Shadow Twin

by Rachel Neumeier

  “¡Eres una perfecta idiota!” Miguel snapped at her, not taking his eyes off Ezekiel.

  But Ezekiel stopped, just stopped where he was for one instant. Natividad had almost thought he might, almost hoped he might. She leaned out of the cage and threw a tangle of dark, shining thread on the floor between him and everyone else

  Ezekiel hesitated, shaking his head. Then he said grimly, his fiery gaze steady on her face. “Not enough. That’s not enough.” He turned his head the tiniest bit, to Miguel. “Shoot me,” he ordered. “Damn you, shoot!” His face was distorting, his shoulders, his chest. Jet-black claws slid out of broadening hands. He took a step forward, slow and smooth.

  “Don’t you dare!” cried Natividad. Ezekiel was fighting, obviously. That was why he was so slow. He was not fighting the cambio de cuerpo. Not fighting his shadow. He was fighting the witch’s control. Before, Natividad had not seen the slightest sign that he could resist Kristoff’s control. But he was fighting it hard now. And losing. But he was giving them time. There was no way out, no way to get past him and nowhere to run if they could. But he was giving Miguel all the time in the world to shoot him.

  Except Miguel didn’t. Whether because of Natividad’s cry or because he just couldn’t bring himself to or because he had some other plan; she couldn’t tell and barely cared. Her brother edged toward the cage door instead, keeping his gun aimed at Ezekiel’s chest, never looking away from the black dog.

  Lieutenant Santibañez slid past Miguel and into the cage, pushing Natividad back, getting ready to slam the door shut. “Miguel!” he said, hard and urgent.

  Her brother edged another step closer. He could make it. He could get to the cage and they could lock the door and then they’d be so, so safe while they waited for Kristoff to come down here and find them. Natividad could just imagine how that would go. She looked at Miguel, waiting for her brother to have a better idea.

  “Miguel!” snapped Santibañez. “Shoot him!”

  “¡Gemelo!” cried Natividad, meaning Don’t do that! Do something smart!

  But for once, at just the wrong time, Miguel seemed to be all out of clever ideas.

  Natividad looked into Ezekiel’s face. Not much of his human self visible there now. Except the ruthless will that slowed his steps and gave her twin time to shoot. If he would. If he had to. If he couldn’t think of anything else. Miguel was backing up very slowly, but if he had any other ideas, Natividad couldn’t tell.

  Then Carissa plunged through the doorway and hit Ezekiel from behind.

  Whipping around, Ezekiel hurled her off, shifting fast, fully black dog and then fully human, effortlessly evading Carissa’s second lunge. Miguel jumped back through the cage door and let Santibañez slam it closed, but blocked the man when he tried to take the key from Natividad. She closed her fist around it tightly and backed away, because now she almost hoped she might have a chance to do something clever—not that Carissa could stop Ezekiel by herself, but—

  Yes, here was Alejandro, slipping into the room behind Carissa. Not attacking Ezekiel, no. He was in human form, mostly. Guarding his ability to think and speak, that was good, that was great, because straight-up aggression was never going to work, not here, not this time. Natividad leaned forward, both her fists clenched, hoping.

  “Good,” Miguel whispered beside her. “Good, do it!”

  Alejandro was already trying, obviously. Suddenly Ezekiel’s shifts of body were much slower, much heavier. ’Jandro didn’t have the sheer strength to force him into human form and keep him there, nothing like it, but he could do this much: slow him down. Interfere with every move he made. It was like Ezekiel was suddenly wading through invisible molasses, while Carissa was still light and quick.

  Also, he wasn’t trying to kill her. She wasn’t trying to kill him either, though it took a moment for Natividad to figure that out because she sure looked vicious enough. But Carissa managed to deal a serious enough wound that Ezekiel had to yield to Alejandro’s will, had to shift to human form, and she didn’t follow that up with a deadly blow. She slid back out of the way and Ezekiel stayed where he was, half kneeling and half crouching, his arm pressed against his stomach where she’d torn him up. Natividad peered through the silver-laced mesh anxiously, but no, there was no injury there anymore. His shadow had taken it. But now Ezekiel was caught in human form. Not for long, probably, but for a few seconds he was trapped. Or he was letting himself be trapped. It wouldn’t last, she was sure of that.

