Ghost of Doors (City of Doors)
Page 21
Chapter 23
ALL THE HAIRS ON WOLFGANG'S arms stood on end. There was an electrical charge in the air that he could feel, taste, and smell, an ozone that convinced him destiny was hard at work and about to be fulfilled. His father led him and Johnny to the Farseeing Tower as if he remembered the way. The reality that he would finally see his father restored to his true self was almost more than he could bear; his hands shook uncontrollably as the tall widerganger slipped from his mount and lumbered toward the door. At the top of a set of stairs embraced by two wide, wing-like walls that served as part of the huge, white pavilion surrounding the tower, it glowed brightly as if it expected him. It opened well before he reached it. Out stepped Wolfgang's twin. “What are you doing here?” Wolfgang shouted and moved before his father to shield him. He doubted the wisdom of his actions after noticing the long halberd that had come through the door with him.
“Glad to hear you didn’t forget me.”
Johnny looked as if he wanted to fight, but Wolfgang held him back with a gesture. He didn’t know if Johnny knew what he was really up against with Vogelfang, nor if his doppelganger knew how to use it, but he didn’t want to take any chances. Not yet. Maybe he could reason with his twin. After all, the doppelganger had given him a chance by letting his body remain alive while he went to see if what he’d said about his mother was true. That meant something, didn’t it?
“If you’re here to stop us, you can’t. My father is going to be freed. He deserves it.”
The doppelganger smirked, the white glow of the door, belonging only to his father and not to any faction, behind him. “How do you know what he deserves? After all, he created a weapon that basically murdered all the humans in the city. I’d say that he deserves prison and should stay right where he is.”
Wolfgang decided against arguing with him. The changeling held more power then he knew in wielding Aar, and Wolfgang did not want him to learn what it could do. “Fair enough. But you’ve been in there. You’ve seen her,” Wolfgang said. “You know your mother is in there. I told you the truth.”
“Yes, well…” He stroked the polished wood of the halberd’s long shaft in an eerily familiar way, as Wolfgang himself had done many times before. “I’ve decided I don’t care. Even if she’s not the person I thought she was, she still let me down. She still didn’t kill you. And now, I have to do it myself.” His blue eyes gleamed with a sudden bloodlust as Vogelfang reflected in them. “I came back to kill your body and find that you’ve put yourself back together. It doesn’t matter. I’ll just start from square one.”
The ancient weapon burning white hot inside his grip, the doppelganger swung Vogelfang in a wide arc and unleashed a surge of energy that blew them all across the wide expanse of concrete tile before the Farseeing Tower's pavilion. Johnny launched himself into the sky and disappeared, returning to the wind of which he was made. Wolfgang sought cover in the open space and found none. He grabbed his father’s lifeless hand and pulled him to hide behind a concrete barrier long ago taken over by bushes as his doppelganger approached. He didn’t know when Marie and the others would return, or if they could return, since they might get blocked by SUN or MOON. And even if they did show up, they might be returning only to face death by Vogelfang. Maybe if Wolfgang could get his twin back into his father’s door, his father could send him someplace far away. Or, at the very least, they could trap him in there until they decided what to do with him. It was the best plan Wolfgang could come up with, so it would have to do.
“Fitting, that I’ll take your place with your own weapon,” the changeling said with a laugh.
“I’m not dead yet,” Wolfgang answered and threw an easily deflected rock at his twin’s head. Maybe he could annoy him into making a mistake. It was worth a try.
“Throwing rocks, now? That’s pretty cheap.” Wolfgang picked up another, slightly smaller one from a broken slab of concrete that a bush’s roots had grown through. “I had expected more from—ARGH!” This time, the stone hit the mark, no doubt with help from Johnny Merriweather. One eye bleeding heavily, the changeling stumbled forward as Wolfgang rushed out to tackle him. The fight quickly devolved into a struggle over the artifact, a mess of arms, legs, hands, and feet smearing a bloody, a dark puddle on the light concrete that would never wear away. With a burst of rage, the changeling rolled the human over and wrenched the weapon free. Wolfgang sprang to his feet because his life depended on it--his twin had begun swinging the weapon with the ferocious hatred of a wild bear swatting a hornet. Wolfgang drew the knife Victor had given him and prepared for the impossible task of deflecting or dodging the killing blow which was sure to come. Out of the corner of his eye came a massive gray object that he barely noticed before it thrust him far from the fray, and Marie’s shriek told him something was horribly wrong.
