Ghost of Doors (City of Doors) (27 page)

"If my father can be saved," he told the throng, "then so can you. If you want to take back the things you once loved, then you must follow me. If your only want is to rampage, that can also be arranged," Wolfgang assured them with an evil grin. "There are lots of things in Doors to hunt. Come with me."

Chapter 21

"Q
UIET DOWN, YOU PRISONERS!"

Pilgrim gave a quick look around the little dungeon, its bumpy stone walls here and there oozing with some sort of gooey lichen that shimmered in the dim electric light. As far as he could tell, he was the only one there. “I’m no prisoner,” Pilgrim snorted. “I’m a part of SUN, same as you.”

“Pipe down.” Claws clicked and clacked on the grimy concrete floor. A tiny eye spied through the grated fence wall of the makeshift prison cell, a room that, in the human world, might have served to store gear for use by the subway workers. Whatever the room had been filled with was gone, and each meshed metal partition in a faded orange yellow made a room about the size of a stall. Pilgrim waited in one of these. The spying eye belonged to a little hairy dog no bigger than a cat, his reddish orange hue burning a fiery red at the ends. “I’ll decide who’s a prisoner or not,” he said.

Earlier, Pilgrim had tried brute force to tear the wire walls down, but they wouldn’t give. The warding symbol painted on them was strong, correctly drawn where it mattered, and would not break. It would keep demons and fae imprisoned for much longer than Pilgrim could wait. Wolfgang needed him. He would have to find another way out. The giant horse bent down his great neck to the spying eye’s level and took a deep sniff. Maybe this little dog would help him. “Hey, aren’t you a friend of Marie’s?” he asked, blowing out his nose.

The little dog squinted. “Aren’t you the horse of that boy’s?”

Pilgrim supposed that was true. Anything if it would get him out of here. “Yeah, sure. Le Ying,” Pilgrim answered, arching his head up gracefully. “Right?”

The dog’s nose and several stray hairs appeared next through the grate. “What are you doing in here? Never had you pegged for a traitor.”

“Two gargoyles caught me and dragged me in here. I guess they didn’t like me for some reason.”

“Well, your boy stirred up some trouble with the Lady. Maybe it’s about that.”

Pilgrim pawed at the ground. He didn’t know what the dog knew about their visit so he didn’t want to get into it. It was better to let the dog think he had nothing to do with any of it and to play up Marie as a common ally. Planting the seed that SUN might not be on the up and up was also probably worth it. “Listen, there’s a guy trying to kill that boy. I gotta get out and help him.”

Le Ying cocked his head. “Help him kill your boy?”

“No.” Pilgrim shook out his gray mane. “Help my boy not get killed.”

“Now we’re getting somewhere. What was his name…Wolfgang, right?” Pilgrim nodded. “Aha,” Le Ying barked, his fur exploding into a bush of fire. “I never forget a face.”

“That’s his name.”

“Yeah, whatever. Point is, mind like a steel trap. Let’s get you out of here.” The door to the gate flew open at the dog’s command, and Pilgrim trotted out of the tiny cell, eager to be free.

“Thanks heaps.” Pilgrim shook out his mane as a shudder slithered down his spine—he was still underground and he hated it. “Listen, I gotta tell you, something’s really wrong here.”

“Here?” Le Ying scouted around himself with eyes and nose.

“With SUN.”

Le Ying shushed him sharply and, with a couple of head-tilts, bade him to follow. They made their way into a dirty corridor, exposed wires in concrete and grimy looking oil stains on the walls and floors. “I know what you’re gonna say. Let’s just say I’ve seen some things…” The two fae trotted up some stairs and through another dank corridor before arriving to a passage that Pilgrim was familiar with. “I wanna talk to Marie about this. I’ll come with you if you’re planning on meeting up with her.”

Pilgrim nodded. “Sure as summer if you see one of those two, you’ll see the other soon enough. I can find my boy, and Marie should be with him, or will show up soon.”

Le Ying’s little feet danced on the concrete as the two worked their way out of the headquarters. He knew the base much better than Pilgrim and they traveled down passages that the horse had not been privy to. “Is he her boy, too?”

“Sort of,” the horse admitted. He wasn’t exactly sure himself. Finally outside, he put his nose to the wind and breathed the fresh air deeply. Rearing up against the backdrop of buildings, the destrier raced around the wide patch of grass that lay not far away from the subway stairwell. It felt good to be out and free. A surge of energy flowed through him from his hooves to his heart, and he bent down to nudge the little dog who was not even as big as his head. “Climb on my back and we’ll find Wolfgang and Marie,” he said.

Le Ying growled. “What?! You think I can’t keep up? Just try me, pal.” He began to puff smoke and flames around him in all directions with each word before searing the patch of grass like a grounded firework. “I’ll teach you a thing or two about racing!”

Accepting the challenge with a whinny, Pilgrim dove into the street and pumped his legs as fast as they could go. He could tell where Wolfgang was, and it had nothing to do with his soul or Wolfgang’s scent. It was a gift of sight that showed him more things than most fae could ever know, or want to know. The gift was not common, and, as far as he knew, no other fae had it—no fae untouched by demon blood, that is. Le Ying, to his credit, kept up the pace and flew like a comet at Pilgrim’s side until they reached the Farseeing Tower and the part of Wolfgang that Pilgrim knew he would find there. Pilgrim slowed and trotted around the tower, his eyes and ears alert and ready to match the vision in his head but was disturbed by the shuffling motion of figures in the distance. “Do you see that?” the great horse asked. Le Ying, not far behind him, put his nose up in the air.

“It’s too far,” the dog admitted. “But I smell death.”