  So she shoved open the door and ran out. She left her handbag behind, but snatched Lieutenant Santibañez’s knife right out of his hand and luckily he let her have it. It was a good knife, not big but sharp, just right for drawing a really fast, really clean pentagram around Ezekiel. She had neither sunlight nor moonlight, not here, but she cut her hand and used her own blood and the memory of light. Ezekiel didn’t try to stop her or leave the pentagram, and the instant she closed the last line, she looked up and said rapidly in Spanish, “Mi sangre con la suya, my sombra con la suya, mi vida con la suya.” Then she laid the knife down on the floor and drew a spiral around it with the tip of one finger. Spirals to pull, spirals to catch. She shook out a cobweb-fine net of light she’d meant to use as a maraña but now redefined in her mind as a teleraña, wound this around the whole, and said forcefully, “Para parar las sombras!”

  She ought to have had sunlight or moonlight or at least starlight. What she actually had was her blood and her will and her memory of having made this exact kind of tool before. And she had a thin, tiny connection to Ezekiel’s shadow already. She used that, she poured it into her working where she ought to have used light and music. She drove the magic with memory and will and blood, and threaded it through and through again with the tiny fragment of Ezekiel’s shadow that belonged to her.

  She knew when Alejandro figured it out from the way the heavy force of his will faltered the least little bit, the way her brother shied back like a startled animal. She knew Ezekiel figured it out from the way his head jerked up, his eyes pure gold, and the way he seized her wrist.

  But though he grabbed her hard enough to bruise, he caught her left wrist, and she was holding the knife—the new aparato, which was both like and unlike the knife that was buried at its heart—in her right hand. He didn’t stop her. She couldn’t do anything against his speed and strength, but he didn’t stop her.

  So she leaned forward and drove the aparato para parar las sombras into his chest.

  Somewhere behind her, Santibañez made a sound of startled horror. She paid no attention, only twisted her aparato and jerked it out again. Choking, Ezekiel let her go and sank back, one hand going to his chest and the other to his face.

  Though she looked him over anxiously, there was no obvious wound—no physical wound at all. She had known there wouldn’t be; of course she had. It was just a scary thing to do with something that only seconds ago had been a knife, meant to deal out injury and death. It wasn’t a knife anymore, her aparato. It was an aparato para parar las sombras, a tool for catching and holding the shadow of a black dog, and it cut Ezekiel in two in a spiritual sense, not a physical sense. The body that fell back in the pentagram was entirely human, now. Ezekiel seemed...smaller, diminished. He was diminished. All the inhuman force that made him so terrible was caught, trapped, in the aparato Natividad now held in both her hands.

  What he had left was his own will and his own soul. That was enough to make him lower his hands, straighten his shoulders, lift his head, and meet her eyes.

  She stared back at him. His eyes were blue. Blue as the summer sky. Completely human, in a way they never had been, even when they seemed human. He didn’t speak. He didn’t have to speak. She knew everything he would have said.

  Her hands were shaking.

  Miguel came to join her. He put a hand on her shoulder and she leaned against him gratefully. He said softly, “Me lo podías haber dicho, gemela.”

  “There wasn’t exactly time to tell you,” Natividad poi
nted out. It was true, obviously. Everything had happened so fast, he couldn’t really think she should have stopped to explain. She said, “But now you have to help me figure out how to clean up his shadow and put it back.”

  “Put it back?” demanded Lieutenant Santibañez, figuring it out with impressive speed and accuracy. “You turned him human and now you want to undo that?”

  Ezekiel didn’t seem to hear him, but both Alejandro and Carissa turned to glare, with anger and heat and barely-leashed violence.

  “Don’t say things like that,” Natividad said quickly. “It would be totally wrong to leave him like this. For one thing, it would probably kill him pretty soon, and for another, he’d never forgive me.”

  Ezekiel made a low, inarticulate sound that after a second she realized was meant to be a laugh. It didn’t hold much humor. She looked at him quickly, and away again at once. It was just very disturbing to see him like that, with her aparato lying on the floor in front of him, the two parts of his soul divided.