Wolfgang was not prepared for the horror that presented itself in the middle of the bloodied square. The blow that had been meant for him had felled Dapplegrim, the great horse prostrated with Vogelfang, the weapon that Wolfgang had never used to kill anyone, deep in his side. For a long moment, Wolfgang couldn’t breathe. It felt like everyone and everything in the square had stopped, including his heart. He fell to his knees beside Pilgrim, his hands and tears sliding down his loyal friend’s silky mane. He couldn’t even speak, but it didn’t matter. If there were words to say that could fix this, he had no idea what they were. He didn’t think Pilgrim could hear him, anyway. The death had been immediate and, Wolfgang hoped, painless. There was no movement in the body, the eyes staring but not seeing. Wolfgang took out a handkerchief from his sweatshirt pocket and laid it over them.
In the haze of his anguish he could sense someone moving behind him. And then it hit him: He was about to join Pilgrim. He was about to die. He had dropped the knife to hold onto Pilgrim and didn’t care about what had happened to it. Judging by the pressure he felt, Wolfgang was sure the blade was now deep in his kidney, even though he felt no pain. He turned around to see a mirror of his own face, this one pale and soaked with sweat, a wide O on his lips and agony in his eyes while the bronze knife clattered to the sidewalk, unwanted. The knife that Victor had given him—the knife that Wolfgang had never used—was cursed. The pain he saw in the eyes of his twin was the pain he would have felt, had he used it on someone. His grief kept him from thinking of the implications, and his thoughts became lost in a fog of revenge. He reverently drew Vogelfang from his fallen friend and the halberd, unnaturally sharp as it was, slid easily out. It was then that he saw his father.
In the time it took for Johnny to get Pilgrim and in the time it took for Pilgrim to save Wolfgang from certain death, Markus Schäfer had climbed the steps to the door and reclaimed his soul. Markus and Lorelei stood at the top of the steps like the king and queen of the Land of Youth. Marie appeared beside Wolfgang.
“You were right, Wolfgang,” Marie told him, her eyes red, her hair wild. “You were right. It worked.”
His twin still crumpled in a heap, he turned his burning eyes to Marie. “Did you save Leonie?”
Marie nodded. “She’s with Raphael. They’ve agreed to join us.” She took his hand to hold his attention a moment longer. “When Johnny said you needed help, Pilgrim and I came as fast as we could. Everyone’s trying to hold this block, but I don’t think we can. Many of the freed are still fighting for MOON, and the doors are going red.” Marie didn’t have to ask. He could see the question in her eyes: “What do we do?”
Then his father was hugging him, and for the moment Wolfgang couldn’t think about anything else—not about their fledgling, failing faction, not about Pilgrim’s death, nothing. For one brief, happy moment he had his father back. His real father. But that bittersweet moment would be short-lived. Perhaps the shot had been meant for Wolfgang, but one second, Markus lay limp in his arms, the next, the widerganger had returned. Wolfgang’s doppelganger wasted no time running for the Farseeing Tower door to escape with his prize—Markus’ soul.
“DON’T!�
�� Wolfgang screamed and rushed at his doppelganger, but he wasn’t at all fast enough to catch the changeling. “You can’t get out that way.” The now red door opened for him, and he passed through, shutting it behind him. Wolfgang looked from Lorelei to Marie, and both wore expressions just as appalled as he felt. They cautiously approached the door.
Inside, Wolfgang found his father just as he had left him only hours ago, a brilliant, pure soul glowing bright. But this time, it was his doppelganger who lay in peace like an ocean below him instead of Lorelei. “It is better this way. I didn’t get to really remember how it feels to be whole again.”
“Father…” Wolfgang began, his eyes involuntarily filling with tears.
“Listen to me, my son. I know what you and your friends are doing. I can see all the doors, everywhere. I touch everything now.” Wolfgang swallowed his sadness and listened very carefully to what his father said, so that he would not forget. “You are doing what needs to be done. Your new faction must fight against SUN and MOON. It’s the only way all humans can be free from the fae and those who would use us and all we are as nothing more than building blocks.” Wolfgang didn’t want this to be true. He wanted there to be another way, any other way. He wanted a way that would set his father free. But he agreed that, for now, he would have to accept that what his father said made sense. Right now, he had no other answer, and STAR needed all the help they could get. “This place will be a safe haven for you. Go back to your faction. You will see my gift to you. The only one that I can give. I love you, son.”
