by P. S. Newman
Creeping my way around the villa would take some time.
“Just say what you’re going to say and get it out of the way,” I told Aunt Vy, hoping to broach the unavoidable discussion before she’d gotten all her criticism ducks in a row.
“Say what about what?” She sounded genuinely oblivious.
“Greyson.”
“Why do you think I have something to say on the subject?”
“You always have something to say when it comes to Greyson.”
“Obviously you know what the best course of action is. You called him in with the Order. They will eliminate him and his manifestation won’t affect our lives any further. There’s no need for me to advise you in this matter.”
I opened my mouth but couldn’t think of a single thing to say. It didn’t happen often because we were so close, but Aunt Vy still managed to surprise me.
“If, on the other hand, you decided to change your mind and go looking for him after all, we’d have a talk about the whole thing, believe me.”
Oh, I believed her. And I truly had no such intention. I opened my mouth to tell her just that - but nothing came out.
“You aren’t going to change your mind, are you?” Aunt Vy’s voice was sweet enough to lure Hansel and Gretel into a gingerbread house.
“Of course not,” I told her, just as sweetly.
“Then we have nothing to discuss. Focus on the doppelgänger.”
Fine. I swallowed my surprise and followed her advice. A cool wind whipped over me, carrying the salty tang of the ocean not fifty feet away. The crashing of the waves was muted. They churned fifty feet below the cliffs the house was built on. The muffled roar provided sound cover for me; a snapping twig wouldn’t be heard from the generous terrace and pool area.
I reached the spot I’d been searching for; a small knoll of rocks and bushes on a tiny hill that brought me level with the gigantic terrace and pool hovering above the cliffs. Most of that side of the house consisted of windows, which gave me a good view into the belly of the beast. If the doppelgänger was inside and moving around, I’d spot him.
I crouched in the shadows between the rocks and pulled out my binoculars. They were military-grade and brought the house within what seemed like touching distance. I scanned the terrace and pool, then moved on to the lower level windows. Nothing to see except expensive furniture and decor. I searched the second level. I had visual access to two of the six bedrooms from here. Both were empty.
I zoomed the binoculars out to cover a larger area and settled in to wait. I would give it half an hour; if the doppelgänger was in the house, I’d spot him by then. If nothing moved in that time, I’d go in and take a look around, just to make sure. I was really hoping to find him here instead of at my house.
I’d just made myself comfortable on the hard-baked, dusty ground, leaning against a rock, my water canteen in easy reach beside me, when my phone buzzed in my pocket. The caller had a suppressed number, so I rejected it. Whoever it was would leave a voicemail or call again if it was important. I put the phone away and focused on the house.
Two seconds later the phone rang again; another suppressed number. Probably the same caller. Maybe it was important after all, but I couldn’t fathom who it might be. Potential clients usually moved right on to the next private hunter in the book if they couldn’t reach their first choice. Unless… I rejected the call once more and waited, scanning the land surrounding the house. Nothing but dirt and shrubbery.
Ten seconds later, the phone chirped. I’d received a text message. Nice of you to join the party, but you’re looking in all the wrong places. Yours, Sean 2.0.
Ice shivered down my back. The doppelgänger was watching me. So much for getting the drop on him.
“‘2.0’ as in new and improved?” Aunt Vy asked.
“He’s playing games,” I told my sword.
“Call him back.”
“I can’t. The number is suppressed.”
“Then a change of location is in order now that he has spotted us. No sense in staying here like sitting ducks.”
Before I could agree, a flash of orange against the blue canvas of the sky caught my attention. A very fast flash, heading straight towards me.
“Incoming!” Aunt Vy screamed.
I dove to the side into the dirt. A ball of liquid fire hit the rock where my head had just been. The burning projectile disintegrated upon impact. Sparks stung my face.
“You forgot the roof!”