“So it’s not just me.” He slowed his pace even more until he was carefully walking down the street to an alley and trying desperately all the while to make as little noise as possible. The first zombie to pass by startled him so much that he nearly trampled Le Ying under his half-bowling-ball sized hooves and, after seeing the sea of bodies crowding deep down the alleyway, was relieved that they did not attack. If anything, they had a bluish pallor and the symbol of SUN—a circle around a dot—on their faces, implying to Pilgrim that they were under SUN’s control. And the bluish cast to the walls came from the doors now flushed with a blue glamour, not the sky which was actually cloudy and darkening moment to moment.

Le Ying pinned his ears back. “What does this mean?”

Pilgrim copied him. “SUN,” he said, “owns the city.”

“We do?” The city around them was undeniable evidence for Pilgrim’s words, but both of them knew that this should be impossible. All that talk about how desperately they needed members, and now, the faction had taken control? Le Ying voiced the question they both were asking: “How?”

Pilgrim returned to the task of finding Wolfgang and finally reconciled his vision with what he saw around him. Not far from the Farseeing Tower, in the back room of some sort of office or store, stood Wolfgang’s body, purposefully trapped there behind a locked door that Pilgrim was forced to kick down. “I’da never guessed he was here. Hey, hey, whelp,” Le Ying barked. “You okay?” The dull glare in his eyes answered the question. “Oh, man,” the dog said. “They got him, too.”

Pilgrim guessed that the other zombies were human once, too, and it didn’t make sense. Why were they stealing their souls if they were the ones SUN had sworn to protect? Wasn’t that like killing them? Le Ying must have had the same thoughts, because he added, “I don’t understand something. I thought we were supposed to help humans? I thought that was the point.”

“So did I,” Pilgrim said, and crouched down low so that the ghost of Wolfgang Schäfer could climb on his back. “Help him up, can you, Le Ying?”

“I’ll try.” The little dog nipped at the lifeless body until it responded, and herded it onto Pilgrim’s back as he’d been asked. “He moves as well as the others. Just doesn’t seem very motivated.”

“I can’t blame him,” Pilgrim said, standing. “I’m sorry this happened to you, Chief. I promise I’ll keep you safe and we’ll find Marie. Maybe she knows what happened.”

“Do you know where she is?”

“Not yet,” Pilgrim replied. “I’m more worried about who did this to him and why.”

“The same reason they did it to everyone else,” The little dog reasoned.

Pilgrim thought that made sense. There was some way to take over the city using the humans souls, and SUN did it. “Could it be reversed?” he asked. “Or is everyone stuck like this?”

Growling, Le Ying trotted back out into the street and Pilgrim followed him. “I can’t believe we’ve been tricked.”

“What do you mean?”

“Tricked into helping them. I dunno about you, but I devoted my life to SUN to help humans, to protect them, and I know lots of others who did, too. So now, how are we gonna know who is fighting for SUN or against them if we’re all in the same faction?”

Pilgrim stomped a foot, careful not to rock Wolfgang so much that he fell off. “Simple. We make a new faction.”

“How?”

“We start it the same way SUN was started. With enough fae or monsters occupying a block that it changes the glamour on a door.”

“That could take days. Weeks. We need something until then. Like, a sign or a symbol we can paint on ourselves.”

“How about a star?”

“Hmm.” The little dog puffed out some smoke through his thin dog lips and thought about it. “I like it.” He blew out a 5 pointed shape in the smoke which floated up into a ring above his head. “Like this?”

Pilgrim nodded. “Good enough.”

“Now we’ve got to write it on ourselves with something.” Running around in a circle, the little dog became overwhelmed with his own excited thoughts. “You stay here with your boy. I’m going to see who’s on our side, rally some troops. We’ll make up some kind of an armband or something to wear and I’ll pass them around. Bring you back some. Don’t go anywhere.” Pilgrim figured it was as good idea as any as the dog flew off into the blue city like a shooting star in the night sky. It made sense to know who their friends were, which was the point of belonging to a faction in the first place. If only Wolfgang would come back. He could see him, see his soul wandering in that other land in another body on another horse. His demon vision was never wrong. He wished it worked both ways so that he could tell Wolfgang where he was and what he was doing, but this would have to do. In a short time, he would be back, and they could piece together what, if anything, they knew about this new war.

Chapter 22

T
HE HUNT RUSHED THROUGH THE
streets of Doors like a vicious river, a flood of angry claws and fangs stopping for nothing and no one. As he and Marie approached the Farseeing Tower, Wolfgang was reminded of what happened to his body, and where his doppelganger might have left it. “We should check around here,” he told her. “My body might be nearby…dead or alive.”

Johnny swooped down from his vantage point above the city. “I see Dapplegrim around the next corner,” he said. “But the sky is choked with elements sworn to SUN. I can’t make a move up there.” He hovered just above the sidewalk, the paved stones slick with rain and a fog that kept rolling in and out from the river.

Tears fell from Wolfgang’s borrowed eyes at the sight of the great, gray horse. “There you are, Chief,” said Pilgrim, his tail swishing behind him against the wind. “I thought you might get stuck like this for good.”

Wolfgang clumsily dismounted and hobbled from the undead steed that had served him and his father well. His arms fell upon Pilgrim and he pulled the great horse to him in a massive hug. Then he helped his body down from the broad back, his soul spontaneously drawn to it. The transfer of life from body to body happened almost at the exact moment that hand gripped hand, skin touched skin. There was no magic to it. It felt completely natural to want to be in his own skin, to dwell in the body he was born to, and he could not fight it any longer. His soul slipped away, back into its rightful form, a drop of water filling a shell. That left his father’s body on its own once more, but it did not complain and returned to mount the horse that had brought him here.