Doubletake

by Rob Thurman

  “Lighten up, Pinky.” Robin grinned. “All fairs, carnivals, markets, bazaars have their fakes. Be grateful he isn’t a real expert in extispicy and doesn’t have the true sight or he’d be screaming the ceiling down. We’d die in an avalanche of brick.”

  “I focused on the one word that interested me. Extra spicy?” I stepped over the tentacle of the Bride of Cthulhu who was browsing a jewelry stand.

  “No, Taco Bell. Back to the bar napkins for you. Extispicy…the ability to read omens and predict the future by reading entrails.”

  “Cal calls that lunch and hasn’t delivered a prediction yet,” Niko said dryly. Kalakos stayed behind us, but not too far. He thought he’d seen and hunted the unclean. He was a babe in the woods. I didn’t recognize one-fourth of what was roaming around down here and I hoped I didn’t run into them upstairs.

  Sometimes things are so nasty that you don’t want to get close enough to do your job. Carrying a gun in one hand and a barf bag in the other because their ugliness was beyond extreme wasn’t worth the money. But then I saw something else. There was a shimmer to one side. Not the love-at-first-sight idiocy shimmer, but a true shimmer of what I thought was a silver-blue light. But when I glanced over, there was no light. There was a woman.

  As I stopped to get a closer look, she was already facing me. She, like Cthulhu’s main squeeze, was at a jewelry stall. A choker of polished black tears and garnets or rubies cut into star shapes hung from her hand. “It’s beautiful and it’s sad, isn’t it, sugar? But family is that way. I had it special-made to remind me. Life is shorter than we know and we’d best get our asses out there and kick up our heels.”

  The choker looked nice on her when she held it to her throat. Her accent reminded me of my trip down to South Carolina, Southern, although not quite the same Southern, but neither of those things were what caught my attention most of all. Not close to it.

  She looked like me.

  Her skin was as pale as mine, and that was hard to find. Her eyes were the same exact gray, her hair the same black only with a slight wave to it. If we were together—not that we were, and where had that thought come out of in the middle of this mess? I felt a twitch below. Oh yeah. That’s where. If we were together, we’d look like one of those bizarre brother/sister-looking couples you see. Walking mirror images—she was close to my height too; not quite an Amazon, but definitely not fragile. Her smile, it was all me too. Wicked and wild, but without the shadows. “What’s the matter, sugar? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  I started to get a scent off of her. She wasn’t human, not down here. So what was she? Goodfellow put an end to that quickly. “Ah, gamiseme tora. No, no, no. I can’t.…Trixa would kick my…No, no. I apologize, Ms.…?” He knew her, but he didn’t know her name? Or from the shifting from foot to foot was he waiting for the name she was using?

  “Charla Tae-Lynn.” Despite the name, she was no countrified Alice down the rabbit hole, this chick. No way. “But this one”—her hand straightened the collar of my bloody, torn shirt—“he can call me Tae. Three names can be a mouthful and then some. And if I want a mouthful, there are lots more pleasurable mouthfuls to be had, ain’t there, sugar?” My brain fried at the double entendre. She winked, slapped my ass—which enjoyed it thoroughly—and disappeared into the milling crowd.

  “Who…?”

  “No.” Goodfellow shoved me along in the opposite direction.

  “But…”

  “No.” He kept shoving. “You think Delilah is hot shit? That one would eat Delilah alive and have room for the whole Lupa pack for dessert.”

  “What is she?” Niko asked. “She has a…presence.”

  “Presence? Presence? You’ve no idea. And we have enough trouble. Given another day, Cal won’t have a dick to insert anywhere anyway. He’ll be Janus mush or locked in with a pit of succubae that he wants nothing to do with and they want even less to do with him. Either way, his sex life is on hold. How about we get to work and try to do something about that…and save our lives, if that’s not too much to ask for?”

