True North

by S.M. Winter

from the table. The boys let go so their father could have his turn. Jon hugged me close and I returned the embrace for his comfort. He held it a bit longer than I would have liked but pulled away as soon as I thought it was going on too long.

  “We were so worried about you,” Jon said.

  Though he’d pulled away, he kept his hands on my shoulders and massaged them. I looked over at Alexandar who was frowning at us. I wanted to shrug off the hands, they were making my skin crawl. I didn’t want to cause a scene so I took his hands and held them with mine, bringing them in front of me. Their coldness startled me. I looked at our joined hands, frowning.

  “How can I help?” I asked.

  “Make them leave,” Jon leaned in close, his icy breath made my skin itch.

  “Everyone?” I asked.

  Jon nodded.

  “Ok,” I turned to the crowd at large and saw that many people were taking note of how close we were. Jon stepped up behind me put his hands on my hips. I moved away before he could lean in. I went to my friends, who were respectfully keeping their distance for our reunion. Alexandar wouldn’t look at me. A pit began forming in the bottom of my stomach. I had some explaining to do. I wasn’t sure how I would since I didn’t know what was going on with Jon. He was probably just overcome by grief and needed someone familiar to hold onto.

  “Can you guys help me clear the room?” I asked them. “Jon wants everyone out. He’s done with the day.”

  “Sure,” Valerie touched my shoulder as she moved past.

  Chauncy smiled and nodded encouragingly. Alexandar just walked by without making eye contact with me. The pit in my stomach twisted and I sighed. We made our way through the rooms and when everyone was gone we sat down to watch the boys play in the living room.

  “Tabbie,” Jon said from the hallway. “Can I speak with you upstairs?”

  “Of course,” I stood from the chair I’d occupied, smiled at my friends and followed him upstairs.

  He turned into his bedroom and faced the window so that when I entered the room I could only see his back.

  “What is it, Jon,” I asked.

  “Close the door,” he said.

  I complied. Turning, I closed the door with a click, thinking that maybe he didn’t want his kids to hear something. As soon as the door closed he was right behind me, hands on my hips pulling me back against him.

  “Stop,” I said and pushed away from him. “Jon, don’t.”

  “You don’t know how much I’ve wanted you,” Jon groaned as I struggled. “You have no idea, do you?”

  His tongue licked the side of my neck making me nauseous.

  “Jon,” I said after I managed to get some distance. “What are you doing?”

  “I want you,” he moved in and pulled me against him. “When I saw you with that person downstairs I realized just how much.”

  One of his hands snuck under my shirt to the bare skin underneath. A sharp pain had me pulling back.

  “Ow,” I pushed him hard enough that we switched positions, which I instantly realized was the wrong move. Now he was blocking the exit.

  His smile seemed to split his face and his teeth gleamed brightly. I’d never seen him like this before.

  “What is wrong with you?” I asked him, shaking my head. “Your kids are right downstairs.”

  “I don’t care about them,” brushing his hands through the air like they were nothing. “Leaches. Sucking the life out of me, of your sister.”

  “Jon,” I started backing away as he came toward me again. “This isn’t you.”

  I backed into a doorway and fumbled behind me for the knob. When it opened I quickly jumped inside and closed the door. I thanked all the powers above that my sister had wanted to transform one of their bedrooms into a huge walk in closet with a lock on the door. Jon pounded against it and I wondered how long the lock would last. The pounding stopped for a moment and in its place I heard a sickening growl. I shuddered and looked for an exit. I went to pull out my cell phone and realized I hadn’t carried one since this weird journey began. Swearing, I began moving clothes around, looking for anything that I could use as a weapon. I opened a long mirrored panel door and something fell against me hard enough that I fell to the ground with a thunk. I rolled out from under it and stared down in horror.

  It was Jon. His eyes were open and held an odd sheen to them, like he’d been held underwater. His head rolled oddly making my stomach roll. The throat was wide open and all I could manage to think was where the blood had gone. I knew how much blood there was in a human body but there was not a speck on his clothes. Nothing. What could have done this to him?