  “Also, if you try to prevent her, I will kill you,” Alejandro told the lieutenant, flat and grim. “It is a terrible thing, losing your shadow. Even when it is someone you love who takes it. Even if she takes it for a very good reason.”

  “Yeah,” put in Miguel. “Plus I don’t want to try to explain to Colonel Herrod why ’Jandro killed you.”

  Slightly to Natividad’s surprise, Lieutenant Santibañez opened a hand in a sort of on-your-heads-be-it gesture and closed his mouth.

  “Why explain anything?” said Carissa, not mollified. “With the enemies we’ve got, who’d question one more death? If she really took his shadow, are you sure you want him telling anybody else about it?”

  Natividad could tell Santibañez didn’t take this threat too seriously. She was pretty sure he ought to. She gathered the shreds of her good sense and patience. “Please, let’s not fight,” she said firmly. “Nobody is going to murder anybody else. We’re all on the same side, you know!”

  Her twin put in quickly, in the meek tone he used for dealing with black dogs in a temper, “Anyway, Grayson might not approve, do you think? He’s almost got this thing between him and the colonel cooled off, so let’s not go fanning those flames, okay?”

  Natividad added, “Of course I have to put it back. Es lo que hay que haser. But anyway, we still need a way to take out that witch, right? If he still thinks Ezekiel’s on his chain, only he’s not, well, there you go.”

  Everyone looked at her.

  “Smart girl, my sister,” Miguel declared, with a look at Santibañez that dared him to argue. “You just stay over there, okay? No te acerques demasiado. You’re not Dimilioc, so just stay out of the way and don’t tempt anybody, right? Let me and Natividad figure this out and you and ’Jandro and Carissa keep watch.”

  The Special Forces lieutenant drew in a slow breath, let it out even more slowly, shook his head, grimaced, and went to lean against a nearby wall. He was probably paying more attention to Natividad and Ezekiel than to anything outside this room, but that was fine with her as long as he didn’t try to argue or get in the way. Alejandro and Carissa would hear anyone coming long before any ordinary human.

  Miguel came to kneel beside Natividad. “Can you see what’s wrong with it? Can you see how to clean it up again?”

  She frowned, holding her aparato up and studying it and the shadow that clung to it. “There’s nothing wrong with it, I don’t think. I mean, not exactly. Last time that demon had part of itself in him, but there’s nothing like that here...that I can see...Ezekiel! Is this different than last time?”

  He barely looked at her. He was closed down inside himself now, his eyes shut. Shuddering. Probably not with cold. Or maybe he was cold, without the heat of his black dog shadow. She longed to put her arms around him, make him feel better.

  Probably there was just one way to make him feel better, and just sitting here wasn’t the way to do it.

  Natividad asked again, more gently, “Ezekiel. Amorcito. Mi tesoro. Is there a demon in you still, one I have not caught? Is there a demon woven into your shadow that I do not see?”

  Now his eyes rose to meet hers. They were blue. Blue as the sky. Not a trace of fire.

  “Mi cielo,” she said to him.

  “No,” he said. His voice was husky, as though he hadn’t spoken for a long time. Or as though he had been screaming. She was pretty sure he hadn’t been. Not out loud. “No, that was...he needs more time to do that. There’s a ritual...he needs time and space and...blood.” His voice tightened. “Yours would do perfectly. Mi querida.”

  “You’ve been learning Spanish?” Natividad knew she was blushing.

  “Just a little. A few words.” One hand moved, brushing this away as though it weren’t important. It was important to her, but she didn’t interrupt. He went on, “The dust alone—it’s quick, but it’s not as strong.” He looked away. “I should have been able to break it.”

  “Grayson hadn’t broken free, last I saw,” Natividad reminded him. “You let us trap and hold you. Don’t tell me you couldn’t have killed everybody if you’d tried.” She held up her aparato again, not letting him argue. “I can put it back? Will you be free if I put it back now? Isn’t there anything else I need to do to make it safe?”

  But Ezekiel didn’t know. She could see that now. She didn’t know why she’d thought he would know such things. She looked at Miguel instead.

  But it was Stéphanie Callot who spoke. Stéphanie, on her feet and moving of herself for the first time since Natividad had woken her, upstairs—could that be so little as an hour ago? It seemed impossible.

