by G A Chase
“I know it doesn’t fit your usual badass persona, but trust me, you’ll fit right in puttering around on this relic.” He set the scooter on its kickstand next to the door.
She pulled the dagger from her boot, which was on the table. “At least I can strap this to my leg. You wouldn’t happen to have a standard ace bandage or something I could use as a holster, would you?”
He nodded toward the back room. “Joe keeps a stash of emergency supplies back there. I’m sure you can find plenty of holsters and weapons in his footlocker. Now, how can I help you deal with this doppelgänger?”
She sat at the desk and pulled out a box of shells Andy had prepared from the backpack. “I know I can kill Monty by shooting him with one of these or cutting his head off. Anything else I do to him will just make for a bloody mess that I’ll have to explain while he regenerates and makes another attack. The clock is ticking. I have to get to him before he kills his real or people figure out that there are two Montgomery Fishers running around town. What don’t I know?”
Professor Yates lit his pipe and settled back into his lounge chair. “There has always been the threat that a doppelgänger might meet its real.”
Though Professor Yates was responsible for Sere’s continued existence, she wasn’t comfortable telling him she’d already crossed that line. “What about a doppelgänger meeting a different real? Would the copy know what was discussed with the real?”
“Are you thinking of confronting Mr. Fisher in person?”
Sere shrugged. “I could say I was looking for some tax advice.”
“You haven’t worked a day in your life. You’d look like a little girl asking what she owed the government from her allowance.”
“Speaking of which, you wouldn’t happen to have some cash you could spare?” She lifted the hem of her flower-print dress. “I spent my last twenty on this frock.”
“You got ripped off.” He reached into his jeans pocket and pulled out a worn leather wallet. “I’ve got a hundred fifteen bucks. It’s all yours.” He put the bills on the desk.
“Thanks.” So this is what it feels like to be a girl asking her father for money. Fuck this. Next time, I’ll steal what I need. Sere folded the bills and thrust them into the dress pocket. “I’m not even sure what I’d say to Mr. Fisher, but as Monty’s real, he might give me some insight into where Monty might go first on entering New Orleans.”
Professor Yates set his pipe in an ashtray on the desk. “I hear Joe’s training kicking in. You’re looking for some weakness in Mr. Fisher that Monty might not even suspect in himself. Just don’t let on about the whole doppelgänger thing. Even if he brushed the idea off, people have a way of letting such notions fester.”
“But if I tell him his life is in danger,” Sere said, “he might be able to be prepared.”
“Play the idea out, though. Even if he does take you seriously, it’s unlikely he’d call the cops based on some wild girl’s warning. As a Southerner with more than a little money, Mr. Fisher undoubtedly has a gun or two. So he stays armed just in case you are correct. Then we have the inevitable shoot-out between doppelgänger and real.”
Sere raised her hand for the professor to stop. “You’ve made your point. Mr. Fisher loses that battle, the loas get involved, and the police show up to find the carnage of one dead and one immortal version of the same dude.”
Professor Yates waved at his banks of computers. “I’ve had nineteen years to worry. No matter how I run the scenarios, if two versions of the same person ever meet, eventually our secret gets out. So long as there’s a separation between dimensions, my computer programs work like check valves. I can project this reality into hell and prevent hell from seeping back. The real people outside that door have no idea they have duplicates in hell. If a doppelgänger crosses over, however, and meets its real, their shared consciousness is like pouring oil and water into the same pot. They remain separate, but a certain amount of mixing of knowledge is inevitable.”
Shit! Hopefully, those around Jennifer would believe she had a vivid imagination—though Sere doubted Jenny had enough brainpower for true creativity.
She changed the subject to something less condemning and more useful in her quest. “How about those sensors of yours? Is there a way we could set them up around Mr. Fisher’s office or home?”
“We’d run the risk of someone stumbling on them and figuring out that doppelgängers are among us.”
