The Night's Legacy (15 page)

“The way to what?”

“Your destiny.”

He pointed with a trembling finger towards the elevator doors.  They opened, white light blazing into the elevator, blinding her.  She put her hands to her face and cried out for her mother—

* * *

She woke up to an ache in her head.  Rubbing the crown of her head, she realized she’d banged it into the wall of the closet during the dream.  “Goddamn it,” she grumbled.  Checking her watch, she saw it was only two in the morning.  Yet she didn’t dare close her eyes again, not after that dream.

What the hell kind of dream had that been?  Even now that she was awake she could remember it in vivid detail.  She found her cigarette lighter and flicked it on just to make sure that she wasn’t six years old again.  The lighter should have been evidence enough—Mom hadn’t even let her use the stove until she was nine—but she didn’t want to take chances.

She capped the lighter and then leaned against the wall.  She’d never experienced anything that powerful.  It was more like one of those visions religious people talked about.  A vision to do what?  She thought about it again, about how everything had been the same until Dr. Johnson took her hand to lead her through the museum.

He wanted her to go to the subbasement.  There was something important there, something she needed to find.  What did he mean that she would find her destiny there?  Had Mom hidden something down there, something about Lois’s past?  Maybe there was something of her father’s down there, some evidence about his identity.

Then she remembered what Mom had said in the hospital.  She had said to beware Dr. Johnson or
Betty or someone else she knew talking to her in a dream.  Almost as if Mom had known this was going to happen.  Or maybe Lois had manufactured the dream based on Mom’s suggestion. 

Lois
got to her feet and then picked up her pack.  She opened the closet door and found no one waiting outside for her.  The apartment building was just as empty as it had been a few hours ago when she had broken in.  She found the window in the basement to slither through.

Back on the street she hugged herself as she walked and considered what to do.  She could probably find a diner somewhere and get a cup of coffee.  That might help to wake her up.  Or she could find another motel, lie on a real bed for a few hours.  Or since it was Ren City she could wander around all night, until the hospital opened in the morning.  Mom might have some light to shed on what was in the subbasement.

She shook her head.  No, if there were something down there, Mom wouldn’t tell her what it was.  Mom knew where every nail in the walls were located; she would have to know what was down there.  That didn’t mean she would tell Lois what it was, especially if it concerned Lois’s father.

So there was only one place to go.  Getting a cab was just about impossible at two in the morning unless you were in front of a club and sometimes not even then.  Buses didn’t run at this time anymore, leaving her with no alternative but to walk. 

As she walked, she thought of those early morning jaunts in Durndell.  No brilliant sunrises awaited her here.  The sky would turn orange, but she wouldn’t get more than a fleeting glimpse of the sun from this level.  By then the streets would be packed with honking cars and the sidewalks jammed with bustling people.  The air would have its usual suffocating stench, the smell making her want to gag.

Maybe she should follow Mom’s advice and go back to Texas.  Or go somewhere else entirely.  She had seen a good portion of the country during the last seven years, but there were still areas she hadn’t visited.  She could head for the Pacific Northwest, to Seattle or maybe Vancouver.  She could find a new job and a motel to live.

She shook her head.  She couldn’t leave now.  Every day she would think of Mom lying in her hospital bed with nothing to do but stare at the wall.  She would imagine Dr. Johnson and Betty’s graves lying untended, unloved.  No, this time was different.  She needed to be here.

It took an hour for her to reach the museum.  The problem then became getting inside.  It would be a lot more difficult than breaking into an abandoned apartment building.  Two police cruisers sat by the curb in front of the building.  There were probably more cops inside to protect the crime scene from tampering.

She did have the advantage of knowing as much about the museum as Mom and Dr. Johnson.  She set out around the block, to the rear of the museum.  There would probably be fewer cops back there, away from the main entrance.  She doubted anyone would be watching the hidden entrance to the basement. 

