The Night's Legacy (30 page)

When she was five, Dr. Johnson had taken her, Mom, and Aunt Betty out on his yacht.  Lois had drawn her mother’s ire by wriggling out of her life jacket to make it easier for her to lean over the railing and look down at the water.  Mom pulled her back from the edge and then Glared down at her.  “That’s very unsafe,” Mom said.  “If you fell, you could have drowned.”

“I just wanted to see what was down there,”
Lois said.  “I wanted to see all the fishies like sharks and dolphins.”

“Dolphins aren’t fish, sweetheart.  They’re mammals like us.”

“Oh, right.  But they’re still pretty like fish.”

“Yes, they are pretty.”  Mom summoned the Glare again.  “That’s no excuse, though.  As long as you’re on this boat you have to wear a life jacket.”

“Even when I go potty?”

Mom’s face turned red.  Those were the kind of questions that flustered Mom, who
could write a treatise on the formation of meteors in seventeen languages, but who couldn’t hear mention of bodily functions without blushing.  Aunt Betty roared with laughter and said, “She’s got you there, Jess.”  Then Aunt Betty leaned down and said, “Look, kid, there’s nothing pretty down there, just a lot of old garbage.”

Waking up at the bottom of the harbor,
Lois saw that Aunt Betty had been right.  She didn’t see any sharks, dolphins, or even small fish.  It was a veritable graveyard in the harbor, with human remains just about everywhere she looked.  To her right she saw a Datsun, a body still trapped inside.  To the left she saw a skeleton clad in a suit, its feet still weighted down by a chunk of cement.  This was the mob’s dumping ground, the kind Sam Rivers had wanted to avoid and that he had wanted Mom and Lois to avoid.

But now she was here and she would be staying for a good long while if she didn’t move it.  The armor was magical, but it didn’t come with a supply of oxygen.  At least it was light enough that she could swim about normally.

Her lungs were burning by the time her head broke the surface of the water.  She flipped open the visor so that she could take in some air.  Never had she been so glad for the stale, rank air of Ren City.  She sucked in a dozen breaths before turning her attention back to the docks.  She expected to find a hundred machine guns pointed at her or Set’s staff aimed at her.

Instead there was silence.  The trucks were gone and the mob with them.  She had little doubt Set would be with them.  He would continue with his plan, figuring that she was out of the fight.  She was going to show him.

With this in mind, she swam towards the docks.

* * *

As at the Federal Reserve bank, she found the front gates of the oil tank farm smashed open and guards lying dead nearby.  The latter gave her a sour taste in her mouth.  They had died because she hadn’t stopped Set.  If she had just stabbed Tony in the heart when she had the chance, those guards would still be alive.  Instead they were dead, their children losing a father or mother.  Now she began to understand why Mom had aged so badly; there was so much responsibility involved with being the Silver Seraph.  She promised that those would be the last innocent people Set ever killed.  This was all going to end now.

Set had stationed his own guards by the gate.  These opened up with their machine guns, still not seeming to understand it wouldn’t do any good.  She punched one in the midsection, took him by the arm, and then hurled him like a shot put into another goon.  Two more fired at her from a catwalk over the remains of the gate.  She didn’t bother jumping up there to get them.  Instead, she used
Caledfwlch to bring the catwalk crashing down.  A couple of punches and they were both out of the fight.

She ran to the nearest oil storage tank and found explosives already planted on the side of the tank.  She stared at these for a moment, wishing Sam were here to tell her how to disarm them.  Studying the bombs closer, though, she realized there wouldn’t be any point.  There were no wires for her to cut, just a radio receiver.  The receiver would be booby trapped to go off if she tried removing it.  Set wasn’t going to take any chances of her disarming these bombs.  She would have to get the trigger from him.

She ran into three more mob goons.  They didn’t fire at her, probably not wanting to set off the explosives too early.  They did carry pipes they hoped to use as clubs.  Those didn’t have any chance of hurting her, but that wasn’t the point.  The point was to delay her so that Set could finish planting the bombs and trigger them.  “You guys can’t be serious,” she said.

