Ghost of Doors (City of Doors)

by Jennifer Paetsch

  “Why should I believe you?”

  “You don’t have to believe me.” Wolfgang gestured to the Farseeing Tower not far behind them. “The beauty of it is you can go see for yourself.”

  “I’ve got a better idea,” his twin said, taking aim. “Right now, I’ve got you where I want you. So, if you don’t mind, I’ll just put you in storage for awhile.”

  “What if you can’t get me out? Who’s going to help you save her? Raphael?” That earned him a sour look. “At least I have a stake in this. I want to see my father alive again. Like it or not, you kill me and you’re all alone.” The steely gaze drifted away for one brief moment, and Wolfgang thought he had gotten through to him. “If you care at all about her, you’ll help me free them.”

  “I’ll have to take that chance.”

  And then everything went white.

  ☽☉✩

  SO THIS, ALL ALONG, WAS what SUN had been planning. Raphael wondered how long it had taken for them to capture this many humans for their souls, when he realized that this had perhaps been the plan from the start. Every human had a purpose for SUN, true, but it was not the one they imagined for themselves, working side by side with their monster compatriots. That meant that all their propaganda of humans being equal to fae had also been a lie.

  A glut of bodies filled the streets. Mindless shells of what once were people wandered, not dead but not as alive as they had once been. Doors that had once been red glowed an eerie blue, the color washing over each face making it colder, the streets chilly and foreboding, the loss of life marked by the shift in the color spectrum as if witnessing this mass murder hurt the sun itself. Raphael did not hold out hope that Wolfgang had escaped this. One of these walking graves must be Wolfgang, just as one held Wolfgang’s father, but which one? He could be in any one in the city. Raphael wondered if he could command these undead as he could any other zombie. Maybe one of them would know where to find him.

  He took the lock of hair from his pocket that he had stolen in the night from Leonie as she'd slept. It shone a lustrous blue against the glamour, and his honed senses caught from it the scent of her sweat and perfume. She was somewhere in this city and he would find her. Now was the time for her to decide which side she was on.

  As fast as a sparrow darts through the twilight, Raphael slipped through the city, past the crowds in thrall, through buildings and doors that carried her scent, that marked her path. Through it all, Raphael noted one important fact: Wolfgang was not with her. Hopefully, he was looking for his father as he had sworn to do. Raphael had wanted to follow him, but this was more important, and he could only follow one of them. Wolfgang would have to take care of himself.

  In the shadow of a church, its copper green roof a deep blue in the glamour that had taken over the city, the scent trail ended. Before him lay a basement entrance, and, at the bottom of the cracked concrete stairs, a locked door. Kicking it in was easy enough, and his eyes scouted out the room to find the crouched form of the girl he sought cowering against the intrusion. “How did you get locked in here?” Raphael asked as he approached her slowly, ready in case a trap should spring.

  She turned to the sound of his voice, perhaps the only familiar thing to her in the midst of the chaos outside. “Oh, it’s you. I was kidnapped by Wolfgang’s double. But I’m not so sure that escaping is such a good idea.” She stood where she was and didn’t back away but didn’t come to meet him, either. “What’s going on out there?”

  “Armageddon,” he said.

  “So, is this church safe or something? Like against—” His presence inside the church made the answer clear, so she cut herself short. “Uh, never mind.”

  “This building holds no power here,” he explained. “It’s just an empty shell.”

  “Like the people,” she replied.

  “No.” His steps were slow and careful as if approaching a skittish animal. “Not everyone here is empty.”

  “You are. At least, that’s what Wolfgang told me.”

  He didn’t know if they had the time to discuss this but he really didn’t want to regardless. However, it was worth it to try to help her see things his way to regain her trust. She had to trust him in order to survive. “I’m still the same person I always was. I think Wolfgang just never knew who I was in the first place. He had this concept of family that I never quite lived up to, nor wanted to. That’s his mistake.”

