It’s a pity it has to end like this,” he said.  He thought of how badly he had wanted her head on his desk, but now that the armor had disappeared, there was no point in it.  He fired three bullets into her back, not caring what he hit.  There was little chance she would survive now.  After holstering his pistol, he took out a walkie-talkie.  “Let’s get out of here.  Now.”

He turned to ask Set about where to meet to divide the loot, but the man was already gone.  Rahnasto shrugged and then started towards the front door, leaving the old woman to her fate.

Chapter 8

Lois waited in front of the administration building with the three suitcases she had arrived at Brown with five months earlier.  No one sat with her or told her goodbye; they were probably glad to be rid of her.  She was equally glad to be rid of them. 

The fire in the dorm room hadn’t really been her fault.  She hadn’t been the one smoking; that was her roommate Madison, eight years older than her but as responsible as a sixteen-year-old. 
Lois had stuck with alcohol, drinking bourbon straight from the bottle.  She hoped to kill enough brain cells so that she might be able to stand it here.  So far she’d found this Ivy League school to be inhabited by rich snobs and rich idiots in equal numbers.  She didn’t like either group and they didn’t like her.

There was someone else in the room, Madison’s boyfriend George.  “Hey, maybe we should ask the kid if she wants to do a three-way,” George said and then laughed stupidly.

“Come on, she probably still plays with Barbie dolls.  Don’t you, Lou?”

“A Ken doll would be smarter than your boyfriend.  Probably a bigger dick too.”

They were baked enough that they laughed at this.  “Isn’t the kid a riot?” Madison said.

“Hey, kid, you want to watch?”

“Oh yeah, I’m sure that would be educational,” Lois said and then took another pull from the bottle of bourbon.  “An example of what not to do.”

Again they just laughed at her.  She set the bottle aside and then fell asleep.  The next thing she knew, the room felt really warm and a woman was screaming.  She blinked her eyes open, but couldn’t see anything more than smoke and shadows.  She coughed violently while her eyes watered.

The advantage of being short was that she could get down to where the air was cooler and easier to breathe.  She couldn’t see any sign of Madison or George.  Maybe those two assholes had already burned up in the flames.  More likely they had fled, leaving her behind.  Fucking assholes, she thought to herself as she crawled towards the door.

She made it to the door a few seconds before the firemen.  One of them got her to her feet and then helped her downstairs.  The paramedics checked her out, diagnosed her with mild smoke inhalation.  She drank a couple gallons of water while the police worked her over.  They already had a statement from Madison and George.  They blamed the whole thing on her, saying the pot and booze belonged to her.

Her reputation preceded her, so there was little point in trying to fight the charges.  She’d already gotten into two fights on campus and had three professors complain about her disrupting classes.  Her “disruptions” had been because she knew more than they did about the material they taught.

It didn’t matter to her; she hated fucking Brown anyway.  Stupid fucking Ivy League assholes.  She didn’t need them, just as she hadn’t needed Northwestern,
Cornell, Michigan, or Ren City Community College.  Fuck college.

She waited in front of the administration building for two hours before Aunt
Betty’s car showed up.  Mom climbed out of the passenger’s seat, looking calm as usual.  She Glared at Lois and said, “Do you have everything?”

“Yes.”  Everything she wanted to take.  Anything else she wouldn’t need.

Mom helped her with the bags; Ren City was close enough that they didn’t have any luggage of their own, making it easy for all three suitcases to fit.  Lois sat in the backseat behind her mother, Betty’s seat pushed back to the limit to accommodate her stomach.

As they had since
Lois was a baby, they went into their good cop-bad cop routine.  While Mom would never shout or swear or lose her temper, Aunt Betty was more than willing to do so.  She hadn’t even shifted out of park before she said, “What the hell were you thinking, kid?”

That was how
Betty always referred to her, as “kid.”  The irony was that Betty often used the same pet name for Mom as well, being a year older than her.  When Lois had been little it had been cute, but now she’d begun to see it as demeaning.  She crossed her arms over her chest and said, “It wasn’t my fault.”

“And I’m sure none of those fights were your fault either.”

