Ghost of Doors (City of Doors) (6 page)

White knuckles peaked over the Touren’s grips, the rest of his father's hands lay hidden until he stretched them. The fingers undulated weakly, flexing in waves of nervousness or excitement. Wolfgang focused on the one hand he could see clearly, the right, and noticed that his father was sans wedding ring. That brought into stark relief another discrepancy too great to ignore: He was missing a finger.

Wolfgang instinctively sat back and pulled Vogelfang close. He stood up on the seat and flipped off backward, somersaulting to the pavement and raising Vogelfang at the ready to launch like a spear into this misshapen surrogate. The truth would not get away; whatever that was on the bike had some explaining to do. But the Touren, having lost its passenger, spun about and stopped.

“What have you done to my father?” shouted Wolfgang.

“You throw that, and I guess you’ll never know, huh?” The father surrogate slipped to the empty street from the bike which ticked slowly, contrasting with Wolfgang’s speeding heartbeat, which only grew faster. “I haven’t done anything. Yet.”

“And my mother?” Wolfgang said, rage building. “I bet you know where she is. Right?”

“Hey, she’s
my
mother. Don’t you think I care?”

It was out. It was his doppelganger, who was wasting no time in tearing his family apart to get to him.

“If you’ve hurt them, I’ll make you wish you were dead.”

His twin still in his father’s form stepped forward, too cocksure to even consider running. “I think you better worry about yourself.” The
Spree
flowed behind them, a bridge over it not far away. In Doors, bridges did not evoke the same fear as they did in other worlds for fae. In other worlds, fae magic could be weakened over water, but the water in Doors was magical itself, thus posing no problem for them. Where could Wolfgang make his escape, then? The motorcycle would have to be his way out. If he could injure his doppelganger just enough to make him think twice, that could afford him enough time to get away.

Dark spots of birds overhead swarmed lazily in the heat, perhaps enjoying the struggle they saw below. His doppelganger was far quicker and stronger than he, but Wolfgang managed to strike out once or twice to keep some distance, though none of the strikes landed. The changeling must have realized Wolfgang's plan for he kept backing him up toward the bridge, further and further away from the bike. Vogelfang was sharp and dangerous enough to keep most monsters at bay, and the doppelganger obviously wanted to get him within reach of his knife.

"We don't have to do this," Wolfgang shouted. "We can work together. Become allies."

"I hope I am never so pathetic that I would need you for an ally."

The doppelganger became more aggressive, slapping Vogelfang aside with his knife and a shout until he finally got the better of Wolfgang and grabbed Vogelfang with both hands, trusting his strength to win out. Wolfgang did not want to relinquish the weapon but feared he wasn't strong enough to keep it. Shoving Wolfgang hard against one of the bridge's lampposts with a resounding clang, the doppelganger claimed the artifact as his own and drew it back to strike. A concrete slab crumbled from stress beside them as a troll bigger than them both together launched itself up from under the bridge and clutched at the first person it saw: The changeling. Forgotten in surprise, Vogelfang fell away to the edge of the sidewalk and dangled precariously over the water.

The troll shrieked unintelligibly in rage; the changeling, still in the form of Wolfgang's father, struggled as it lifted him high over its head like a rag doll. With his back throbbing and still unable to move, Wolfgang could weakly make out through the haze of pain the form of swords or knives sticking from the troll's massive back, swords perhaps from those who had tried but failed to resist becoming a meal. The doppelganger reached for one of those.

"Don't! It's a trap," Wolfgang shouted, his senses returning enough to remember what he knew of Doors and its denizens. "Those swords are cursed." He was proven right as, moments later, the doppelganger drew forth one and returned it to the monster's chest, but the troll didn't react in pain; the doppelganger did. The swords would injure those who used them, not their intended victim. As the troll ambled away to carry the doppelganger back under the bridge, Wolfgang saw his chance to escape but his body, for long moments, would not respond. Finally finding his strength, he scrambled awkwardly to the motorcycle after pausing to scoop up Vogelfang.