  But now she was up. She looked drawn and tired and sick, but she was on her feet. She leaned on the silver-laced mesh of the cage and said impatiently, “Pure. You’re Pure. So be Pure, and purify that shadow before you return it.” She added disapprovingly, “You know you’re certain to pick up a little more of it yourself, yes? You are so careless.” Then she stopped and said more quietly, “Or maybe only desperate. I think maybe that is so.”

  Miguel started to say something, probably something cutting. Natividad punched him on the arm and answered herself, careful to be gentle. “Si, yes, a little desperate maybe. So then how would you purify it, if it were you? A priest would do an exorcism, but I don’t know the words for that...”

  Stéphanie raised her eyebrows. “Are you a priest? Then do not try to do it that way. You’re Pure. Ask for what you want. But don’t wish for peace. Wish for purity, and for Ezekiel Korte to be what he ought to be. If I were his lover, I think I would use an open star instead of a pentagram, but you should do what feels right to you.”

  An open star. Natividad immediately saw how that should work. A pentagram gathered peace and held it and poured it slowly back into the world. An open star would reach outward more. Sí. It would reach out, not hold firm.

  A wish for purity rather than peace. For Ezekiel to be what he should be, not what anybody else wanted him to be. That was freedom; of course it was. Sí. Yes. She could see how that might work. A wish for freedom and for things to be right. She could do that. Maybe it would be so simple.

  Her twin expected her to make this work. She looked at Alejandro and saw that he, too, thought she ought to be able to do this.

  Natividad drew a star on the floor around Ezekiel, outside the pentagram, with the aparato on the inside of the star. Then she erased the pentagram. That felt odd. She’d never tried to lift a pentagram, to pull its magic back into herself. But it wasn’t actually hard. Just strange.

  Ezekiel’s shadow was all tangled up in and with and around the aparato. That was as it should be, as she had meant it to be. But not as she meant it to be forever. She could see nothing wrong with the shadow—it was demonic, of course, so that was certainly wrong in that sense. But she couldn’t see anything unusually wrong, or wrong for Ezekiel.

  Whatever Kristoff had done to him, it was something that affected only black dogs. And so it was surely the shadow that was affe
cted. But she could see nothing.

  But she didn’t need to see it or understand it. She just needed to fix it. She said, softly and clearly, “Que sea como deberia. Let Ezekiel be as he should be. Que no otro dicta que debe ser libre.” This reminded her a little of blooding silver suddenly, for no clear reason, and she added, “Esta libertad de voluntad es mía, pero este es tuyo también.” It was just like giving silver to a black dog, except it was not silver she was giving him this time. This freedom of will is mine, but it is also yours.

  Then she opened the aparato she had made and let all the pieces fall back where they belonged.

  This, she had done once before. So she was not surprised at how fast it unraveled. The knife fell onto the cement of the floor with a ringing clatter; the teleraña rippled to the floor in a fine tangle of silk; and Ezekiel’s shadow whipped away, returning to him with a force that nearly pulled her over even though she had expected it.

  Within the pattern of the open star, Ezekiel put one hand over his face, bowing his head. He stayed like that, perfectly still, for a long moment.

  Then he lowered his hand, and straightened. And got to his feet, unhurriedly. Before he was all the way up, Alejandro reached out and lifted Natividad neatly back and away. Carissa slid to one side, where she could move in any direction without being crowded. Miguel had his hand on the butt of his gun. Stéphanie stepped back into the protection of the silver cage. Lieutenant Santibañez didn’t move, only watched narrowly.

  Ezekiel looked at Natividad. He just looked at her.

  “Bienvenidos,” she said softly. “Welcome back. Welcome back to yourself.”

  -21-

  It was a simple plan, really. Keeping things simple seemed like a good idea to Miguel.

  The plan depended completely on Ezekiel’s ability to fool Gregor Kristoff into thinking he, Ezekiel, was still under the witch’s control. One of the items that didn’t seem like such a fantastic idea was pinning everything on Ezekiel Korte’s acting ability, but Miguel hadn’t been able to think of anything better. Especially not in the time available. They were all pretty sure that Kristoff expected Ezekiel back in minutes, not hours, and they’d burned through kind of a lot of minutes already.