  “Is it a mistake? To want a family?”

  “It’s a mistake to not trust that people know who they are. Just because he’s confused doesn’t mean that I am.”

  “Maybe it’s better to be confused sometimes. How can you be so sure that you’re right?”

  “Never claimed to be right. I just know who I want to be.” He looked out through the narrow windows of the basement prison to see feet shuffling by with increasing frequency. “We have a bigger problem than family matters at the moment.”

  “What exactly is going on here?” Moving to stand beside him, she followed his gaze out the stained and fractured window. “Wolfgang told me about the stones. That they used to be people.”

  “True. The magic of the land claims souls. The powerful fae do it, too. Often slowly, over time.”

  “So then why are all these zombies coming out to wander the streets?”

  “They’re not ‘coming out,’” he told her. “SUN did this. They’ve taken the souls who trusted them and betrayed them. Every one. It is no accident that every door is turning blue and that every living human has suddenly become a mindless husk. I don’t know exactly how they did it. I am not privileged enough to know. That’s one for my betters to know. But I do know that what I see before my eyes is not a lie.”

  “How do you find this out?”

  “It was…explained to me. No, proven.”

  “By whom?”

  The name caught in his throat. He didn’t want to tell her. That might make her trust wane, and he was struggling to build it up through this discussion, not erode it. “A colleague.” She waited, wanting more. Expecting more. She had every right to be wary and he had no plan to assuage those fears. “He told me on strictest confidence what the higher-ups had found: SUN had developed a device to take over the doors. And that it used human souls, trapped them in the doors. He warned me it would be put in use soon, so I tipped off Wolfgang in an effort to get him to join me. I…told him where he could find proof to see for himself. If you don’t believe me, look around you. That prediction has come true.”

  Raphael turned to her then and took her hands in his. They were soft and warm in the cool basement air, her warm blood sweet through her flesh and throbbing with life. “It’s time that you claimed the job that you came here to assume.” Even in the dimness, Raphael could see her pale. “In the event that you haven’t noticed, SUN is taking over this city. If you don’t join me, you’ll become one of them, a wandering husk with your mind trapped elsewhere. A zombie—or worse. Unless you want your spirit to wander for all eternity.”

  “You’re unbelievable,” she snarled.

  “It’s for your own protection that I turn you, you realize,” he said. “If you become one of us, you join us, you join our fight.”

  “Against Wolfgang.”

  “Not necessarily,” Raphael countered. “Not anymore. When he sees what I sent him to see, he will join us. That, I promise you.” Leonie did not look convinced.

  “I’m beginning to think he’s right.” She struggled to avert her eyes from the zombies who drew her attention and disgust as a gruesome accident scene might. “What made you look at those things and think, ‘I want to be one?’”

  Raphael snorted. “Ah, you mean, the same way you did?”

  She blushed, the blue light from the windows bruising her cheeks. “I never actually saw a monster before. But you did. You grew up here.”

  “You saw me. Seeing me convinced you, I thought.”

  “You’re not the only monster I’ve seen anymore. Wolfgang was right. You don’t even
remember what it was like to be human, do you?”

  His blood began to boil even though his heart had stopped beating long ago. What was she challenging? His humanity? His sanity? Given the circumstances, he believed he was making not only a correct decision, but the best course of action. If she didn’t join them, join MOON, she would be destroyed. Why was that so hard to understand? How had Wolfgang completely brainwashed her? Had he given her something to ward against his glamour?

  Her necklace winked a blue as deep as her eyes and he took the cold stone between his fingers. “Who gave this to you?” The fear in her face told him. So Wolfgang gave this to her to keep her from being charmed. He smirked in spite of himself; the paltry thing worked pretty well. The thought crossed his mind to attack her and turn her against her will, but no, he was going to set her straight. There was no need to force her. He just had to open her eyes. He had done it before. He could do it again. “What do you mean? You mean, do I remember the fear of being hunted? The horror I felt when I looked upon a living corpse?”

