Shadow Twin

by Rachel Neumeier

  The second van, its engine pinging as it gradually cooled in the chill air, was parked farther up, where a rocky slope ran up toward the jagged, broken cliffs of blasted stone and scree. This was where Herrod and his people were waiting. Not the woman or her team. Just Colonel Herrod and his eight remaining men.

  “Your Ms. Raichlen went on without us,” Grayson said with heavy disgust.

  “It seems so,” Herrod admitted. He had come forward a few steps to meet them, waving his people back impatiently when a couple of them moved to cover him. The colonel did not have a weapon drawn. “We have lost contact with her team, unfortunately. I think we had better take time for reconnaissance. Perhaps one of your people might be particularly well-suited for—”

  “They didn’t go,” Carissa broke in, studying the ground ahead of them. “A demon got them.” She glanced up at Herrod’s sudden stillness. “Or it might not have gotten them. Maybe it just drove them ahead so they couldn’t wait. Look there, see those burn marks? You get marks like that where a demon strikes with its...claws, or spines, or whips. Or whatever. That place over there, it looks to me like somebody shot at those rocks. See how light-colored the stone is where those pieces broke and fell? I think somebody was shooting, only you can’t shoot demons. They’re not...they’re too...”

  “Insustancial,” said Alejandro, thinking of the greasy-looking smoky form of the demon.

  Carissa didn’t glance at him. “Incorporeal,” she said.

  It was not a word Alejandro knew. But then he did not know insustancial in English. He guessed they probably meant the same kind of thing. A creature, an ente, that was not physical enough to wound with ordinary physical means.

  Herrod said grimly, “Silver bullets work on everything supernatural.” This was not quite a question. It wasn’t that he didn’t believe Carissa, Alejandro thought. More as though he didn’t want to think she might be right.

  “Yeah, demons, not so much. Bullets, even silver ones, go right through a demon, in and out before they have time to do much damage. Didn’t you notice with the other one?” Carissa spoke absently, frowning as she studied the way ahead.

  “Yeah, I think she’s right, sir,” muttered one of the men. “I shot at the other one and that’s just what happened. Thought I must’ve missed, but yeah, I bet it was just like she says.”

  The colonel didn’t answer, but he gave a small nod. It seemed he hadn’t realized until this moment that silver bullets might not work on demons. Alejandro hadn’t noticed this either. Yes, now he vaguely remembered some of the Special Forces people shooting at it. Everything had been fast-moving and hard to track, but he was not human. He had no good excuse for not realizing bullets didn’t work on demons. He was, he realized, too used to depending on Miguel to notice things for him. After the brief, peculiar battle with the witches and the demon, his brother would have found a chance to slip important information to Alejandro and the rest of them in some subtle way, as though just happening to mention something everyone had naturally observed already.

  He missed Miguel more and more. Maybe he should have insisted the Master demand Herrod return them. And Ezekiel.

  Though then Ezekiel would either be here, with his uncertain temper and sanity, or back there with Théo Callot, whom Alejandro certainly would not trust to care for him. No, still it seemed better that Ezekiel and Natividad and maybe even Miguel were not here—

  —his breath caught in his throat, and he turned sharply, half crouching in response to a threat that was not here, not a threat to him. It was somewhere far south. Much too far.

  “Natividad,” Grayson said, his tone grim. After one sharp glance at Alejandro, the Master had leveled a steady gaze at Colonel Herrod.

  “That hardly seems—” the colonel broke off without finishing that foolish statement. He said instead, “Whatever might possibly be happening in Albuquerque, I promise you, Lanning, my people will handle it.” He jerked his head at one of his men, who without a word brought out a small, flat black phone and hit a button.

  “She is upset,” Alejandro snapped at the colonel. “She is afraid! Whatever is happening, your people are not handling it!”

  “Ah, I’m not getting an answer,” the man with the phone said uneasily. “I—just the generic message. No one’s picking up.”