“I didn’t start them.”

“You sure as hell finished them.”  In both cases
Lois had sent her aggressors to the hospital, one with a shattered femur and the other with a broken pelvis.

“That was their fault.”

“It doesn’t matter whose fault it was,” Mom said.  “You know better to be drinking and smoking, don’t you?  It’s illegal for a girl your age.”

“I wasn’t smoking.  Madison’s boyfriend brought the stuff.”

“Then you should have told someone.”

“I’m not a rat.”

Though they were good cop-bad cop, both cops used guilt equally well.  Betty turned slightly—Mom would give her friend a Glare if she took her eyes off the road too much—and said, “Do you know how hard it was for your mom to get you in here?  Do you know how much it cost?”

“Yes.” 
Lois quoted the figure.  “Take it out of my allowance.”

“Don’t be a smart ass,”
Betty said.  “Your mom stuck her neck out for you.  So did Richard.  They had to practically beg to get you in.”

“
Betty—”

“She needs to hear this, Jess.  She thinks this is all fun and games.”

The mention of Betty’s husband prompted Lois’s face to turn red with shame.  She was glad he hadn’t shown up.  Mom putting herself on the line didn’t hurt nearly as much as the thought of Dr. Johnson begging to get her into Brown.  She could only imagine how disappointed he was going to be when he found out about her expulsion.

“I’m sorry,” she said.  “But it really wasn’t my fault.”

She hoped Mom would go easy on her, but instead Mom said, “If you see a crime and don’t report it then you’re just as guilty.  More so because I know your aunt and I taught you better.  We taught you to be responsible.”

Lois
didn’t say anything to this.  She just looked down at her feet and clammed up.  Betty didn’t say anything either.  Not for about an hour.  Then she patted her stomach and said, “You two birds probably aren’t hungry, but I’m famished.”

“I could use a cup of tea,” Mom said.  “It’s been a long day.”

“No kidding.”

Betty
pulled off into a diner off the exit.  Lois waited for them to tell her that she was to stay in the car and wait, but Mom opened the back door for her.  She even put an arm around Lois’s shoulders to pull her close.  “It’ll be all right, sweetheart,” she said.

Lois
wanted to slither out of her mother’s grasp and stomp away, but she knew that would only make things worse.  Aunt Betty would probably smack her if she tried it, at least once Betty caught her.  For the moment she grinned and bore it.

They took a booth in the corner,
Betty taking up most of one side and Mom on the other with Lois.  While they waited for the waitress, Mom rubbed Lois’s back as if she were still four years old.  “We can find you another school,” Mom said.  “Maybe you could take classes online, stay at home—”

“Maybe I don’t want to go to school,”
Lois said.

“You need to get a good education,” Mom said.

“I’ve already got a bachelor’s degree.”

“Do you think that will be enough?”

Lois shrugged.  “Maybe.”

“What is it you want to do?”

Lois shrugged again.  The plan since she had been six was to get a PhD in Egyptology and then go to work for Dr. Johnson at the Thorne Museum.  She had tried to make that plan a reality, but now she wasn’t sure about it.  “I don’t know.”

The waitress who showed up at the table had hair the same copper shade of red as Mom’s, though with fewer gray hairs.  She was probably as old as Madison back at Brown, not much older than
Lois.  In a strange twist her nametag read, “Lois.”

“Hi, would you like to hear our specials?”

“I’ll have a cup of coffee, black,” Betty said.  “Plus a cheeseburger with fries and a side of pecan pie.  My friend will have a cup of tea and toast, no butter.  The little ingrate in the corner will have a glass of water, tap water, not the bottled stuff.”

“
Betty—”

“Fine, bring the ingrate a chocolate shake, but no whipped cream or cherry.”

Lois the waitress flashed Lois a shy smile as she wrote the order down.  She’d probably seen kids with even more embarrassing parents, or pseudoparents in this case.  “I’ll put that in and be right back with your drinks.”

Mom’s Glare at her friend wasn’t nearly so effective.  “The kid needs to be punished.  She could have set fire to the whole dorm,”
Betty said.

“She’s been punished already.”