  “Wolfgang said that monsters live forever and lose their human perspective.”

  “What does Wolfgang know about being a monster, anyway.”

  “A lot.” They both turned to the sudden voice. “More than you think.” Out of the blue darkness, a long coat and heavy boots sauntered with a far heavier load of suffering, hate, and regret than most clothing outside of a casket should contain.

  “Wolfgang?” Leonie asked as if she didn’t even believe that herself in spite of what presented itself before her.

  Raphael didn’t think he would ever see a sneer so cold and brutal on Wolfgang’s face. “No, not Wolfgang. Der Andere.”

  “Fitting. Calling me the ‘other.’ ME.” Raphael never liked what the doppelganger did with Wolfgang’s face. He wished he would give it back and take on one of his own making or choosing and set Wolfgang’s likeness free. But he couldn’t help how he looked, Raphael supposed. “And to my face, yet. Do you say that to Marie? Do you call her the ‘other?’ No, because her twin is dead.” Subtly, he had pulled out a billy club from his coat so that Raphael had not been aware he was holding it until, against the eerie blue glamour from the windows, it stood out, a shadow cast over the glow. It was too late. There was no time to turn Leonie now. Whatever Anders wanted, it would cost them both dearly.

  “I didn’t mean to offend you,” Raphael said.

  “Sure.” His smirk wavered, twisted between rage and amusement and found no middle ground to hold. “Hey, call me what you want. Anders it is. In a moment, it won’t matter anyway.” What Raphael had thought was a billy club turned out to be a gun. “Good thing you were so bad at recruiting her or I wouldn’t be able to do this.” An electric charge shot from the gun into Leonie and she contorted even though she remained silent, or perhaps couldn’t make a sound because of the pain. Diving for the gun, Raphael had grossly underestimated Ander’s ability to react. He grabbed the vampire and struck him hard with the weapon, knocking across the room and against the wall. As the soulless form of Leonie rose and began to wander, Anders approached and yanked the shimmering necklace from her. “Take this,” he told Raphael, the bauble sailing through the air like a shooting star.

  Instinctively, the vampire caught it, his hand burning with the stone and a force like a thousand volts shooting through him. The agony was endless, and Anders took him outside to drag him for what felt like an eternity to a red door and shoved him inside. The nightmare finally ended as unconsciousness enveloped him, and, just before giving in to it, he thought he heard Leonie’s voice whisper, “What am I?”

  Chapter 19

  SO THIS IS WHAT IT'S like to be a monster, Wolfgang thought. This is what it's like to be something you don't want to be. He felt impossibly tall and impossibly long, the longest road ever, stretched out from one point to another. He still felt like himself, but he wondered how long that would last. The void of space yawned out before him, a million lights dancing and swirling like eddies and whirlpools in a river with no end. Behind him, Marie slept. He could see her silhouette against the stars, a stark and beautiful outline as lovely and serene in its darkness as the stars were with their light. She would not wake.

  He remembered the voice of his father’s soul, cannon fire and primal thunder, insistent and mysterious, the voice that speaks to the conscious mind from the subconscious. But when Wolfgang himself spoke, here in this void, his own voice made barely a sound. It was muffled, swallowed up by the unending blackness, the tiny points of starlight making him wonder if they were really stars or if they, too, were souls floating in this vastness, guiding people to other lands as he was made to do. Purblind and muted, he had no choice but to assume that these debilities were an illusion, and that he himself was a glowing being of light as his father had been, his voice thunder from the depths of the universe should he use it and someone were there to hear it.

  And Marie, like a forgotten goddess, slept somewhere below in the vastness of stars and worlds laid out before him.

  Marie. She was someone there to hear him. But would she? What could he say that she would want to hear? He thought about Marie, her blond hair shining little sunbeams of its own on a summer’s day, and now she lay below him, dark and silent.