On the southwest side of the museum was a brick shanty with a wooden door padlocked shut.  The shanty dated back to the museum’s opening in 1866; back then it had been used for storing coal that had been shoveled down a chute into the furnaces.  The museum had switched to natural gas sixty years later, but the coal shanty and the chute remained as historical artifacts.

The padlock on the door probably dated from that era.  She picked it with a hairpin in about a minute.  The toughest part was making sure the chain didn’t make any noise as it slipped off, onto the ground.  Then she opened the door slowly so it wouldn’t creak.

The inside of the shanty was empty, except for the hole in the floor for the chute.  Mom probably would have torn the building down or blocked off the chute if she had thought
Lois could fit in it.  It was a tight squeeze, much tighter than the apartment building window, not to mention much dirtier.  She would probably be black from head to toe by the time she reached the basement.

“Here goes nothing,” she whispered as she dropped herself feet-first into the chute.

The chute was like the longest, darkest slide she had ever been on.  There was nothing to see, it being far too dark in the shaft.  She didn’t have any idea how close she was to the museum.  Nor did she want to contemplate if she got stuck in here.  Instead she pressed her eyes shut and prayed to any deity listening to protect her.

She knew she had reached the basement when she felt her feet slam into something, followed by the sound of metal hitting concrete.  She hit the concrete about five seconds later, landing on her right shoulder.  She lay on the cold floor for a few minutes, her shoulder aching.  She had made it!

She used her left hand to push herself onto her feet.  There wasn’t much to see in the old furnace room except for the newer furnaces and some miscellaneous tools.  Among these tools she found a crowbar, which she decided would come in handy if she came to any more locked doors.

The door came open easily enough.  She poked her head out and then looked around.  She didn’t see any cops in the hall, nor did she hear any alarms sounding.  At least Mom hadn’t been so paranoid as to put motion detectors on the old chute grate.

The furnace room was in the museum’s basement.  Other than that there were a few storage rooms for records and items not being used at the moment.  These doors were protected by digital locks, the combinations known only by Mom and the department heads.  She didn’t want to get into any of these rooms anyway; she wanted to find the elevator.

It was at the end of the hallway and required a key card for its use.  She rummaged through her pack until she found her staff badge.  She hoped a lowly gift shop worker had access to the staff elevator down here.  She swiped the card through the reader and held her breath for a moment, until the light on the reader turned green. 

The risk was that a cop might see the elevator going down and check it out.  One of the cops might even be on the elevator when it opened.  She clutched the crowbar like a baseball bat, readying herself for any trouble.  The elevator dinged and then opened—

There was no one inside.  With a sigh of relief she stepped inside.  She didn’t remember ever seeing a button for the subbasement before, but there it was, right beneath the one for the basement.  She stabbed the button and then grabbed hold of the bar running along the back of the elevator to steady herself.

It didn’t drop like her dream.  Instead it coasted down the same as it always did.  It lurched to a stop and then dinged again.  She released her grip on the bar as she waited for the door to open.

No white light flooded the car this time.  The only light came from a red exit sign in the subbasement.  She searched for her lighter in her pocket, wondering if that would set off the fire alarm.  With a deep breath, she stepped off the elevator—

Fluorescent lights flickered on around her.  They weren’t nearly as powerful as the white light of her dream, but they were enough so that she could see what was in the room.  The answer:  not much.  As with the basement there was a hallway with more rooms off of it, each locked by a keypad.

She shook her head.  Why would Dr. Johnson want her to go down here?  Even if there were anything down here, she didn’t know the combination to any of the locks.  Short of using her crowbar to try prying a door open, she was stuck.

Then she noticed a glow coming from the end of the hallway.  It was too bright to be the fluorescent lights overhead.  This was far more like the light in her dream.  She broke into a run, wondering what she would find.

The last thing she expected to find was a door marked, “Janitor’s Closet.”  Beneath the door she saw the white glow that had led her down here, seeming to beckon to her.  She tried the door handle, but it didn’t open.  Like the others it needed a code.