“Sounds like I’m on my own.” I should have just stayed on the hunt. She tried to remain stoic, Joe’s first rule ringing in her head as if she’d been hit with it by a baseball bat: no self-pity.
“That’s not true. You’ve got Joe’s training. Kendell and Myles are respected members of the community. They have ties among every economic stratum that they can call on for help. I may not be much use in a fight, but I can offer you these offices, where you’ll be safe. Figure out what you need. We’ll all be here for you.”
The most important thing Sere took from her meeting with Professor Yates was also the most obvious: she needed a plan. But any coordinated effort required knowing the strengths and weaknesses of those closest to her. She could walk into any bar and quickly identify every potential threat and possible weapon, but reading the abilities of those she’d need to rely on wasn’t so easy. Leaning on others required trust, and that wasn’t a condition Sere found comfortable. The difference between people was like choosing an oak chair over one made of pine. They both looked and functioned pretty much the same for their stated purpose. The only way to discover which was more useful in a fight was to actually bust someone over the head with the two and see which splintered to pieces and which laid out the adversary. Evaluating a person’s usefulness, however, often required making the assessment without the benefit of combat.
Night had fallen by the time she left Professor Yates’s offices. Without her gun, motorcycle, or snakes, she felt more vulnerable than she wanted to admit. She ran a hand along the side of her dress to assure herself that the knife strapped to her leg was easily accessible. Sitting sidesaddle on the small, rattly scooter with her legs exposed didn’t help her self-image as a badass demon hunter. At the moderate speed, at least, her wig didn’t blow out of place. Her dress flapped around her legs as she gave the scooter full throttle. I guess a bar fight is out of the question tonight. Not that she wanted to bust up Aunt Kendell and Uncle Myles’s establishment, but some activities had a way of happening in spite of her intentions.
As a challenge to her nerves, she headed up Esplanade. Sanguine’s ghost stories about deranged doppelgängers out to steal young Sere’s body parts always took place between the elegant tree-lined avenue and Canal Street, two roads that helped define the trapezoidal nightmare of the French Quarter. Come and get me, assholes, she thought. But the only people she passed were bands of gutter punks and laughing tourists. She looked at the drunk, giggling fools and wondered, Why did I think reals here would have more depth than their doppelgängers in hell?
She turned right onto Royal Street, away from the Quarter and toward Frenchmen Street and the Scratchy Dog. The throngs of hipsters, fashionable tourists, street musicians, and all manner of artists plying their creativity on every street corner made it nearly impossible to maneuver the small scooter down the narrow, crowded road. She set the faded-yellow motorbike on its stand behind a black VW bus covered in white Dia de los Muertos images. The fanciful skulls had her shaking her head. Like that’s what the dead look like. Someone’s clearly never been to hell.
She squeezed past a group of excited women holding red plastic cups filled with alcohol so strong it made Sere’s eyes water. This is insane. I’m never getting into the club, and even if I do, Aunt Kendell and Uncle Myles are going to be way too busy. I’m letting my experiences from hell get the better of me. Reals can’t drop everything and pay attention to me just because I ask.
With each step farther into the throng of people, Sere’s sense of panic increased. Like a salmon struggling
to spawn upstream only to discover it had made a wrong turn, Sere turned around and fought against the mindless mass’s attempt at forcing her to join the mob. The claustrophobia of so many bodies pressed around her caused her heart to race. Without an adversary to confront, the fight-or-flight impulse had only one outlet. She put her palms flat together and cut like a fish through the gaggle of drunk women intent on pressing their way into the club. Once past the pheromone-fueled females, Sere eased up on her struggle, but the need to run—which she had seldom before experienced—didn’t abate until she rounded a corner into a dark side street. The seclusion that most women feared, she found comforting. But the confusing maze of streets that met at oblique angles made it impossible to figure out a direct path back to the scooter. Groups of partiers noisily passed her as she turned down one street then the next.
