The Night's Legacy (16 page)

Chapter 14

The silver trunk didn’t have any handles or even a lock to keep it sealed. 
Lois turned to Percy and said, “Am I supposed to say ‘Open Sesame’ or something?”

“Just get close enough and it’ll open for you.”

“How convenient.”  She knelt down in front of the trunk.  The swan on the lid came to life, its eyes turning blue as it stared at her.  The swan let out a loud trumpeting sound and then went back to being inanimate.  Lois continued to stare at it until the lid opened.

Every kid growing up in Ren City knew about the Silver Seraph.  There weren’t any good pictures of her, so that descriptions of her varied wildly on the playgrounds.  Everyone agreed that her armor was silver and that she was a she. 
Lois had never put much stock into those stories, finding the idea of superheroes to be juvenile.

She couldn’t deny those stories as she held the Seraph’s helmet in her hand.  The wings on either side of the helmet were similar to those of the swan on the lid.  She opened the visor and tried to imagine Mom’s face behind it.  No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t believe it.  Mom wasn’t a superhero; it wasn’t possible for a woman who never raised her voice to beat the crap out of people as a hobby.

If she needed any further proof, she found it in the white boots that came with the armor.  The size-12 boots could only belong to Mom with her huge clown feet.  Feet that would never move again, at least not on their own.

This thought snapped
Lois back to reality.  This Set person had crippled Mom and Lois was going to find him and teach him a lesson.  She finished laying out the armor, noting how big it was, sized for Mom’s body.  She held the breastplate up against her chest and found that it went all the way down to her thighs.  “Maybe your armor should have picked someone taller.”

“It’ll adjust to fit.  It is
magic
armor after all,” Percy said.

She muttered something under her breath and then decided to start with the boots.  Her feet were about the same size as Mom’s, but as she watched, the boots started to glow white as they shrank an inch or two for her.  Next she picked up the leg pieces and began assembling them.  As she strapped each one on, it would glow white for a moment and then shrink to fit.  As she flexed her leg, she noted the armor didn’t feel any heavier than a pair of jeans.  Magic armor indeed.

She saved the breastplate for almost last.  This time when she held it up and began buckling it, it glowed white and started to shrink.  At the same time, it expanded outward to accommodate her breasts, which since she was fourteen had been bigger than her mother’s, something she’d taken pride in back then.  Except Mom didn’t have any breasts now, not after what Set had done to her.

With this sobering thought in mind she picked up the helmet.  She tried pushing her hair up to fit inside, but a few tendrils snuck through.  She would have to get a haircut at some point to make it more manageable.

She turned to face Percy, flipping up the helmet’s visor.  “How do I look?”

“I think you’ve set a new record as the shortest to ever wear the armor.  The previous holder back in 1790 was five-feet six inches.  You have him beat by at least seven inches I’d say.”

“I’m not
that
short.”  She usually listed her height as five-two on her driver’s licenses, although she was probably an inch or two shorter.  “Maybe the boots can give me a little extra lift.”  She waited but nothing happened; apparently the armor only resized to fit, not to improve her self-esteem. 

“Well, I suppose it’ll make you more agile,” Percy said.  “Or something like that.”

“Gee, you’re such a great teacher.  Where they’d find you at anyway?”

“I was the first Seraph.  It’s a long story, but suffice it to say that after Arthur died, someone had to carry on.  Merlin made this armor and I was chosen to wear it much the same way you were.”

“With a trippy dream?”

“Yes.  It led me to Merlin’s cave and he instructed me in how to use the armor to continue fighting against darkness.  After I died, Merlin asked me to stay on as a spirit to teach the others.  Since it was either stay as a ghost or take my chances with the Great Beyond, I decided to stay.”

“You took the coward’s way out,” Lois said.  “Now you’re here, haunting a natural history museum.”

“I don’t
haunt
the museum.  I’m not rattling chains or any of that nonsense.”

“So what did you do for Mom?”

“First I helped to train her about the armor, which is what we will be doing tonight.”

“What about Set?”

“You can’t fight him until you know how the armor works.”  The ghost crossed his arms and gave her a hard stare.  “He nearly killed your mother and she was perhaps the best in our history.”

Lois
snorted.  That figured.  If Mom were going to be a superhero she would have to be the best at it, just as she had been the best at everything else in her life.  There seemed to be no way for Lois to escape her shadow.  She sighed and said, “Fine, what do you want to do?”

“First you’ll need the cape so you can get out of here.”

“Hey, I don’t mind this silly armor, but I draw the line at a cape.”

“The cape isn’t just for decoration.  It allows you to become invisible and it can serve as a parachute for long jumps.”

“Oh.”  Lois reached into the trunk, bringing out a stack of shimmering white material.  She shook it out, hoping that it too would shrink to accommodate her.  She tied it to hooks on the shoulders of the armor and then took hold of the cape to flourish it around a few times.  “So how do I turn invisible?”

“You have to wrap the cape around your body.”

“Fine.”  She tried whipping the cape around like she’d seen Dracula do in the movies.  Instead of turning invisible, she wound up on her rear end.  Percy rolled his eyes at her while she felt her face turning warm.  Some superhero, she thought.  “Don’t say anything.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.  Though perhaps you should practice it a bit more.”

She nodded and got back to her feet.  This time she didn’t try using such a violent motion, letting centrifugal force do most of the work for her.  The cape went smoothly around her body.  She could still see herself, though.  “Did it work?”

“There’s only one way to find out.  But first, you should probably grab your weapon.”

“My weapon?”

“
Caledfwlch.  The blade of the great king himself, forged by—”

“Yeah, I know the story.  Arthur pulled it out of the stone and all that.  How’d you end up with it?”