It didn’t take her long to strip them of their clubs and leave them lying on the ground.  She shook her head and then moved on.  More of them stood in her way.  One carried a chain he tried to wrap around her legs.  She grabbed the chain and then yanked it out of the thug’s hands.  “This is just getting sad.  I expected a lot better from you guys.”  She dropped the chain and then kicked its former owner in the left knee.  He collapsed screaming to the ground.  His comrades decided discretion was the better part of valor and took off.

She didn’t bother with trying to fight the rest.  She just pushed them out of her way.  They didn’t try to press the issue.  Some went down on the ground as she approached, going into a turtle position.  At this point she imagined Slowey could have put up a better fight.

Jogging around the complex, she kept looking for Set.  He wouldn’t be out here with his minions.  He wasn’t so stupid as to give away his biggest advantage.  He would be somewhere sheltered, where he could still use that magic stick of his.

She saw the ideal place, a control room suspended at the other end of the complex.  He could hide himself up there and keep an eye on things.  The tank farm was bound to have cameras watching everything so that he could oversee the operation and watch her progress to prepare a proper reception for her.  She wasn’t about to disappoint him.

She used the suction cups on the armor to climb up a tank and then
leaped onto pipes feeding into the tank.  These were wide enough that she could run along them without any trouble.  She had just stepped on one length of pipe when it gave way beneath her.  She managed to catch the end of the pipe and dangled in the air.  Using the armor’s strength, she pushed herself back up and took off again.

This time she was more careful, going slower to see the sabotaged pipes before she reached them.  Given more time Set probably would have come up with some better booby traps, but this did at least slow her down.  She wished she knew how much time she had left before he triggered the explosives.  It could be at any moment if he wanted to blow up a tank or two and hope for a chain reaction.  Set was too thorough for that; he wouldn’t unless he though
t there was no other way.

She found Set waiting for her in the doorway, the staff at the ready.  Up here he didn’t have to worry nearly as much about triggering an explosion before it was time.  She flattened herself against the pipe as he fired a lightning bolt.  Before he could fire another, she dropped between the pipes, grabbing onto a support.  She used it like she had the lampposts and flagpoles in the city, spinning around a few times before flipping herself towards Set.  He took a step back so that she landed in front of him.

He already had the staff ready to fire.  A lightning bolt blasted through the armor, searing into her left shoulder.  She screamed in pain and dropped onto her back.  Set’s glowing red eyes looked down at her.  “All of your heroics have accomplished nothing.  Now they’re at an end.”

As he was about to fire, she rolled, bad shoulder and all.  While she did, she reached to her belt for
Caledfwlch.  She bounced to her feet, swinging the sword wildly as she did so.  The blade caught the end of Set’s staff, decapitating it.  The dog’s head landed at her feet, its eyes going black.

“Looks like your magic wand is broken,” she said.  He tried bringing the remainder of the staff around to hit her, but she blocked it with
Caledfwlch.  She swept her right leg around to trip him.  She didn’t get all of his leg, just enough to make him stumble.  Biting down on her lip from the pain, she swung her left arm, catching him on the side of the end.  As he reeled back, she kicked him in the midsection, throwing him back against a wall.

With her injured arm she tore the broken staff away from him, tossing it over her shoulder.  Then she ripped the headdress off, revealing Tony’s face.  Despite that the headdress was gone, his eyes still glowed red back at her.  “You haven’t won,” he said.

“I beg to differ.  Now where’s the trigger?  Give it to me or else you’re going sky high along with this place.”

With a shaking hand he reached into a pocket, pulling out a remote control with a red button on it.  “Here it is,” he said.  Then he grinned, which chilled her far more than even the glowing eyes.  “But before I give it to you, you might want to look at monitor fourteen.”

“I’m not going to fall for that.”

“That’s too bad,
Lois.  I thought she was your friend.”

“Who?”