  “Well?” growled Grayson. His shadow gathered around him, dense and heavy, infusing his still-human voice with low and threatening thunder. He must have felt how near Alejandro was to letting his own shadow rise because the heavy weight of the Master’s shadow filled the air, forcing all black dogs down. Or nearly all. James had melted back a few steps, effacing himself in that way he had, seeming less powerful and far less dangerous than he actually was. If there were a fight, no one would focus on him first. Then someone would find out ignoring him was a mistake.

  Herrod nodded. He took a second to gather his thoughts. Then he said, “Albuquerque is hours to the south. It is inconceivable that my people will allow anything to happen to yours. I promise you, Mr. Lanning. We are here. Gregor Kristoff is here. Right here. We need to finish this. We can finish it. I believe we can. We have holy water; we have silver knives and nets as well as bullets. Your people have those little beads Miss Toland made. We can’t go back now. When will we have a better chance than we have this moment? We must go on.”

  “You are concerned for your missing people. I am concerned for mine.”

  “You’re right, and that’s perfectly understandable, sir. I give you my word that my people will not allow yours to come to harm.”

  Grayson looked at Alejandro.

  “She is afraid and angry and upset,” he told the Master. Some of the first urgency of Natividad’s fear was easing, though, and he added reluctantly, “She is not hurt, I think.”

  Carter had edged forward, past the van, flanking the Special Forces people—they must be aware of this, but they hadn’t tried to prevent him, or Rip, who had followed. Now it was Rip who said suddenly and sharply, “Could there be caves here? I kinda think I hear something underground?”

  Everyone paused. The Master said nothing, merely strode ahead, wary and intense, his shadow gathered around him, so dense it nearly seemed to have physical body. The air wavered around him with banked heat, ready to set something on fire at the least provocation. He brushed past Colonel Herrod without acknowledging him, and the man shifted back a step without apparent offense.

  Alejandro thought James would follow close behind the Master. Instead, frowning, James gestured to Alejandro himself: Go on. That made sense; of course James meant to bring up the rear. He would stay well behind, watchful and wary of their putative allies as well as their enemies. Of course he would want someone else trustworthy at Grayson’s back. Alejandro had no choice but to force down his anger and fear for his sister. He strode forward, bringing Carissa with him with a glance and a sharp little jerk of his head, His shadow rose around him, wanting the cuerpo, wanting battle and blood, screaming and death. He was so angry. His shadow would have been satisfied to attack Carissa; it was always glad to take advantage of a rival’s poor condition. It pushed for attack and crushing victory, now, before the girl had any chance to recover from these past months of enslavement.

  Alejandro fixed his own attention forward, concentrating ferociously on finding their actual enemies. Tearing those black witches to pieces would satisfy both his shadow’s bloodthirst and his own desire for vengeance on Carissa’s behalf. Then he would go south. No one would argue. He would go south, the Master would go south, and if Herrod’s people had not protected Natividad—and Miguel, and Ezekiel—they would kill them all.

  It was hard to focus on the moment, but he tried.

  Underground. It wasn’t even surprising. Deep places out of sight of decent people...places where enemies had to come in from one direction rather than tear their way in from a hundred different directions. If you thought you were strong and held the dominant position, if you thought you could defeat whatever came at you as l
ong as you knew it was coming, if an underground place seemed to offer shelter rather than a trap...sí the witches’ choice to go literally to ground in this place seemed unsurprising, given they’d known the place existed at all.

  The entrance was an narrow tunnel-like opening, blocked by a door that probably would have looked much like the rest of this barren stone except it had been not merely left open, but torn completely off its hinges. Twisted, jagged metal shards thrust like daggers out into the opening.

  “No human did that,” Carter said darkly from behind Alejandro. “A demon did it, I bet.”

  “Explosives?” one of the Special Forces man murmured, not arguing, but just pointing out that damage like this was not beyond the reach of human strength after all.

  Alejandro ignored them both, edging forward after the Master, who strode ahead as though it did not occur to him that he might find any danger too great for his strength.