Lois closed her eyes and thought about the situation.  If there were something back there Mom didn’t want her to find, that meant Mom had programmed the lock.  What code would she use?  Lois typed in her mother’s birthday without any luck.  She tried her own birthday without any success.  What other numbers were important to Mom?  An anniversary?  There was no way to know any anniversary concerning her father.  There was another anniversary she could try.

She typed in the numbers 051969, the date
Mom’s parents died.  The lock beeped and the light on the keypad flashed green.  She turned the handle and then pulled open the door.

Inside she didn’t see any janitor’s supplies.  Instead she saw a desk with a computer on top and a black box.  The box came to life, a woman’s voice indicating there was a robbery in progress at 5
th
and Harper Avenue.  A police scanner.  Why would anyone have a police scanner down here?

Then she saw a silver trunk in the corner of the room.  Engraved on the trunk’s lid was a swan poised in mid-flight.  A silver trunk, a swan, and a police scanner all pointed to one thing:  this was the lair of the Silver Seraph!

“Welcome to the Citadel,” a voice said behind her.  She spun around, the crowbar poised to strike, but quickly she realized it wouldn’t do any good.  Behind her was a ghost!

Chapter 13

The ghost was a translucent blue and shaped like a man.  A man wearing the bulky plate armor of a knight, or at least the top half of a knight.  Like the old Casper cartoons he didn’t have any legs, just a blur of blue light beneath his waist.  His face was clear enough that she could make out a beard and two eyes that Glared as well as Mom.

“I’m surprised you didn’t faint,” the ghost said.

“I must have hit my head in that chute,” Lois mumbled.

“I am quite real, I assure
you,” the ghost said, his voice tinged with an English accent.

Between the accent and the armor, she could guess who the ghost was supposed to be.  “So are you the ghost of King Arthur?”

“Close.  My name is Percival.  You can call me Percy.”

“Yeah, sure.  I’m
Lois Locke.”

“I’m well aware of that.  I’ve known who you are since you were in diapers.”

“So you’ve been living in the museum?”

“More or less.”

“And you work for the Silver Seraph?”

“Bingo.  You could say I’m her consultant.”

“Yeah, right.”  Lois wanted to make a run for it, but she didn’t want to see what would happen if she went through the ghost.  If he were really a ghost.  Maybe he was some kind of hologram generated to distract intruders.  “So where’s she at?”

“I’m looking at her.”

Lois turned around, but she didn’t see anyone.  She tapped her chest with one finger.  “Me?  You think I’m the Silver Seraph?”

“You followed the vision, didn’t you?”

She nodded, thinking of her strange dream.  In the dream Dr. Johnson had said her destiny awaited her down in the subbasement of the museum.  “No.  You’ve got to be joking.  I’m not any kind of hero!”

“I won’t argue with you there,” Percy said.  “I’ve always thought you were a spoiled brat myself.  Your mom needed to give you a few good thrashings.”

“Hey—” she stopped as something caught her eye.  Next to the computer on the desk she saw an eight-by-ten photo.  The picture had been taken fifteen years earlier, a couple weeks before Thanksgiving.  Betty stood to one side of the picture.  Mom sat next to her, both of them wearing tacky holiday sweaters.  Lois sat on Mom’s lap, wearing a green velvet dress with a bow in her hair.  She had thrown the bow away that afternoon and exiled the dress to the darkest corner of her closet until Mom finally gave it away.

As she picked up the photograph, the pieces began falling into place.  Mom’s warning about her not listening to voices.  The vision leading her down to the subbasement.  The lock opened with the date of her grandparents’s death.  And then there was how old Mom had looked, how tired she had been, plus the poorly-explained bruises. 

It was so obvious she wondered why she had never seen it before:  Mom had been the Silver Seraph.

* * *

“Jesus Christ,” Lois said as she collapsed onto the chair.  She set the photograph aside so that she could bury her face in her hands.  Lois had always known her Mom was unnaturally kind and ethical, but a goddamned superhero?  Mom, the woman who objected to use mousetraps because she didn’t want to hurt an innocent animal was the one out there beating the shit out of criminals every night?