But he wouldn't leave his doppelganger to his horrible fate. Mounting and revving the motorcycle, Wolfgang held Vogelfang in one hand and steered with the other. He jousted with the artifact against the fleeing troll, severing an arm at the elbow. The half-an-arm and the fae prize fell together into the river Spree, both sinking quickly out of sight.

"You're welcome," he muttered and sped off to rejoin his friends.

Chapter 4

J
OHNNY MERRIWEATHER DID NOT BELIEVE
in humans. That is, he did not have enough faith in them to trust them. He used to. But he had seen enough jealousy, greed, and betrayal to change his mind. True, he was a creature who did not know hunger or thirst--the restrictions of all animals--nor the need for companionship and how those needs could warp a person. But he did have feelings, no matter how much he kept them to himself, and he knew which side he was on. That MOON grew in record numbers of late only proved his point. Humans were the larvae of monsters, nothing more.

So what he saw in the street that afternoon from his vantage point high above as he left the Schäfers’ neighborhood did not entirely surprise him. Disgusted with Wolfgang, Johnny had joined the summer sky with every intention to report back to SUN HQ to get new orders. Disgusted with himself, he sought a distraction in the streets below to keep from reflecting on the regretful things he had said and done. He still believed that he was right, but he didn’t know how to fix the problem, how to take the neighborhood, a neighborhood that had belonged to SUN ever since there had been a SUN to claim it, back. The streets of Doors were a web, each highway, road, and alley circling out from the center, buildings filling the spaces in between. Movements of creatures and vehicles drew his eye, and one vehicle in particular, one which he had often admired, Dr. Schäfer’s black Touren-AWO, raced as if to a fire (when Johnny knew he was racing
from
one) back to HQ. But the driver was not Dr. Schäfer, so Johnny moved in closer for a better look: His halberd held straight up like a flagpole on his back, it was clearly Wolfgang.

Figures
, Johnny thought.
Would it kill him to die just once for what he believed in?
He wondered where Wolfgang’s shadows were, Dapplegrim and Marie, when his thoughts were interrupted. Johnny’s sight from afar rivaled binoculars, and when he saw something floating in the river, he couldn’t believe what he was seeing was real. Doors had warped the minds of humans before, but not in the case of Wolfgang. Wolfgang was one of the most stable humans he had ever met, not that that was saying much. And here he was, stealing his father's motorbike and leaving his father to drown.

Johnny felt rage rush into the empty hole in his stomach. Dr. Schäfer was a good man and a SUN besides. As much as Johnny wanted to make Wolfgang pay, he could not let the doctor die alone in the river. Johnny was a force for retribution, not mercy, but that wouldn’t keep him from rescuing a desperate comrade. He summoned the gentlest of winds through his fingertips to collect the body from the river before the sirens could get to it and lifted it up in a stretcher made purely of air. The weather above him changed. A moment ago it was darkening as he called in his heart for Wolfgang’s blood, but now clouds hung in a gray haze, blocking out the sun, swaddling them and whatever watched nearby in a gray cloak of fog. Saved from the river, Dr. Schäfer laid coughing and sputtering on the cut stone sidewalk as Johnny knelt beside him.

“You okay, Doc?”

“I don’t know what happened,” Dr. Schäfer said, his voice struggling. “He’s…changed.”

Johnny remembered their argument earlier that day, in SUN’s fallen neighborhood. “Yeah, I know.”

“Can you stop him?” His look of concern for his son conflicted so much with the outrage in Johnny’s heart that he almost felt guilty. Almost.

“Yeah, don’t you worry, Herr Doktor.” Johnny clamped a reassuring hand on the old man's. “He won’t get away with this.”

The rage gave way to an unfamiliar feeling. If he could describe it at all he would have called it a softening of the heart, like pity, a regret that he could not undo this wrong. He would help Dr. Schäfer back to SUN and his lab.