  A sharp turn, and another. The sunlight fell behind them and there were no artificial lights here. Human eyes could not manage in such dim light, or should not have been able to manage. But the Special Forces men had already pulled some kind of glasses or goggles over their eyes. They kept up with the black dogs, with similar aggressive haste. It made sense. Those were their people missing, their people down here somewhere in the dark. With a demon, and Kristoff.

  They would tear Kristoff’s head off his body and rip out his belly and this time no demon would stop them.

  A slope, steeply downward. Another heavy door, this one torn as badly and left lying so that they had to clamber over it. Grayson shifted in the space of three or four strides and leaped over the wreckage, his shadow taking his weight so that he landed light and soundless on the other side. There was light now, flickering and yellow, visible around the Master’s shaggy bulk. This was not firelight despite the flicker. Electric lights, but fed with insufficient and uncertain power. The strengthening and now-familiar roar of machinery hid any subtle sounds that might have come from the place before them. But the machine-noise could not hide the sharp report of a single gunshot, nor the high and wavering scream that followed.

  Alejandro permitted his shadow to rise at last. It streamed forward and up, the change of body coming fast and hard, the fierce joy in battle and blood and killing urging him to run, to press past the Master, to rend and kill whomever he found in the unseen places ahead. Only habit and a cautious awareness of the Master’s strength and dominance kept him from trying to rush ahead—and Carissa’s caution. She was still beside him, mostly in her black dog shape now, smaller than most, but quick and savage. In her, he could tell, fear battled with eagerness to kill and gave rise to a caution he felt was not inborn in her. Her caution was more than enough to remind him that their enemies were unpredictable and not to be taken lightly. That, too, kept him from rushing ahead.

  A circle, black and tarry, hardly a step inside the room so that anyone entering would have to go into the circle. Roaring machines and a wide stage raised half a step above the floor, with on the stage a smaller but still broad circle. This one was made of grayish powder, black ash and white grit—salt, maybe. The powder looked like it ought to blow away in any breeze or be scuffed aside by any careless foot. But the outline of the circle was completely smooth.

  Inside this ash circle, up in the middle of the platform or stage, accompanied by three young people who must be disciples, stood Gregor Kristoff. Outside the ash circle, contained by the black tarry circle, crouched a demon.

  “The same one? Or a different one?” he asked Carissa. He could not tell. The thing was so changeable, so unsettled. It looked different with every beat of the heart.

  Carissa’s lip curled. “The first one got away. I think this one’s smaller. Probably it’s smaller. That bastard probably didn’t have anybody like Alistair to sacrifice this time. Those punks with him wouldn’t be enough, I bet, plus if he killed one of ’em the others wouldn’t be stupid enough to stick around. Vicious little baby witches, I bet they wish they were black dogs. They wouldn’t survive a week if they were. Or a day, if they met me.”

  Alejandro grinned. Natividad’s fear still pressed at him. He wanted very badly to kill someone. He wanted to help Carissa rip those three little witches to pieces.

  Still, despite the fast, aggressive entrance of six black dogs and eight—nine, counting Herrod—Special Forces people, Kristoff seemed disturbingly unintimidated. Soft-handed and soft-bodied, nevertheless Gregor Kristoff stood right in the middle of the circle with the arrogance of someone so dominant he knew he would not have to fight any challengers. The young ones were afraid. They hardly knew where to look, they obviously thought they were threatened from every direction: by the Special Forces people, by the demon that Kristoff had called up, and now by the Dimilioc wolves. Alejandro liked their fear. He snarled, a low deadly sound that he tried to direct just toward the nearest disciple. The young man flinched and cowered. Alejandro wanted to laugh. He wanted to snarl. He wanted to give voice to his shadow’s rage, to his own rage.

  Kristoff’s arrogance made him wary. That arrogance said he knew no one would dare challenge him, that if they did, he would have the advantage and destroy them all. He did not seem afraid, not of the Special Forces people nor of the Dimilioc wolves.