As she sought out a street sign for some hint of her location, a thin-bladed knife penetrated deep into her back. Fuck. This is what I get for allowing myself to become distracted. She resisted the urge to summersault away from her assailant and have it out in the street. Too many people might be attracted by the scuffle like moths to the flame. If any of them gets killed in the fight, the loas will be all over my ass.
The man behind her turned the knife to direct her like she was an insect impaled on a pin. “Walk nice and slow. We’re just two people looking for a quiet corner to get to know each other better.” He drove the blade in so deep she could feel his fist on the handle against her back.
“What do you want with me? Please don’t hurt me.” She did her best to add some trembling to her voice. If her abductor thought she was scared, she might be able to catch him off guard.
He nudged her toward a deserted side street. “I think we both know a little knife isn’t going to do you much damage, Sere Mal-Laurette. Though I am curious: if cutting off your head is the only way to kill you, what happens if I sever your spine?”
“So you know who I am.” She gave up the pretense of fear. Anyone who knew her wouldn’t be so easily fooled into thinking she was a damsel in distress. “If you expected me to keep walking, I wouldn’t do any additional damage if I were you.”
He clicked a remote inside his pants. The sliding door of a van in front of her opened as if by magic. He yanked the knife out of her and kneed her in the small of her back. She fell face-first onto a blue tarp that covered the floor of the van. Her black wig flew off her head and landed in a corner like a scared dog scampering for safety.
Rolling onto her side, Sere was finally able to face her enemy. “Thomas?” Though the boy lab assistant was now a man, Sere easily remembered the facial features of the doppelgänger she’d decapitated as a girl. He slammed the door shut before she could reach for her blade.
9
“I don’t have time for this bullshit.” The van’s walls rumbled like someone shaking a piece of sheet metal to imitate the sound of thunder. “Can you not hit every fucking pothole?” Sere couldn’t reach the wound on her back to stop the bleeding. It stung like blazes, but as deep as it was, it would heal on its own eventually. Passing out from blood loss, however, was a real possibility, and that was going to make it hard to fight. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of expressing fear or pain. “Are we there yet? I have to pee.”
“Just shut up. You’re in no position to counterattack. By the time we get where we’re going, the blood loss should make you nice and docile.”
“I wouldn’t count on me being nice regardless of my physical condition.” Fucking real Thomas is even more annoying than his doppelgänger. She needed to keep him talking. So long as he thought he was in charge, she might get him to say something useful. “I won’t do you much good while comatose, so how about answering some of my questions as a way of keeping me conscious?” He swung the van violently to the right, which forced her to roll onto the gaping wound. You fucking did that on purpose.
“I suppose it couldn’t hurt.”
“How do you know about me?” From the increase in speed, she assumed they’d gotten onto a main road. The smoother ride allowed her to sit upright against the van’s wall and get a glimpse out the windshield.
“When you chopped off my shadow’s head, I gained his memories. At first I thought they were just my teenaged delusions, but as I grew older, his thoughts became a part of my own.”
“That’s not possible.” The pain in Sere’s back was nothing compared to the shocking revelation. That fucking arrogant professor and his toys.
“I don’t make the rules.”
“Even if you do know what I did, how did you know how to find me?” Her disguise might not have been the best, but to someone who must have thought he was dreaming up a murderess, it should have sufficed.
“I have my sources.”
And if one of those sources happens to be in hell, I’ll have to add another tick to my suspicion column regarding someone playing games in hell. “Still getting messages from the beyond? I would have thought without your doppelgänger, you would be happy to be rid of hell.”
“You don’t know shit about hell.”
By flexing her legs, she forced her back firmly against the metal wall to stop the bleeding. “Bullshit. You’re just trying to get under my skin. I lived most of my life in hell.”
He slammed on the brakes so hard she tumbled up against the barrier behind the front seats. He then turned on her with a glare she’d never seen from a living human being. “You honestly believe you experienced hell? That dimension was your playground, and you acted like a spoiled little girl ripping the heads off her dolls.”