“No,” she said.  “That can’t be.  It’s not possible.”

“It is possible.  You’ve been chosen as the Silver Seraph.”

“Because Mom is paralyzed?”

“Yes.  When she was crippled, it became necessary to find a replacement.  I suppose it’s not too surprising that it would choose her daughter.”

Lois
shook her head.  “Your armor doesn’t know me very well then.  I’m not like Mom.  I don’t help little old ladies cross the street.  I swear and drink and screw.”

“I’m aware of all that.  The armor probably is as well.”

“You are?  Have you been spying on me?”

“On a few occasions your mother asked me to look after you, when you were still in the city.”

“Christ,” Lois said again.  She reburied her head, wishing that she would wake up in the closet of the abandoned apartment building again.  Through her fingers she asked, “How long?”

“It’s been about thirty years.  She was a little younger than you when she took up the mantle.”

“Thirty
years
?  You mean she was doing this before she had me?”

“Brilliant deduction, Sherlock.  Now I know why you skipped all those grades.”

She looked up at him and tried to glare at him.  The ghost showed no reaction.  Why should he?  He was already dead; nothing she could do could hurt him unless she found a priest to perform an exorcism or something.  “This is unbelievable.  You’re saying Mom’s been fighting crime at night for thirty years?”

“Yes.  She set a new record.  The old one was nineteen years back in the early 17
th
Century.”

“Don’t try to change the subject.”

“I’m not.  Your mother is part of the lore of the Silver Seraph Society.  As are you, now.”

“Not me.  I don’t want any part of you or your society.  Maybe you conned Mom into doing it, but not me.  I’m not going to end up like her.”

“Your mother ended up the way she did because she wanted to protect a certain headstrong little thing from harm.”

“You’re saying it’s my fault?”

“No, it’s that Set bloke’s fault, but she was there because of you.”

“Set?  Who’s that?”

“Not sure.  He goes around in a dog mask and carries a gold stick.  Shoots lightning from it.  Don’t ask me how.”

Lois
shook her head again.  A dog mask.  The Egyptian god Set was often depicted as having the head of a dog.  “An Egyptian god did that to Mom?”

“Probably not a real god.  Not many of those running around anymore.”

“Yeah, sure.  So he’s an imposter god.  With a stick that shoots lightning.  Then why did he put three bullets into her?”

“That was his friend Mr. Nasty.  You might remember those gentlemen in the ski masks carrying the heavy artillery?”

Mr. Nasty, aka Jarko Rahnasto.  She had read about him a few times in the papers.  He was believed to run the Mafia in Ren City, though no one had made anything stick yet.  It figured, though, that if he were a mobster he would want the Seraph dead.

Now she knew who had crippled her mother.  She looked over at the silver trunk, staring at the swan carved on its lid.  By herself she didn’t have much of a chance against a mob kingpin and someone with a stick that shot lightning.  With some magic armor, though, she might be able to make them pay for what they’d done to Mom.

She turned to Percy.  “If I put that armor on I’ll be the Silver Seraph?  With all the superpowers and whatnot?”

“That is the arrangement.”

She stood up and nodded.  “Let’s do it.”

* * *

The Kunzel Building had once been prime real estate in Ren City.  Its ballroom had accommodated numerous weddings, dances, and even a presidential inauguration.  Then came the skyscrapers and the old building lost its luster.  A few entrepreneurs had tried to salvage it as a hotel or condos or a nightclub, but none of these ventures ever panned out.

Standing on a second-floor balcony, Rahnasto looked down at the dance floor.  The eagle in the center of the floor was missing one of its black marble wings and most of a foot; no one would be holding any dances here for a long time.  He reached into his jacket for the roll of Tums and popped a couple in his mouth. 