  Maybe that was because he had already proven he could handle the Special Forces. Because here was Raichlen’s team—four men and Raichlen herself, and the priest, not in very good positions. They had plainly gotten the worst of whatever had been happening.

  Only one of the four men was on his feet. Something had happened to the other three: something that left two of them on their knees, weapons canted aside, and another sprawled and helpless. Raichlen herself stood over them, her own long-barreled marksman’s automatic pistol braced in a two-handed grip. The priest—Father Petros—stood braced, his heavy cross held out before him with both hands. The demon had obviously been attacking them, though it seemed to have left them now to threaten the newcomers.

  This demon was smaller than the other one, or maybe just more tightly condensed. It was more like a serpent and less like a bird, more like a scorpion and less like a cloud, more like a man and less like a faceless, featureless creature of fangs and poison. It felt different somehow. Just as ugly. Malice might as well have dripped from it in poisonous droplets. But different, the way Étienne Lumondière felt different from Grayson Lanning.

  Herrod’s men spread out, moving quickly to reinforce Raichlen’s team. Two held those fine-corded silver nets. All of them had broad-bladed silver knives. They all had guns, too, but they had listened to Carissa and mostly had knives at the ready.

  Kristoff gestured. The demon turned, stooped low, and sprang or flowed forward. The silver nets, flung out and wide, drove it back, but not far. And probably not for long. And if the men got close enough to use those knives, they would be in the demon’s reach. This put Herrod’s men in a bad position. Indeed, the demon struck suddenly, so fast no human could have evaded it, and one of the men collapsed, screaming thinly.

  Herrod looked straight to the Master and said with hard-held calm, “A little help would be appreciated, Mr. Lanning.”

  Grayson was not in human form, but his burning, inhuman gaze met the colonel’s and he rumbled, low and aggressive and powerful and confident.

  Beside Alejandro, Carissa snarled, not at the human colonel nor even at the demon but past them both, straight at Kristoff. The sound started deep in her throat and ratcheted harshly upward in pitch as it rose in volume. Alejandro snarled with her, filled with fury and hatred and impatience and a hot, violent delight in battle. He wanted to hurl himself forward. He wanted to find a way to hurt the demon. He wanted to rip it to smoky shreds and force it to flee back to the fell dark that had birthed it. He wanted to fling Gregor Kristoff after the demon, into the fell dark, where if he lived he might come to know such creatures much, much better. He wanted to tear out the still-beating hearts of all those helpless young disciples and see the
life go out of them.

  But he stayed exactly where he was. He watched the Master, while the other Dimilioc wolves padded softly out of the tunnel behind them and spread out in a line. Everyone was in black dog form now. Little enough in this place seemed burnable, but scorch marks scored the concrete where the black wolves stepped, and small flames rippled in Carter’s shaggy mane and flickered between the Master’s jaws as he snarled.

  Wood was easier and less complicated, but if there was nothing else, people would burn just fine. Alejandro could see the thought in Carter’s hot gaze. The witches thought they were untouchable in their dust-and-grit circle. Fire wasn’t Alejandro’s strength, but he tried to summon fire then. So did Carter, he saw that. But fire only guttered around the edges of the gray-dust circle. Their ugly magic was good enough for that, unfortunately. But if the witches were not vulnerable to fire, it only became so, so tempting to summon fire right into the human soldiers just as the demon pounced and see what the demon made of that, how it liked consuming hellfire.

  That would probably complicate things with Herrod. Alejandro didn’t care, not now, not with his shadow high and savage around him, not when Herrod’s people had failed to protect Natividad—she was still afraid—still alive, that was better than it might have been. But Alejandro might not mind calling fire out of the air right at Herrod’s feet.

  Grayson might disapprove. Besides, Natividad was alive. She and Miguel and probably Ezekiel might still depend on Colonel Herrod’s good will. Alejandro ought to have asked earlier: what would happen to his sister and brother and to Dimilioc’s executioner if Colonel Herrod died. If every human with him died.

  He had not asked and did not know. Better if the colonel survived, and not as an enemy.