Then Wolfgang would pay.

☽☉✩

T
HE MOTORCYCLE WAS A ROCKET
beneath him, thrusting Wolfgang through the streets unchallenged. He needed to get to the outskirts of Doors soon, or he would have no chance of breaching the Hindernis before dark. He didn't want to be wandering around in the No Man's Land after darkness fell. One thing he and his companions all had in common: The three of them were daylight beings. Daylight was their time, was on their side. It gave them strength, helped them to see and think clearly. At night, living shadows came out to feed, to grow, to destroy for the fun of it.

In the Hindernis, night was eternal.

He had just emerged from the tall and modern buildings of downtown and slipped into an alley when a familiar face formed ahead of him in the street. But the golden locks shone a bit dingier, the sun not quite reaching the ground in the valley formed by the great buildings. His ball cap drawn down low, only a hint of the gleam from his eyes shone as he said, "You don't need to go any further. This ends here." Wolfgang had never seen that look on Johnny's face before--at least, not directed at him. It was a cold and disturbed look, one befitting a child of the wind. At the same time, Wolfgang hated to see that look on his face, because it meant he was beyond reasoning with. His mind was dead-set at this moment against him.

"Hey, Johnny," he offered, but he knew that weak greeting in friendship would do nothing. Calling out to the storm wouldn't calm a hurricane. "What ends here?"

Johnny didn't need to look around. A zephyr has eyes on the back of his head. He didn't use the wind; he
was
the wind. But he looked around for the sake of Wolfgang, to better dramatize his point. "The road. Everything. Whatever. For you."

Wolfgang did not doubt him. His expression had spoken volumes, and Wolfgang was ready to take flight the only way he could, on the motorcycle. He gunned it and sped off down the street, back the way he came, but it was useless. How could he outride the wind?

Just up ahead, Marie and Pilgrim had stopped. Since bridges narrowed the traffic from one side of the city to the other, they had to come this way and so did Wolfgang, and since the sound of the Touren was unique in Doors, Pilgrim certainly would have heard it and recognized it. Wolfgang raced toward them, holding nothing back and hoping for their aid.

Johnny made good on the promise he'd held in his eyes: the burst came, like a shock wave, a gust so strong and sudden it could have broken his bones if it had been more focused. Wolfgang knew this. He had seen it in action before. But Johnny's intention this time was to stop him, and the gust did so elegantly, with a practiced and perfected swoop against the motorcycle as easily as a child throws a ball.

Friction lost, the motorcycle weaved into and against the wind, and Wolfgang did his best to keep it upright, but failed. It spun into a grassy median where Wolfgang could no longer hang on; it flipped several times alone and crashed in loud metallic thunder against a lamppost.

"I guess now we know which side Johnny is on," Marie said, after helping Wolfgang to his feet and asking him if he was all right. He wobbled helplessly and leaned heavily on one leg.

"Damn is he strong," Wolfgang said. "Where did he get all that power?"

"I hate to guess," she said. "Can you walk?"

"I think so," he said, hoping that his leg was only badly bruised where the motorcycle had skidded upon it and not, as he at first thought, broken. He lifted up the leg of his jeans and studied the proud flesh above his boot. It was swollen, yes, the color fast changing from red to purple, but nothing about the leg's angle was amiss.

"It doesn't look broken," she told him.

"It doesn't look good, either. I just hope it holds together because I don't think that's all he has planned." Wolfgang followed Marie's eyes to where, high above the rooftops, they could see the haloed shape of the zephyr in the distance as he bent light and air to his will. Electricity shocked the air around him. He grew steadily in their sight, speeding toward them, returning for another attack. Wolfgang nodded to her in understanding and imagined it would be easy to run on his injured leg when he thought of what might happen if he stopped. They scrambled onto the horse as bicycles and garbage cans skidded past, flipping end over end before slamming into buildings ahead of them. "We have to get underground," Marie said, desperation and exertion threading her voice. "He'll kill us out here."