scared now, even if you won’t scream. You’re so scared I can taste it from here.” I took a step back, holding the bat in front of me like a sword. I didn’t bother trying to run. Why would I? There was nowhere left to go.
It hit the door hard, bowing it inward. The cheap plywood door started to give way on the second hit. It was never meant to stand up to this sort of abuse. This was it: this was the end. I was going to die wearing nothing but a bathrobe, at the hands of a Doppelganger I’d been stupid enough to invite into my home. I was never going to find the answers I was looking for. Evening and Ross would never be avenged.
The doorbell rang.
Silence reigned as the Doppelganger ceased its assault on the door. There was a long pause, both of us sorting out what to do next.
And then I heard my own voice call, cheerfully, “Coming!”
Footsteps moved away, down the hall, too light for a creature the size of the Doppelganger . . . but just right to be believably mine.
I stayed where it was until the footsteps faded. Then I undid the lock and pushed the chair out of the way, opening the half-shattered door. The hall was empty. The Doppelganger had actually gone to answer the doorbell. Oh, that was smart. Why didn’t it just hang a sign on its back that said kick me?
The carpet crunched underfoot as I inched along, despite my best efforts to be quiet. Considering the beating I’d taken—and the amount of blood I was losing—I thought I was doing pretty well just by not falling down. Not that it would do me any good if the Doppelganger caught me out in the open. I might be walking into a trap, but that was a chance I had to take.
I was halfway down the hall when I heard the voices arguing from my living room. “You don’t understand!” Dare, the combination of anxiety and desperation making her voice impossible to miss, even without the affected accent. “When Devin says to come here, we come here. You can’t tell us to go. We can’t listen. He won’t let us.”
“She’s right, ma’am.” Oh, root and branch, Manuel was with her. I shuddered, unable to stop myself from imagining what the Doppelganger would do to them, and forced myself another few feet down the hall. “Devin said we had to come and help you with anything you needed.”
“I’m sorry, kids,” my voice replied. The Doppelganger was using a painfully cheerful tone that would have been a clue that something was wrong all by itself, if Manuel and Dare had known me better. I never sound that happy before sundown. “I just don’t think it’s a good idea for you to visit right now. Maybe you can come back later? I’ll bake you some cookies . . .”
Okay, that was
It wasn’t the best comeback ever, but considering how much blood I’d lost, I didn’t think I was doing too badly. My double turned to face me, stolen eyes narrowing. “I thought I sent you to your room.”
Manuel and Dare gaped as they looked between us. It wasn’t hard to tell us apart: the Doppelganger was fully clothed, and I was wearing nothing but a bathrobe. Also, I was the one doing all the bleeding. “You did. Unfortunately, I’m a little old to be grounded.”
“Uh . . . ma’am?” said Manuel, wide-eyed.
The Doppelganger lashed out with one hand, fingers morphing into talons, and shoved Manuel away from the door. He shrieked in pain and surprise as he fell backward, tumbling out of sight.
“Manny!” Dare shouted.
The Doppelganger turned and stalked toward me, growing taller as it abandoned the pretense of my form. “Bad girl,” it chided, grinning. “Bad,
It was moving slowly, certain of its own strength. That was the only opening I was likely to get, and so I took it, swinging my bat as hard toward its midsection as I could. Something in my shoulder ripped free, and the world was suddenly bathed in a fresh veil of pain.
The Doppelganger reached out and caught the bat midswing, careless as a child gathering daisies. It tightened its hand, and the wood shattered into splinters, leaving me holding nothing but the bottom third of what used to be a bat.
“Oh, crap . . .” I said, starting to back away. Aluminum. Next time, I was going to buy aluminum. Or maybe a tire iron.
Moving too fast to dodge, the Doppelganger reached out and grabbed my chin, talons cutting into my cheek. “You’re a stupid thief, but you’re scared enough now,” it said, still smiling. “You’re going to tell me everything I need to know.” Dropping the splinters of my bat, it dug its fingers under my armpit and lifted me off the ground. My heart was pounding so hard that it hurt almost as badly as my injuries. I’d seen death before, even recently, but it had never been that close.
That might have been the end, if the Doppelganger hadn’t made one small, fatal mistake: it turned its back on Dare. I didn’t know her very well, and I still could have told it that turning its back on her wasn’t a good idea. The young changeling had been given time to process all her possible responses to someone smacking her brother aside like a stray dog, and she’d settled on the one that came most naturally. Rage.
“Hey,
Snarling, it turned toward Dare. I had to give the girl this much: she might have been an arrogant little brat, but she looked into the face of death and was sincerely unimpressed. “I’ve seen scarier things than you on blind dates,” she said. She still needed a dialogue coach, but I wasn’t in any position to judge. “You wanna piece of me?”
Apparently it did, because it stalked toward her, still snarling. She didn’t flinch, but flung another knife, this time aiming for the throat. The creature batted it aside without a pause. I think that’s when Dare realized that maybe insulting something that large when it’s close enough to catch you isn’t a good idea, because she started backing away, eyes wide.
My shoulder wasn’t just bleeding anymore, it was gushing, blood soaking my robe and running freely down my arm. I forced myself to stand, squinting past the pain that threatened to knock me down again. Four of Dare’s knives were embedded in the thing’s back. Two were stuck in the lower back, and one in the side of its arm, but the fourth was at an angle that might put it through the rib cage if somebody grabbed hold of the hilt and shoved upward.
I’ve always made a pretty good somebody. Moving as fast as I could still manage, I wrapped my hands around the knife’s hilt, slippery with almost black blood. My left hand didn’t want to close, but I forced it, gritting my teeth as the Doppelganger’s blood started burning my skin. Dare was whimpering somewhere in front of me, blocked from sight by the bulk of the thing’s body.
That did it. My hand finally caught a good grip, and I shoved the knife up as hard as I could.The Doppelganger bellowed, whipping halfway around, but I managed to keep hold of the knife, twisting it and driving it deeper in. One clawed fist hit my right arm as the creature tried to rip me off its back, slashing through the muscle of my bicep. It didn’t matter anymore. I was committed: I couldn’t have let go of that knife if I’d wanted to.
“Dare, the front!” I shouted.
She didn’t say anything, but I heard her high heels hitting the floor as she launched herself at the thing. The Doppelganger kept bellowing, lashing out in all directions as it tried to get away. I twisted the knife harder, not letting the pain of the blood washing over my hands force me to let go. It felt like the skin was being eaten off my bones. At least if that happened, it would probably stop hurting. I heard Dare strike again, screaming and cursing, and the Doppelganger fell. It landed unmoving, with me still clinging to its back.
When I was certain it had thrashed its last, I pried my unwilling hands away from the hilt of Dare’s knife, forcing myself to my feet. Dare’s last strike had opened its throat in a ghoulish parody of Evening’s death, bathing her in a veil of acidic gore. She was clutching her last knife in one hand, eyes wide and glassy with shock.
Manuel stumbled back into the doorway, apparently having just gotten up; combats never last as long as they feel from the inside. Four parallel slashes ran down his chest, marking where the Doppelganger hit him. Con grats, kid. You’ve got your first scars. “What . . .”
The Doppelganger’s edges were starting to smoke and blur. I stepped away from it. “This is the part where it