“There wouldn’t be much point in having magic armor without some kind of magic weapon to go with it, would there?  Why should Merlin fashion a second blade when he already had a perfectly good one?”

“So you’re saying he was too lazy to make another sword?”

The ghost shook his head.  “I don’t know how your mother ever put up with you.”

“I don’t know either,”
Lois said.  She reached into the trunk and found a black scabbard with silver stripes.  The hilt of the sword was also silver, the neck of a swan wrapping around it.  She gripped the hilt and then gave the sword a firm tug.  The blade sprang out, glowing white.  Looking more closely at it, she saw the blade wasn’t metal; it was made of crystal, as if Merlin had carved it out of a diamond.  “I bet this would fetch a few grand at a pawn shop.  Is it really a diamond?”

“Of course not.  It’s a magic crystal, the kind not in existence anymore.  With it you can cut through anything of this earth.  It will also respond to your thoughts.  I’d suggest trying that, but we need a bit more open space for that.”

“Then let’s go somewhere more open,” Lois said.

* * *

As Percy had said, the only way to test the armor’s invisibility was to go out and see if anyone could see her.  She managed to wrap the cape around herself without falling down, though she found it hard to walk with the cape like that.  She shuffled down the hallway, back to the elevator.  This time she hoped there was a cop in the elevator, or that they would be waiting for her when she got where she was going.

There was no one in the elevator when the doors opened.  The smart thing would be to go to the first floor and then out of the museum.  But seeing the button for the third floor, she had another idea.  She pressed the button for the third floor and then listened to the elevator grind its way up. 

Percy’s head appeared through the doors as he asked, “Are you sure this is wise?”

“No, but it’ll be a great test.”

The doors opened on the third floor.  Even from down the hallway she could see the yellow tape blocking off the Egyptology department and two policemen on duty.  If that bitch Detective Murphy knew she was up here she would have Lois thrown in jail, but Lois had to take the chance.  She had to see what had happened to Dr. Johnson.

The uniformed cops didn’t look her way as she shuffled towards them.  They were discussing the pitching rotation for the Rennies as she came up to them.  She pressed herself against the wall, hoping they didn’t run into her.  They kept talking for at least five minutes, until one said, “I’m going down for a smoke.  You want a coffee or anything?”

“Yeah.  Make it black.  This place is so fucking boring.  I don’t know who Murphy thinks is going to show up here.”

“Better than driving around collecting drunks.”

“I suppose so.  Just make it quick, would you?”

“Right.”  The one officer sauntered off, leaving just one between her and the door.  She waited until he began pacing to ease herself over to the door.  The hard part came in ducking beneath the yellow tape without letting the cape drop.

Then she was inside.  She found more tape sealing off Dr. Johnson’s office.  With the cops outside, she didn’t have to be so careful with this tape.

She barely held in a gasp once she was inside.  The office had been trashed, either by Set or the police, she didn’t know.  She saw tape on the floor marking where Dr. Johnson’s body had been found.  The tape wasn’t necessary since there was still a patch of blood on the floor.  She bent down, staring at the blood in disbelief.  Dr. Johnson had died here.

“Find what you’re looking for?” Percy asked.

“Not yet,” she whispered.  She crept around Dr. Johnson’s desk, finding the drawers flung open and emptied out.  The CPU on the floor was just a hunk of melted plastic and metal, as if it had been struck by lightning.  That gave credence to what Percy had said about this Set character.  It also meant there was nothing for her to find; Set had already covered his tracks.

“If you’re finished, may I suggest you use the window?”

“The window?”

“Go out on the ledge.”

Lois
opened the window, grateful that the alarms had been turned off or destroyed.  The ledge was about a foot wide, a bit narrow for her feet.  Still she managed to ease herself along the edge of it until she was away from the window.  Then she let the cape drop.  “Now what?”

“Turn around and stick your gauntlets against the wall.”

She did as he suggested.  She put her left gauntlet against the wall.  When she tried to pull it back, she found it took a bit of effort.  Looking closer at the gauntlet, she saw tiny suction cups had appeared along it.  She stuck the gauntlet back against the wall and then tried the right one as well.  Similar suction cups allowed her feet to stick to the walls as well.  These made it far easier to climb up to the roof than it had been to climb up Jeff’s skeleton all those years ago.

Percy waited for her at the top.  “That was impressive.  Now let’s practice a bit with the sword.”

“Sure,” Lois said and pulled Caledfwlch from its scabbard.  “So it will respond to my thoughts?”

“That’s right.  So long as you concentrate.  How do you think Arthur got it out of that stone?”  She shrugged at this.  He said, “Let’s start with that.  Stick the sword into the roof and try to pull it out with your mind.  A smart girl like you can do that, can’t she?”

“I suppose.”  She jammed the sword into the roof, not hard enough to cut all the way through, just enough so that it would stand up.  Then she took a step back and stared at the white crystal blade.  Nothing happened.  She squinted at it, willing it to move, but still nothing happened.  She turned to Percy.  “Are you hazing me?  Does this thing really work?”

“Of course it does.  You just need to focus.”

She snorted; patience had never been her strong suit.  “I bet Mom got this to work pretty quick, didn’t she?”

“To move the sword, yes.  It took her a bit longer to master her control.”

“Then I’ll probably never get the hang of it.”

“It’s not that hard.  Most of us in the society weren’t MENSA candidates but we managed to do it.”

“That’s comforting.”  She closed her eyes and took a few deep breaths.  She thought of what the martial arts books she’d read said about clearing your mind of all other thoughts and focusing on the moment.  Or maybe that was Yoda in
Star Wars
.  She tried to think of nothing except the sword, not about Mom or Dr. Johnson—

She heard the sound of metal clattering on stone.  Opening her eyes, she saw
Caledfwlch lying flat on the roof.  “Did the wind knock it over?”