Tony smiled wider.  Lois turned to face a bank of monitors.  On the one marked ‘14’ she saw a young woman handcuffed to a post in front of an oil tank.  She wore a bulging black vest, a timer on it ticking down from three minutes.

The young woman was
Melanie.

* * *

Lois pressed Caledfwlch to Tony’s throat.  “Let her go.  Now.”

“There’s no point trying to save her.  She’s going to die one way or another.  Either when the C4 I wrapped her in goes off or when I blow the tanks.”  He paused, letting this sink in.  With that evil grin still affixed, he added, “That is unless you surrender that armor of yours.  Then I might decide to be merciful and let
Melanie go.”

“No you won’t.  As soon as I give you the armor you’ll kill both of us.”

He shook his head.  “I don’t want to kill Melanie any more than you do, but I will if you don’t leave me any choice.”

“How about I just cut your head off and then free
Melanie?”

“Good luck.  Not even the Silver Seraph can get to her in time.”

“You son of a bitch!  I loved you!”  The latter sentence came as a surprise to her until the words were out.  She remembered her picnic with her father and him saying she had a glow that Mom had when she was with Sam.  The glow that meant she was in love.

She took off the helmet, seeing no point in the pretense now.  “I still love you, Tony.  Stop this, please.  I know losing your brother hurt—”

“Don’t you talk about him!  You don’t know anything!”

“I don’t?  You killed Dr. Johnson and my father.  You crippled my mother.  How much do you think that hurt?”

“Then go ahead and chop my head off.  Let Melanie die.”

“No.  I’m not like you.”  She said the magic words and the armor vanished.  “Now turn off the bomb.  Let
Melanie go.  She’s innocent.”

“No one’s innocent.  You should know that.”

His finger reached for the red button on the remote.  She brought her right foot around in a spin kick.  For once her big feet came in handy, the front of her shoe connecting with his hand.  The remote flew from his grasp, clattering on the floor.  They lunged for it at the same time.  She landed on top of him, wrapping her right arm around his throat to pull him back.  She wound up on her back with him still thrashing in her grasp.

“Give it up, Tony!  This isn’t going to accomplish anything.  You can’t bring Vincent back to life any more than I can bring back Richard or my dad.  You remember what I said at Richard’s funeral?”

He grunted in response, still trying to throw her off so that he could reach the remote.  She said, “You have to live
for
your brother.  He loved this country, didn’t he?”

“How would you know?  You don’t know anything about him!”

“He carried on your family’s tradition.  He wanted to serve this country, didn’t he?”

“And it killed him.”

“But he loved America.  He wouldn’t want you to destroy it.  He would want you to help make it better.  It’s not too late.  You can still find a way to make a difference.”

“From a prison cell?  From the loony bin?”

“Why not?  You’re a smart guy and inside I know you’re still a good person.  You just need some help.  Let me help you.”

“Then let me go!”

“I can’t do that.  This is my job now.”  She spun around, slamming Tony’s head into a console.  While he went down with a groan, she dove for the remote.  On the side was another button.  She clicked this and then rolled over to look at the fourteenth monitor.  The counter on Melanie’s vest was frozen at fifteen seconds. 

She got to her feet and then went over to Tony.  “It’s over now,” she told him.  “I’m going to take you to the cops so you can confess to killing Dr. Johnson and Stan Stevens plus robbing the museum.”

He rolled over to look up at her.  His eyes were back to their natural brown, the eyes she had first seen in the Brass Drum, the ones she’d fallen in love with.  Those eyes turned moist with tears.  “I’m sorry, Lois.  I loved you too.  That’s why I couldn’t kill you, not even after I knew what you were.  Don’t turn me in.  Just kill me now.  Get it over with.”

She shook her head, thinking of what Mom had told her about Dr. Wolfe and the Black Demon.  “That’s not my choice to make.”  She picked up the broken Staff of Set and hit him over the head with it.  He collapsed forward into a heap.  She held her breath for a moment, until she saw that he was still breathing.