  He knew where he should start. “Marie, I’m sorry. This is all my fault. If we’d just gone to the human world, this would never have happened.” How long would they have to stay here? A week? A year? Forever? For almost twenty years, his father had been isolated in this purgatory, yet he still appeared sane. But his father was some kind of genius. Would Wolfgang be as coherent after so long?

  His father was not yet free. Was he one of those lights, those stars? Could he hear him when he spoke? “Hello?” Nothing. “Can anyone hear me?” No, nothing, and if his father had spoken to any of the stars in his time there, he was sure he would have said something about it. No, this was a prison of the mind, and help was not forthcoming. Whatever was going on in Doors was beyond Wolfgang's ability to know, but he was sure that no one would notice he was missing for quite some time. Perhaps never, if his doppelganger took his place. He would have to save himself—more accurately, he and Marie would have to save themselves, since he would not be able to do this on his own. If his father was correct, he would have to wake Marie, because there was no one who knew that he had to get his body back. Guilt paralyzed him momentarily. Not only for letting down his father—after all, he had promised to set him free—but for letting down Marie, the girl his thoughts always returned to, the girl who had done more for him than he had ever done in return.

  “Marie? Can you hear me?”

  It was oddly like sitting by a sick bed and speaking to a comatose friend. There was no sign of life, no response, barely any breath, like begging a corpse to sit upright. The body was there, but it seemed hollow, uninhabited. And yet the essence of being was still there, unable to answer, unable to react: A seed, a bud. Could he make it bloom? That thought was met immediately with despair. He was no doctor, no magician, and certainly, no genius like his father. How was he to know the magical combination of words and meaning that would bring Marie back?

  “Marie, please. We’ve got to get out of here. I can’t do it by myself. I need you.”

  There were places in the universe where people could get lost, and this was one of them. There were not only wells that could trap a body deep within the earth, but wells that trapped minds and ideas, consciousness and thought. He was trapped within this well as surely as if he were trapped within the earth, rock on every side, and every exhale slipping him deeper and deeper into the hole.

  How long had he been here? Months? Weeks? Days? He’d thought he had fallen asleep, exhausted, but maybe he was merely hypnotized by the slow and steady movement of the stars in their spheres. It seemed like there were cycles of sleeping and waking, but maybe that was just him losing concentration, losing himself. Without a body, without something to ground him, he was losing all perspective. Time meant noth
ing. People meant nothing. People…what had he promised to them? To someone? To whom? Something about a prisoner…something about escaping. What had happened to Marie? He looked down and saw her still there, still sleeping, still below him, enormous and unmoving, a sea of darkness in endless space, blocking out the brilliant stars. This is what it means to be dead. And when he was alive, who had always been there for him? Who had always been honest and real when everyone else had lied? The young woman who now laid beneath him. She would never wake again. He had killed her by bringing her here, by involving her…by trusting her, by loving her. But had he really loved her? Loving involves warmth and affection, and he had given her none of that. Had he really trusted her? No, if he had, he would have showed her that he loved her. And now it was too late.

  Now they would lie like this—dormant, crippled—for eternity. It was over, and he had done nothing. Nothing to help his father, or his race, or the city which was his prison and his home. It was too late now to do anything, but that didn’t end his grief, as he thought the serenity of death might. There was no peace for him, in this place of unending regret, this hell of his own making. “If we ever get out, I promise I’ll change.” He gazed off into the depths of the void, unable to shut his eyes to it, diving deeper and deeper with the sensation of moving away though he was not really moving at all. “Can you hear me, Marie? I’ll change. I’ll treat you better. I’ll value our friendship.” Value our friendship? What kind of promise was that? That was not what his heart said. He was still afraid to repeat what his heart said out loud, no matter how softly. “I’ll return the love you show me. I promise.” Better. But it was still not the whole truth, not the emotion in his chest that pulsed through his whole body when he remembered her—that, even without a body, he could still feel.