“I love you too, Dad,” Wolfgang said. With that, he left his father once again alone in darkness.
On the other side of the door, Wolfgang greeted Marie and Lorelei with hugs. Like a beacon, the Farseeing Tower glowed with a strange light, a bright violet that Wolfgang had never seen before. The door that housed his father’s soul glowed with the same color. “This…this will be our color,” Wolfgang told them. “This is our door.”
Chapter 24
THE CHANCE THAT SHE WOULD still be living in the same apartment some twenty years later was small, but it was a place to start. One of the names on the apartment building's register read “Schäfer”. Wolfgang’s heart raced. The city looked a lot like Doors, but not exactly. It wasn’t hard for him to find the address Victor had given him. Wolfgang opened the old birth record. His birth record. Beside Vorname under Mutter was the name “Heidi”. Schäfer, he knew. Heidi Schäfer. That’s who he would ask for.
A woman almost as tall as the door answered it. Her blond hair was pulled back severely as if she lacked either the time or desire to care for it properly, or both. High cheekbones and an oval face said she had been pretty once but had traded smooth cheeks for deep lines of worry and regret. But her first words to him were a big surprise: “I thought I told you to get out of here,” she said.
Her voice carried so much venom that Wolfgang almost dared not ask. “Are—Are you Heidi Schäfer?”
She gave him a funny look. “Let’s not play games, Wolfgang. I don’t know what you’re in trouble for this time. I just…I can’t take anymore. No more.” She kept the door mostly closed so she could shut it fast if need be, with just enough of her face showing to talk. “I don’t know what I did wrong, but—”
“You didn’t do anything wrong. Mother, I…” What could he say? Should he tell her who was, that he was her real son and she had been raising a changeling the entire time? Would she believe him? “I know that life has been difficult for you after dad left. And I’m sorry about all of the horrible things that happened. But that’s not the person that I am. I need you to believe me. To give me a chance.”
Her eyes were pleading with him to make this easy on them both and give up. “I’m sorry, Wolfgang, but I just can’t deal with all this anymore. I’m done. After what happened to your step father…” The tears came easily. “He was a good man, Wolfgang. I’m sorry that that didn’t matter to you.”
“I didn’t kill him.”
“No. No, I know you didn’t. But the things you did contributed to his death. And for that, I don’t think that I could ever forgive you.” He hadn’t expected this. He knew that his twin had been a monster, but somehow, Wolfgang thought he could convince her to give him a chance. That seemed well nigh impossible. “If you weren’t so young when he left, I might think you had something to do with your father’s disappearance.” Everything she’d said up until this point he completely understood, but now, after she said this, he couldn’t look at her the same way anymore. To him, she was no longer special, no longer the shining light in his heart that he had hoped to one day meet. In fact, she was worse than any monster he knew, even his doppelganger. At least Anders had given him a chance to prove he was telling the truth.
The failings of the human world came crashing down around him then, destroying the model of perfect peace and harmony that he had built up all those years in his mind. It was just like Doors, in fact, this city that Wolfgang had thought held more forgiveness and truth and love. It was just as much an empty shell where people warped the world around them, skewing it to meet their thoughts, their dreams, their desires. But they did it with the little powers they had, changing only their perceptions and those of the people around them, whereas in Doors, the fae changed reality for everyone.
“I…well, I’m sorry to bother you, then,” he said, stepping away from the door and backing into the stairwell.
Heidi Schäfer had no problem shutting the door.
Back out on the street, Wolfgang opened the old birth record to study it one last time. He threw it on the sidewalk after crumpling it up with all the strength in his hand, the shape of his fingers molded deeply into the paper so that it resembled a knife handle. “That was quick,” Marie said. She appeared beside him, her cold weather clothes keeping up the appearance that the winter affected her.
“I don’t want to talk about it, Marie,” he said.
She nodded silently, took his hand, and walked with him arm-in-arm through the Berlin streets, back to the door that would spirit them away. Like alarm bells in the distance, a faint clamor welcomed them, the clashing of swords and weapons of old carried through time to herald a new era. A new order fell upon them, a blanket of snow cleansing their city beneath white depths, burying the past in icy dust.
Wolfgang was home.
Table of Contents
Ghost of Doors
CONTENTS
ACT 1
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
ACT 2
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
ACT 3
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24