“Thank you, Captain Obvious,” I ground out, madder at myself than at my sword. I couldn’t believe I’d forgotten to check the roof. I should have sat still and let the fireball hit me; I deserved to be scorched for that oversight. I drew the Walther. The shade’s aim had been uncanny. He wouldn’t miss again, especially if I popped my head over the protection of these rocks. But while I sat and dithered, he could already be making his way over here and take me by surprise. I had to get another look.
I grabbed the canteen lying by my knees and turned it upside down so that the rounded base pointed up. I raised it slowly above the rocks. A sizzle scorched the air. The canteen was knocked out of my hand in another shower of sparks. I popped upwards and squeezed off two shots towards the roof without a visual lock on my target. My aim was close enough to startle the doppelgänger into action. He dove aside to avoid my return fire, giving away his location. I squeezed off another shot, but he drew back and disappeared behind the edge of the roof.
“Go go go!” Aunt Vy screamed.
I leaped up and sprinted towards the house. He’d be coming down off the roof, not wanting me to corner him up there. The question was how and where he would come down. David hadn’t shown us how to get up there, which was why I hadn’t even considered it an option. But there had to be a way up from the inside. My guess was on the staircase that also lead to the second floor.
Getting in wasn’t a problem; David's doors didn’t lock. The trick was to disable the alarm within ninety seconds upon entering or security would be at the doorstep another two minutes later. This upscale neighborhood paid its own private security force. If possible, I wanted to keep them out of the line of fire. They were trained in handling burglars and home-invaders, not fire-wielding, psychopathic shades.
I slipped inside through the glass door and located the alarm pad. The little light at the top right corner blinked green. As expected, the doppelgänger knew the passcode.
Gun drawn, I listened into the silence of the house. The ocean’s steady roar didn’t penetrate the glass walls, leaving me with only the drumming of my heart and the air streaming in and out of my lungs like an angry tide. I slipped out of the backpack that would weigh me down and hid it behind a big ficus pot. I tiptoed forward, keeping close to the walls for cover. A peek into the living room showed me it was empty. I pressed on toward the open staircase that spiraled upwards in between the vast living room and the enormous dining section.
I stood at the bottom of the spiral, listening, but the house echoed with silence. Which was why I jumped straight out of my skin when my phone buzzed in my pocket again - giving away my location to anyone listening for any sound in the quiet house.
“Move!” Aunt Vy screamed from my back. I ran up the stairs. When I came level with the second floor, a ball of fire hurtled my way. I dove forward and rolled, grateful I regularly practiced this move with Aunt Vy on my back. The fireball bounced off my shoulder as I came out of my roll, stinging like a whiplash. Sparks blinded me. Aunt Vy’s angry roar filled my head. The stench of singed fabric burned in my nose. Blinking through black smoke, I spotted the doppelgänger standing in the hallway, a twisting mass of flames writhing around his right hand.
“Get him!”
Sucking in a breath against the pain in my shoulder, I gained my feet in a crouch and squeezed off two shots in his direction. He leaped out of harm’s way, into one of the bedrooms that branched off the hallway.
The plush carpet softened my steps as I ran forward, gun pointin
g at the door. I stopped in front of it, my back against the wall, gathering my breath and my courage, trying to remember if that bedroom connected to any of the others. I needed to know my enemy’s location before running into that room. “You might as well surrender,” I called. “I alerted the Order, and the Neighborhood Watch is on its way, too.”
“I don’t believe you,” Sean's voice drifted around the corner. “You would never call for backup.” A sound more lunatic cackle than laughter followed. It raised the hairs on my arms. “The only man you’d ever allow to watch your back doesn’t exist.”
I let his words, their meaning and especially their intentions, slide over me. Now wasn’t the time to wallow in their truth or revel in awakened possibilities. “Why are you here?” I asked, “at David's house?”
Another barking chuckle. “I just wanted to pay my dear brother a visit.”
The way he said it sent chills down my arms. If there was any brotherly affection in his voice, it got lost amongst the hostility. “And greet him with fire?”
“That was for you, my dear,” he said. “Didn’t want you messing up my plans.”