Below, hundreds of his soldiers milled around, most of them smoking and swapping jokes, their voices echoing off the white marble columns.  None of them knew why they had been summoned, nor did Rahnasto, not really.  That maniac Set wanted them here to make some kind of grand announcement.  Rahnasto didn’t want to imagine what it would entail.

He turned to Andropov and asked, “Any sign of him yet?”

“No, sir.  No one’s seen anything but our people.”

Rahnasto shook his head.  He hoped this wasn’t an elaborate ruse, a practical joke.  Or maybe Set would call the police and have them all rounded up.  No, that wasn’t his style.  He would be far more likely to use that staff of his to cave the roof in on them.  Why else hold the meeting in this dilapidated building?

At the stroke of three, a bolt of lightning rained down from above to strike the center of the eagle on the dance floor.  The black marble exploded, most of the eagle winding up in tiny pieces against the wall.  Set’s voice boomed, “We will bring another, much larger eagle to its demise.  Tomorrow night we will begin a campaign unlike any other.  We will bring this city and then this entire feeble nation to its knees!”

Rahnasto searched the balconies for Set.  He finally saw him on the fifth floor.  Some of the soldiers below must have seen him as well.  They aimed their guns at the fifth floor, not that it would do any good.  Even if they had the range, bullets couldn’t hurt this monster.

The monster jumped from the balcony.  He plunged through the air, ignoring the shots fired by some of the more jittery soldiers below.  Set came down in the center of the eagle that he had blasted moments earlier, landing as easily as a feather.

His red eyes glowed as he surveyed his audience.  “For too long we have been enslaved by a government that cares little for its people, a government that uses its citizens as pawns in its power games.  That time will soon be at an end.  We will bring this country low, starting here, in Ren City.  And you will help me.”

“Why should we?” one soldier asked, the same question Rahnasto was thinking but wasn’t dumb enough to ask.

“Because you have two choices:  join me or die.”  The eyes on the staff flashed red.  A bolt of lightning struck the soldier dead just as it had Dominguez and nearly the Silver Seraph.  Set swept the staff around, glaring at his audience.  “You of course require financial incentive.  Let me say that my new government will be very sensitive to your needs.  You will finally have free rein to do as you wish, without any worry about interference.”

No one dared to ask how this would be accomplished.  Set must have known it was on all their minds, though.  “The lifeblood of this nation is its money.  That is where we will strike first.  Tomorrow we will raze every major bank in this city.  We will loot and plunder in a way never seen before.

“When we have finished, we will begin hitting other targets.  Renaissance City will be brought to its knees, drowned in a sea of chaos.  From here we will spread, until we have enveloped this country from one ocean to the other.”

There were no cheers, not even polite applause.  No one dared to say anything.  Rahnasto imagined most of them were thinking about how quickly they could get on a plane, train, or bus out of Ren City, away from this lunatic.  Rahnasto shook his head; these men weren’t an army, they were criminals.  They, like him, cared for only one cause:  money.  Risking open war with the Federal government was not a lucrative idea.

“There are no doubt many cowards among you.  Those who try to desert me will wind up like this one.”  Set kicked the dead soldier.  “Do not attempt to betray me either.  You will assemble here tomorrow.  I will provide Mr. Rahnasto with a list of our targets and the weapons necessary.  That is all.  Go and rest for tomorrow the war begins!”

Rahnasto leaned against a pillar, watching as the bewildered soldiers filed out.  No one said anything, probably still afraid of getting a lightning bolt through the chest.  He and Andropov waited for Set to appear on the balcony.  As promised, he had a list of fifty major banks in the city.  At the top of the list was the Federal Reserve bank.

“The Fed?  That place is a fortress.”

“Leave it to me,” Set hissed.

Then he was gone.  Rahnasto sighed and turned to Andropov.  “Get started on his list.  Have everything ready by tomorrow night, understand?”

“Yes, Mr. Rahnasto.”

“Good.”  Rahnasto staggered out to his waiting car.  At a moment like this he wished the Private Eye were inside; he’d let the do-gooder shoot him this time.