  We ended up at the last stall next to the bricked-up wall. This place was unbelievable. It reminded me of the trade shows where, hand to God, the guns were all within the law, Officers, until five minutes later when the cops were gone and you were being shown the latest in the highly illegal, mean-as-rattlesnake-poison, newest design of machine gun to come out of Israel. So new you could feel the packing grease on the stock.

  “This is, as I said, my last guess. We hit the black market to see if anyone had been asking about a nine-foot artifact of assassination, and there’s no one better to ask than my old friend the Artful Dodger.” He was trying to summon up the old Goodfellow energy, but the shape we were all in, none of us felt like being upright, much less bargaining with a thief. And if he went by the Artful Dodger, he was a thief. But so was Robin and he had no equal.

  Dodger grunted, unimpressed with Goodfellow’s praise.

  “Although it’s probably pointless, as Janus’s type are gone for all time or not for sale. But if someone needed Janus, whether he already possessed him or stole him, a Rom perhaps or someone more Grimmly inclined, that doesn’t mean we make the assumption he had the words to activate him. If they didn’t, and as Hephaestus isn’t talking—sanely—this would the only place to find them. Words sell for more than gold or anything else often enough.”

  Dodger grunted in agreement on that one.

  “And if a Rom did buy them, it would be here, as I doubt more and more that Hephaestus entrusted them to some of the Vayash; it would be like giving your car keys to a two-year-old and telling him to take a drive around the block. Disaster.” Robin leaned against the booth, yawning, exhausted as we all were. “If it were Grimm, on the other hand, he’d drive Janus like Andretti with a Viper.”

  The Dodger grunted at him again—a “get off, you lazy bastard” one. I had to admire him. He could grunt with the best of them.

  Hoping the stall was sturdy, I watched Robin lean harder, as equally unimpressed with Dodger as Dodger was with him. He yawned again before returning to his train of thought. “If those words were found here, then we might find the second set. The ones that put the Statue of Liberty’s boyfriend back to sleep. Dodger, can you point us in the right direction? I know you’re more about the glitter and shine than that boring reading and writing.”

  “Money, lives, and blood no object?” The grunt became a question. “And I learnt me some lettering. If it makes money, I learn.”

  “Good for you, and price no object? Who do you think you’re talking to? Who got you the Trojan horse while Troy fell? And it was on fire at the time. If my business wasn’t serious, I’d take it to Walmart.” He lifted a shoe off the damp black-green fungus creeping across the floor and the rivulets of sewer water that seeped into anything belowground in the city. “At least they mop at Walmart. I’ve heard people say so.”

  “Lemme look, guvnor.” That he mixed with a grunt and grumble to keep his vocal cords in the game. He swept jewelry, silver and gold teeth, metallic nuggets—all that was shiny and covered the threadbare black velvet into a large Tupperware bin. Robin didn’t go to Walmart, but this guy did. Putting them away, he then pulled out and slammed down a book as thick as a NYC phone book but wider, bigger, and the cover was definitely made of tanned, dark brown human skin. It was the frigging Necronomicon, and if it wasn’t, it should’ve been. “I’ve expanded me business.” Dodger chortled slyly. “On my way to being a right proper gentleman now, I am. I am. Rich I’ll be, sitting up in some fancy roost like you.”

  Goodfellow groaned. “Don’t start that again. Not that accent. If you can’t do it correctly, don’t do it at all. I cut your tongue out once. Don’t make me do it again.”

  Cut it out, huh? It’d grown back nice, though, hadn’t it? Which meant…

  The guy was short, had to be six inches under five feet, and he looked odd, as if the face of a ten- or twelve-year-old boy had aged while the rest of h
im, including his child-size hands, didn’t grow. He had a face that would substitute for a prune, mud brown hair cut in a bowl cut, and eyes that matched the mud of his hair. He looked human, but I’d bet Kalakos’s left nut, right one too, that he wasn’t. Down here Niko and the gypsy were the only humans walking around. As for me, there was no dual citizenship in monster–human land.