Sean hadn’t mentioned that his doppelgänger might have manifested with a plan and I hadn’t asked. The thought hadn’t crossed my mind. Very few shades had plans of their own. A purpose, yes; a sense of their prey, yes, but seldom an actual scheme beyond the zombie-like drive to fulfill their purpose. If his shade was following a plan, Sean had to have given the incentive for it himself, if only subconsciously.
“I’m getting the feeling that there’s more to this doppelgänger than Sean was letting on,” Vy said.
“You and me both. But I’ll have to ask him later. Any suggestions?”
“If Sean is too embarrassed to tell you the whole truth, maybe his doppelgänger will,” Aunt Vy suggested.
It was worth a try. “Care to tell me about these plans?” I called.
“Not even a little bit.”
Yeah, didn’t think so.
The wail of sirens reached inside the house. Stuck in the hallway, I had no windows to see what was going on, but the doppelgänger’s exclamation told me enough. “Well, I’ll be… you did call the Watch.”
“Why would you assume I lied?” No need to tell him he’d been right the first time. A neighbor must have heard the shots or seen my abandoned car in the driveway and alerted the neighborhood security.
“Won’t happen again,” was his answer, followed by a crash. I whipped around the corner, gun first. The room was empty. Jagged glass hung in the frame, smoke curling from melted edges from where a fireball had shattered it. My sneakers crunched over shards as I ran to the window, from where I had a fantastic view over the front yard. Several cars were charging up the driveway, lights flashing; one, two, three. They took their Neighborhood Watch appointment seriously out here.
I looked down just in time to see the doppelgänger rolling to his feet. I aimed my gun and fired, but he was already running for the corner of the house. He disappeared around it just as the cars pulled into the yard with screeching tires. The doors flew open and six guns pointed up at me.
“Drop your weapons,” one of the security men yelled.
Aunt Vy groaned. “Idiots!”
“It’s too late,” I told her, flipping the safety on my gun and dropping it on the bed. I raised my empty hands so the cops would see them from their lower vantage point. “They didn’t even see him.” By the time I’d explained who I was and what I was doing here, the doppelgänger would be long gone.
“Taking off my sword now,” I called down, turning around slowly, making sure they saw me draw Aunt Vy out of her sheath and laying her on the bed. I faced the window again and lifted my arms above my head. “I’m shade hunter Eden Maybrey. I was tracking a shade who broke in here. You can check my credentials when I come down.”
“Stay where you are!” The man signaled to his colleagues. Four of them broke away from their vehicles and headed into the house. I heard them pounding up the staircase. I kept my hands up, preparing myself for a lot of questions.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
My burned shoulder was a stinging nuisance by the time I got home. The men from the Neighborhood Watch had offered to check my wounds after they’d gotten my statement and cleared me, but I’d refused. They would have sent me to the hospital, the only place I avoided with more fervor than the Order.
I went straight upstairs to take a shower. The hot water stung in the burn before working some magic. Muscle by muscle, my body lost its tension until I had to get out of the shower or fold to the floor like a limp noodle.
Dressing the graze on my shoulder proved tricky. The fireball had hit my shoulder blade. I had to reach far behind me to smear antiseptic cream on the wound and bandage it. I finally patched several Band-Aids together and managed to attach them without the sticky parts hitting tender flesh. I could have asked Cecelia to help; she'd stitched up deeper wounds for me before. While I would have been grateful for her help, it only made me feel worse because these were the moments I missed him. In a perfect world, he’d be the one to stitch me up.
The doorbell rang before I could fully fall down the pity pit threatening to open up beneath me. Grateful for the distraction, I pulled a t-shirt over my head and went to the door. The vidscreen showed Bella standing in front of my gate, nervously glancing left and right. I pressed the speaker button and buzzer. "Come on in."
The pedestrian gate opened. Bella limped through and up the short path to the house. I pressed the button to close the gate and opened the front door to let her in. She entered and threw herself at me. Her skinny arms squeezed my injured shoulder. I suppressed the wince and held her, feeling absurdly better than I had moments before, despite the pain. "What's up?" I asked, holding her against me.