“That’s not punishment enough.  If you ask me, she needs a good reform school to straighten her out.  Maybe one of those tough Catholic schools where the nuns still hit you with rulers.”

“She’s too old for that.  And she isn’t Catholic.”

The waitress returned with their coffee, tea, and a cloudy glass of water for Lois.  Lois the waitress winked and Lois and said, “I’ll be right back with your shake, darling.”  That was even more embarrassing than Betty’s comments earlier.  Lois wished she could slip under the table and faint dead away.

Betty
sipped her coffee, wincing at it.  “Is this coffee or motor oil?” she said loud enough for everyone in the place to hear.  At times like that Lois couldn’t understand how Betty and Mom could be friends, let alone best friends for nearly forty years.  In a lower voice, Betty said, “It’s our fault for spoiling the kid, I guess.  We really ought to have tanned her hide after the museum caper.”

“She’s not a bad girl.  She just needs to find herself.”

“You guys know I’m right here, don’t you?”

Mom patted her back.  “Of course we do, sweetheart.  Why don’t you tell us what you need?  Let us help you.”

“Can’t you both just leave me alone?  I’m not a baby anymore.”

“Don’t talk to your mother like that, kid.  You’re not to big I can’t put you over my knee.”

“I’d like to see you try,” Lois grumbled.  That was the wrong thing to say.  Despite the number of fights she’d been in, she didn’t see the slap coming until her cheek was stinging.  The tears in her eyes stung just as much.

“Listen you little brat—”

“Leave her alone, Betty,” Mom said.  “She’s still my child.”

“You wouldn’t know it from listening to her.  The apple fell pretty damned far from the tree in her case.”

The waitress came back with the chocolate shake.  Somewhere she’d found a curly straw to put in it.  “Here you go, darling,” she said. 

Lois
stared at the curly straw with revulsion.  She wanted to pick the damned shake up and throw it against the wall.  She was tired of being treated like a child.  Tired of everyone thinking they knew what was best for her.  Tired of everyone expecting her to be Dr. Jessica Locke and not Lois Locke.  And most of all, she was tired of Mom’s blind, unfailing love and forgiveness.

Watching Lois the waitress sashaying away,
Lois started to imagine what it would be like to work here.  She could be anonymous here, no one expecting anything from her except to bring their food and the check.  She could have her own life, away from Mom, Aunt Betty, and even Dr. Johnson.  She could find herself as Mom claimed she needed to do.

She took an obligatory sip from the milkshake and then cleared her throat.  “Can I get out?  I need to use the bathroom.”

“Of course, sweetheart,” Mom said.  Those were the last words Mom spoke to her.  Lois hurried into the bathroom, where she was gratified to see the diner wasn’t so paranoid to lock or bar their window.  It was small enough that no full-grown adult could get out of it without being double-jointed, but Lois was small enough that she could fit.

She paused at the bathroom wall, thinking of her mother and Aunt
Betty.  Then she reached into her pocket for her keys.  She left these on the sink and then crawled out the window—to freedom.

* * *

She awoke to someone calling her name.  At first she thought it was Lois the waitress from that diner seven years ago.  But when she opened her eyes, she saw an older Latino woman wearing purple scrubs.  The woman smiled at her.  “Hello, sweetheart.  Can you tell me your name?”

Lois
could, except that her mouth felt like someone had crammed an old gym sock into it.  The nurse seemed to understand and brought some water for her to drink.  When some of the dryness abated, Lois croaked her name.

“That’s a pretty name.  Do you know where you are?”

“No.”  From the woman’s scrubs and in looking around at the beige room with its white curtain, she thought of the hospital back in Texas.  “Hospital?”

“Very good,
Lois.  You’re in the hospital.  Do you know how you got here?”

That was a more interesting question. 
Lois remembered being at the museum and going downstairs to find some people breaking in.  They’d shot a guard.  She had wanted to go upstairs and call for help, but some of the thieves had caught her.  The last thing she remembered, a foul-smelling man dressed like an old detective had killed the thieves and then taken her to the gift shop.  He must have knocked her out.  What else had he done to her?