  I leaned a few inches closer for a whiff to get a trace of what he really was. I narrowed my eyes. All I was getting was human, every last cell. I tried elsewhere, the last refuge of a human on the outside but a paien on the inside, their minds—that was always the difference. It took but one cell to get you in the club, and where better to hide it? And from the faintest trace I detected, it was one cell. One damn cell to have him crossing the line. That was a trick.

  And developed into a bigger one than I thought, as Dodger was giving me the same once-over.

  “Monster.”

  This time I wasn’t the one saying it. Dodger was. He said it to me as he grew two feet taller, his arms became wings, his head narrowed, his mouth became a beak, and black feathers covered him. The irises of his now round eyes were a white full-moon shine. They made his feathers appear blacker. The night and the moon, as one.

  “Monster,” he croaked. “Auphe!”

  No one else had heard the “Auphe” over the loud bickering of the customers as Niko wrapped his hand around the beak, shutting it tightly. The wings flapped desperately as Robin did his best to calm him down. As he did, Niko said, “The Artful Dodger from Dickens. His real name in the book was Jack Dawkins. Jackdaw. A jackdaw is one of the known tricksters. Very clever. I wonder who fooled who? Did Dickens fool his readers or did Jackdaw fool Dickens?”

  “He’s very…free…with his knowledge,” Kalakos said, eyes fixed on Jackdaw, but the comment was meant for Niko.

  “And you just noticed?” I asked wryly.

  Goodfellow wasn’t having any luck with the convincing or restraining until he snapped, “He is what he is. Do you want to annoy him enough that he tells us to let you go for him to handle your squawking death wish?”

  I pulled out the Glock and slapped it down on the book. “I’ve never seen a trickster turn into a bird before, but Thanksgiving is only a few months away. I’ll bet you wouldn’t taste that different from turkey.” Then I picked up the gun and aimed it at one MoonPie eye, the muzzle a half an inch or less away. “So shut the fuck up, as plucking feathers all day from your dead ass isn’t my idea of a good time.”

  Jackdaw stayed a bird, one that bowed his head to hide his eyes and the tears dripping from them. I didn’t know birds could cry. “This is what I am,” I said flatly to Kalakos. “Whether I try to back down from the paien’s insults and attacks or I am this, I am always treated the same once they know. Terror or attempted slaughter. I learned that a long time ago.”

  Kalakos watched as Dodger rapidly turned the pages of the book. “How long since you were able to try to back down?”

  “Sixteen. The day I escaped the Auphe.” The two years of captivity I didn’t know. I didn’t remember if I’d backed down or fought. I did know one thing: I might have backed down in the beginning, but I must have learned to fight. Or I wouldn’t have made it back with teeth coated in black Auphe blood.

  The pages of Dodger’s book were flying faster and faster. It was a good indication that this wasn’t a conversation he wanted to be a part of and as soon as he was rid of us the happier he’d be. “Humans only notice once in a while that I’m not…right. But I don’t live in a human world anymore. It wouldn’t be safe for them. Eventually…” I shrugged.

  “Everything is not eventual,” Niko refuted sharply.

  “But eventually everything is,” Kalakos said. It wasn’t a counter to Niko. It was as if he were saying it to himself.

  “There is nothing. There is no Janus.” The crappy cockney accent had disappeared and the voice was that of a bird, a harsh caw, but an improvement. “I am sorry. I am sorry. Please. Please.” The tears had slowed but not stopped. He’d been about to scream my identity to every monster in the place, and I recognized crocodile tears whether they came out of the eyes of a bird or not.

  Sometimes I took off my mask and showed who I was, could be, would be.

  There were times it was necessary…like with a giant screeching tattletale of a blackbird.

  There were times it was purely instinctual.

  And there were times I enjoyed it.

  “Dodger.” I leaned closer and picked up a fallen black feather, ran my finger along it. “I’ve been looking into goose-down mattresses. Good for insomnia. But expensive as hell.” I considered him before smiling—a sociopathic shopper finding a bargain. “But you…you’d be free. And better than cable when I have you pluck your own feathers out one by one”—I let the one I was holding drift away—“…by one.”