"Turn on the TV," she said, her voice muffled against my shirt. "The news on Channel Four."
Dread curled in my stomach. There was only one reason she'd want me to watch the news.
Unlike me, Aunt Vy wasn’t too afraid to ask. “What happened, dear?”
Bella laid a gentle hand on the scabbard and attempted a smile. “Something Eden needs to see.” She took my sword off the hook and lead the way into the living room. I followed and we sat on the couch, Aunt Vy leaning upright against the armrest next to Bella. I turned on the TV and switched to Channel Four.
A reporter wearing blood-red lipstick stood in front of a tall, windowless building. Thin, smoking chimneys of a factory rose into the sky behind her. The caption read 'Hero Shade Saves Seven Lives'. A picture of Greyson from yesterday's smartphone footage appeared next to it.
‘...killing at least four of the shade hounds and driving the rest of them away from the foundry,’ the reporter's hypnotic lips said. ‘The seven workers trapped inside the factory sustained only minor injuries, thanks to this shade's heroic efforts.’
A man in gray overalls, soot smeared across his forehead, replaced the reporter. ‘Those big-ass burning dogs had us trapped in the furnace room. Took them a while to get through the locked doors, but they got in and attacked.’
Footage of inside the factory showed a maze of fully automated assembly lines, metal grate overhangs and large robotic units, hunched over the lines like giant metal octopuses. The camera zoomed into a corner of the high-ceilinged space, where a fiberglass cell surrounded an enormous industrial furnace. The giant cavern of metal was open at two ends. A conveyor belt ran in and out of them like tongues out of a glowing, gaping maw. A partition in the cell had been knocked down. The camera zoomed inside, focusing on a glistening dark stain on the concrete. Blood.
Guilt bloomed like thistles in my chest. I'd created those monsters, yet here I sat, watching them terrorize innocent people from the safety of my home.
‘One of them jumped right into the open furnace,’ a voice-over of the worker continued his interview. ‘Lit up like a Christmas tree. Next thing I know, one of my colleagues is bleeding on the floor, and then this Order hunter appears and c
uts them down. He saved our lives.’
They switched to black-and-white security camera footage showing the factory's loading bays. One of the docks stood open, a truck backed up to it. Three giant hounds escaped through the tight gap between the bay doors and the truck, leaping to the ground as if weightless. A man, possibly the truck driver, stood in their way, armed only with a crowbar.
‘Witnesses on the outside saw at least three of the hounds escape the building, injuring another innocent bystander who tried to stop them,’ the reporter's voice explained.
The first hound spat a ball of fire at said bystander. The truck driver dodged just in time, letting the hellhound run past him. The second hound followed. A bolt of lightning zapped from its nose to the crowbar in the man's hand. Electro-Hound. The man convulsed and dropped to the ground. I sent a silent apology to the poor brave soul.
The last hound didn't even look at the downed trucker. It zipped by, chasing after its brethren, and disappeared around the corner of the factory. I caught a glimpse of three pairs of burning eyes set in three monstrous heads.
The report cut back to the lipstick-lady. ‘The Somni Order has sent out more hunters to eliminate them and to track down the warrior. The Order insists this hunter isn't one of their own, but the shade that manifested alongside the hounds just yesterday. It appears he made his escape before the Order hunters arrived.’
"You could still go find him," Bella said next to me.
“To what end, dear?” Aunt Vy asked. “So she’ll end up being the one to eliminate him herself?”
Bella ignored her, eyes fixed on me. "He wouldn't run from you."
But I should run from him. Far, far away.
‘Public opinions on this warrior shade differ greatly,’ the reporter continued. ‘Most are demanding the Order employ all its manpower to catch and eliminate it before it runs out of hellhounds to kill and turns on the innocent public. But other voices are speaking up and their side is rapidly picking up speed and supporters. David Baptiste, chairman of SHAID, the Society for a Higher Acceptance and Integration of Dreams, has an explanation for this particular shade's growing popularity.’