  I remembered then, about the thing that had pretended to be my sister. Another bang at the door, louder this time. The lock began to give under the barrage. A rage took hold of me. This thing had killed my family. I let out a growl of my own. I stood and felt the air around me stir in response. I would never have used my element against my brother-in-law, but I would destroy the thing that killed him. I heard a crack of thunder, saw a flash from under the door, and the rain on the roof began to pound. The thing on the other side of the door howled in anticipation.

  Red. It covered my vision, flooded the room and changed the pretty things my sister had collected over the years into something sinister. I wanted to tear this thing apart. It had deprived me of yet another good person in my life. There were so few that losing two in the last few weeks was unacceptable. This was a loss I felt keenly. My chest tightened and my face hardened. I reached for the door and instead of opening it exploded into the bedroom. Splinters circled the room. Shrapnel embedded itself in the thing’s arms, chest and legs. It howled. The explosion had knocked the creature back. As I entered the room it stood. Clothing sloughed off like a second skin. Its face had pulled back, revealing the sharks teeth I had known were there. The rage I felt was all consuming. In that moment it had the audacity to smile, though the term was loosely based around the fact it showed its entire set of shiny, dagger like, shark’s teeth. Smile was a relative term.

  I heard a pounding on the bedroom door but ignored it. Focusing on my rage, I threw a wall of air against the creature, pinning it to the wall. I watched as a large crack made its way up the wall and over the ceiling. The pounding got louder, accompanied by some muffled yelling. With an odd sense of detachment I saw the splinters around me, dancing in the swirls of air. A thought occurred to me and the pieces started hopping jauntily toward their target. It struggled against the wall.

  “Tabbie,” it cried in my sister’s voice. “Tabbie please.”

  The splinters halted for a moment. This was just long enough for the beast to escape from my wall of air. The door burst open behind me, letting Chauncy and Alexandar step through. Chauncy had the same glowing orbs surrounding him from when I first met him, and Alexandar was crouched into a fighting stance. While I was distracted from the anger that had raged through me, the adrenaline that had been fueling the hatred began to abate and exhaustion took hold. I fought to keep my eyes open. I fell back into line with my comrades.

  A sigh came from the window directly behind the beast. I watched as it stepped to the side and revealed a man sitting in the window, as if he were relaxing, enjoying a late summer breeze. He was unaffected by the near hurricane conditions that currently raged outside. Now that my vision had cleared I looked at the destruction of the room. Pieces of the frame and door were strewn about, leaving ugly destruction in their wake. A crack broke the room nearly in half, and water was beginning to leak through the roof.

  The man let out a long suffering sigh again as I surveyed the room. He wore black leather, head to toe. His hair stuck out in unruly tufts and ended just above his shoulders. It looked like he’d failed to run a brush through it in years.

  “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” He asked. “The wanton destruction of property. The absolute best element in my opinion. Endless possibilities, unlike fire, earth, and water. You have boundless energy when you figure out how to in
fluence it within its boundaries. But you haven’t gotten there yet. A pity, though I didn’t expect you to fill her shoes so quickly.”

  I just stared at him. He smiled in response to my study, but it was a flexing of facial muscles at best. There was no light in his eyes. It just seemed like something pale inhabited his body in comparison to true life. Everything about him seemed dull. The monotone he used, the way he sighed as if trying to laugh. It was disconcerting.

  “Recognize him don’t you?” He asked. “Of course you do, he’s unforgettable.”

  He seemed to preen as it finally sunk in. The Doppelganger shifted and became the shark-toothed man who had pushed me into traffic. This man tried to take my choice from me. He tried to kill me.

  “Where is she, Max?” Alexandar’s voice broke my haze, crackling with suppressed anger.

  “She’s around,” he shrugged as if annoyed anyone would want to talk to someone else.

  A thought occurred to me.

  “You’re right,” I said. “I do remember him.”

  This smile almost reached his eyes, but it looked more like the lighting on a corpse rather than a genuine smile from a living person.

  “He used to deliver my pizza right?”

  His face fell in a near comical fashion. I watched Chauncy shake with silent delight out of the corner of my eye.

  “It’s not smart to provoke me,” he grumbled like a tired two year old.

  Chauncy