  Dodger dived his beak back into the book, turned a few more pages, and then: “Here. It says here. There are commands or spells or phrases, but none specific in a way they can be written down for the sake of history. They are…” He peered at the word, puzzled, as a last fake tear fell from the end of his beak. “Mutable? Indefinable? Erratic?” He hunched. “I am sorry, Lord Auphe. That is the best I can decipher.”

  Lord Auphe. Now I did feel like shit, crocodile tears or not. He was afraid; I knew it was true. The tears were an act; the fear wasn’t. Almost everyone who knew the truth was afraid. I grabbed Robin’s wrist and took off his five-trillion-dollar watch, shiny and gleaming as they came, and tossed it on the book. “Sell it. Buy Mrs. Jackdaw something nice. And keep your mouth shut until we’re gone or a jackdaw mattress won’t have a chance to hock anything.”

  As I was turning to leave, with Goodfellow bitching and snarling about his watch before demanding the location of other book stalls with more helpful information, I saw it, a black blot overhead. Bad things come from beneath, beside, and overhead. I didn’t skip a location and hadn’t since I was fourteen.

  It hadn’t been there before. It had been brick shadowed in the gloom of torches and lanterns, but now it was pure black with the sheen of dirty oil. “Goodfellow, stop your bitching. What’s that?” I pointed up.

  “Zeus’s pubic lice. We took up a collection. They were supposed to be exterminated three weeks ago or I never would’ve brought us here.” He already had his sword drawn. “The blood. The blood our clothes are soaked in. It woke them. They sleep in the side tunnels. It’s the manananggals.” It was the sound a cat would make coughing up a hairball or Salome would make coughing up a Great Dane, but apparently it was serious. Goodfellow was already moving back toward the entrance. “I’m going to eviscerate every last one of those lazy exterminators. Run. Run!”

  Strange, twisted heads lifted from their bargaining to watch with suspicion and nervousness as we tore through the market, trusting that if Goodfellow thought it was bad after facing Hephaestus and his crew, it was plenty goddamn bad.

  “Manananggals,” Niko said as we ran, his own sword out, “are descended from the ancestors of bats. An offshoot. They’re similar to vampires, although vampires are descended from Homo sapiens, humans. They suck blood through a hardened, long, tube-shaped tongue, sometimes even taking the blood directly from the heart if they strike deeply enough. They form in colonies as real bats do, but are much larger. They—”

  A dark olive-skinned hand came up to smack the back of Niko’s head like the countless times my brother had smacked mine. Kalakos growled, “We are about to die. Could we do it without the enlightening voice-over? Khul!”

  “I still hate you, Kalakos,” I said, “but that is a memory I’ll keep to my dying day.” Which might be this day.

  I looked up to see the stream of silent wings in rippling motion, a river of night streaming over our heads. Niko’s general pissiness at having his lecture interrupted was apparent. “Fine. One last fact. They don’t attack one at a time or even two or three. The entire colony will swarm down on us the same as a school of piranha
. They will blanket us. There’s no way from beneath that. They’ll suck us dry in seconds.”

  Jesus. Could this day get any worse? And dying in a pink shirt was still in my future. Goddamn it.

  We were halfway to the arch when I raised my eyes again. One of them hit the wall, tumbled, and, before it straightened, its flight let me see more than I wanted. What fresh hell was this? They were cut in half at the waist. No legs. Only a waist and a heavy sac of intestines that should be cascading out…but weren’t.

  “Holy shit, why are they sliced in half? What keeps their guts from falling out? That is disgusting. Niko…”

  “If we live, you can Google it when we get home. I don’t want to weigh you down with so much information that it slows your running.” If we lived…I was currently on Niko’s shit list, which made one not that invested in living.

  “I was listening. I didn’t do anything. It was Kalakos. I marvel at every fact that falls from your lips, I swear.”