The blood oozing from her back soaked her dress from bra to panties. Consciousness threatened to drain out of her like water swirling out of a claw-foot tub. I have to stay focused. “You can’t possibly be this obsessed with me harming what was little more than your virtual-reality avatar.”
“It was all just a game to you, wasn’t it? You really don’t get it. I was a nice guy before I bonded with my hell persona. People liked me. I had a girlfriend, a steady job, a future. Now I’m an asshole. The former me wouldn’t have even thought about abducting you, let alone running a knife into you. Who I am now, however, will happily kill you and not even lose any sleep over the murder.”
She still had her knife. He’d gotten the drop on her by using the crowd, but he hadn’t killed her when he had the chance. The evil he saw in himself hadn’t fully taken over. Unlike Monty, Thomas did have a soul that rejected the impulse to kill. His inexperience with evil gave her the advantage. He was counting on her loss of blood making her unable to fight. She just needed to string him along for a little longer. I still need to find out who’s involved. But equally important, I need to find out if killing a doppelgänger releases its evil into its real—and if so, what will happen when I do in Monty the serial killer. I need to study this deranged hybrid.
Thomas got out and opened the sliding door. “Let’s go.”
She rolled to her side and spoke in a broken whisper. “I don’t think I can.”
He bent into the van and wrapped an arm around her waist. As he hauled her from the vehicle, she slipped his switchblade out of his belt and stashed it in her dress. She let her feet drag against the pavement while he struggled to maneuver her weakened body into the garage warehouse.
He gently lowered her into the desk chair. “I suppose you’re not a threat. Don’t do anything stupid, and I won’t tie you up.”
She made a show of trying to breathe in enough air to compensate for the hole in her lung. “So are you going to kill me now? Have you thought this through? For starters, my blood is on your knife, in your van, and soaked into your clothing. People might not have seen you stab me, but someone is sure to have noticed you toss me into your vehicle. Just having the impulse to kill isn’t the same as knowing how to get away with it.”
Thomas stood over her with his arms crossed like an asshole ex-boyfriend about to accuse her of an indiscretion. “If I wanted to kill you, I wouldn’t have gone
to the trouble of abducting you. You put this evil in me. You can damn well figure out a way to get it out.”
At least you’re not asking me to make you immortal, she thought. “I can talk to the professor, but as your doppelgänger used to work for him, you could do that yourself.”
“And once again be that old man’s lab rat? I don’t think so. Besides, he’s just the architect of hell. You may not be the gatekeeper, but you know who is. I hold you personally responsible for the evil within me. Figure out how to remove it from me, and return it to hell where it belongs.”
She coughed up blood and spit it on the concrete floor. The metallic taste of iron and copper made it hard to breathe without gagging. “I get it, but what do you expect me to do? We’re not talking about you being possessed. Your doppelgänger was based on who you are. It’s not my fault you can’t face your personal demons.”
“Subject anyone to hell for long enough, and they’re bound to turn dark and twisted.”
Sere had had just about enough of Thomas’s whining. I’ve already got a goddamned mass murderer to contend with. “I’m not your fucking demonic psychiatrist.”
Thomas moved in menacingly. When he reached for the knife that wasn’t there, Sere made her move. With one foot, she kicked hard against the heavy wooden chair, sending it flying backward toward the wall. Using the momentum, she lunged forward, pulled her knife from under her dress and his from her pocket and, like an expert assassin, held the two blades to his throat—one at the front and one at the back. The artery in his neck pulsed against the razor-sharp steel.
“I could free you of your evil with little more than a paper cut,” she said. “I was only a kid when I beheaded your doppelgänger, but even back then, he was a better adversary than you are now. Did you really think you could outmaneuver me?” Her adrenaline made up for her blood loss. Though there wasn’t a bullet holding the puncture open as with her last injury, the dirt and fabric from her dress prevented her flesh from bonding shut. In the exhilaration of battle, she drew even more energy from her real. I hope Jennifer drank lots of liquids today. She’s going to need it to replace the energy I’m draining.