Ghost of Doors (City of Doors) Read online

  Lorelei began to cry. She had always believed that he would turn out like she did--merciful, loving, giving--at least toward his own mother. She had dreams that they could all live together as one happy family in spite of tradition and what it demanded of them. Her heart was breaking as only hard reality can break a heart. Grief burned a hole so deep it would never heal. "Did you forget about me, Mother?" he asked. Through the ivory curtains that were embroidered generations ago, sunlight floated across this Wolfgang's face, making shadows a gruesome mask and his pale blue, almost white, eyes glow.

  "Of course not!" How could she make her feelings clear to him? If a lifetime of living with emotional humans could teach him nothing about empathy, what chance did she have now? "I want you to understand. I love you."

  He reacted as if she'd told him a joke; the room echoed with sudden mocking laughter that the ear mistook for tears. "You don't know me," he scoffed. "How could you love me?"

  "You're my child." To her, the answer was obvious, but her life depended upon making him understand. She realized in horror that it was something she could not explain. So what now? She couldn't kill anyone much less her own son. And he would never believe the truth; it was too foreign to him, a rat trying to understand the moon. She had always fantasized that, if this moment ever came, she could explain compassion to him. It was painfully obvious what a naive idea that was. She didn't know when she had slipped from the coffee table to her knees. The warm carpet blocked out the scent of this intruder; sunlight and the faded jasmine of a favorite perfume drifted up to her as she scraped a hand across its soft wool, then stood and wiped her eyes. "You don't understand what I did because you haven't had children."

  "No, YOU don't understand," he shouted, punctuating the sentence by slamming his fist into the tiled surface of the table, "what a mess you have made of my life because you don't have any common sense!" Cracks spread along the frame as the wood splintered and tiles flew, but his hand remained unharmed. His coldness shocked her more than the violence. Unsure how to respond, she paused to collect herself, hand to breast, the rhythm of her heart giving her courage.

  "You were both helpless babies," she whispered. "How could I decide?"

  "I'll decide for you," he said in disgust. He turned to the apartment door and bolted it shut, his dark coat trailing behind him like a living shadow.

  "What are you going to do?"

  "Make things right."

  "No, you're not." The time had come for her to make her beliefs real. His life and death was once more in her hands--his life and death and that of his human twin. Had she only put off the choice to end the life of one of the two? Would she have to make that choice now? She leaped for the small oak table in the entryway and, with a practiced movement, drew the gun she kept in its drawer for emergencies.

  His hand fell gently upon the door handle before he spun around like a spider and lunged. Grasping her shoulders, he pulled her face to his. His breath was cloying, meaty and bitter, the breath of a predator. The son that she had dreamed of meeting, the only being in the universe she had carried inside her and given life to, had for her only the strength that comes with murderous rage. "Go ahead, use that gun on me. Do it!" As the feeling in her hands bled away from the crushing grip on her upper arms, the gun slipped through her fingers. "It'll feel good, I promise you." He let her go, and the tingling in her arms slowly went away, but not the numbness in her heart. "You'll have to kill me to stop me, and we both know you can't do that. Look at your track record." A laugh deformed by a sob burst through his smile, twisted and strange. "You can't stop me, Mother. Don't make me hurt you by trying." His expression softened, and he seemed to have a change of heart, however small. But she didn't trust it; her hand trembled visibly as he took it, adding, "I want to believe that you and I can both get through this humiliation. Together."

  "Humiliation?" Eyes locked with his, she tried to spy the gun out of the corner of her eye, so that he wouldn't realize she was looking for it. But it lay secreted against the dark wood floor.

  "Your failure," he explained, "to kill that...other. That thing. I'm sure that, in time, I can find it in my heart to forgive you." His voice took on a seemingly honest sadness. "You don't know what it was like to grow up in a world full of them. Petty little creatures. Always frightened. Always lying. I expected at least to come here and be free of them, then I find out that one had taken my place...and that my mother is just like them!" He gripped the hair on his head tightly as if he was using it to hold his head together while this thought taunted him. "By failing in your duty, you failed me. Lost my respect." Her rapt attention was borne of concern which rapidly dwindled to pity. It was frightening to watch a man go up in flames of his own making. Pleading with her for understanding, his eyes grew wide, helpless. "Why didn't you come for me, Mom? Someone had to do that for you, too. Or else I wouldn't even be here now. Why did you fail me in every possible way?"

  So the raw truth was finally laid bare. All of the worst traits of the fae had come out in him, and she had only herself to blame. She should have done something to prevent this--found him first, visited him perhaps, guided him somehow--but now it was too late. His ice blue eyes took her back to his birth; their lost expression belonging to a refugee from another world, a world dark and warm and a part of him, now adjusting to this one where everything was wrong and he was alone. Maybe he'd never gotten over it. Maybe it was still with him, like scars from a long and painful illness. The regret that she had done nothing to comfort him after leaving him was raw. She had done what all changeling mothers did without even thinking how wrong it was, simply trusting that he would be taken care of. True, she hadn't murdered the real Wolfgang because she could not stomach that evil, but when it came to her own son, she had all but forgotten him. Time softened the horror of the act of abandonment. All the love she had she had given to the surrogate, and this was the rotten fruit it bore.

  Torn between pity and disgust for both herself and her son, Lorelei sorely wished that whoever brought him here hadn't, and she wondered who that person was, and why they did it. What came to mind was an organization, probably Monsters Organized Opposite Nature (MOON) or Supernaturals UNited (SUN) since they were the largest, and both needed members badly right now, SUN especially, if the rumors of a coming all-out war were true. Both had more than enough spies in this world and others to be able to find just about anyone. But SUN wouldn't have done it without telling her first, so that left MOON. It seemed strange that they would seek him out, but it was not impossible.

  "Anyway, when it's behind us, we can get to know each other," he promised, breaking through her thoughts. "Become the family that I know you want."

  She gritted her teeth. "You mean after you kill my stepson, we can be friends?" she asked. "You're insane."

  He laughed. "I am? Killing a human is like killing a pig. You're crazy for thinking they're anything like us. Why didn't you just raise a chimp from a zoo like it's your son, too? It would have been the same." She slapped him as hard as she could across the face. He only grimaced. "Ah, now I understand. The trauma of losing me was too much. You needed a substitute. It's mental illness." He smiled patronizingly and picked up the gun, turning it on her. "Now that," he said confidentially, "I can relate to." Lorelei realized that a lot could happen in twenty years. But there was no way this animal was her son. Maybe her real son was dead, and this was another changeling pretending to be him. She could only hope. "Look, I promise, I'll clean up this mess with that...impostor, then get you the help you need. Don't worry. I'll be sure to visit you in the asylum."

  "Maybe I can't stop you," she admitted aloud, "But I know who can."

  He shrugged. "Keep it to yourself, then," he said, the bizarre, sad grin returning. "I love surprises." Looking down at the gun, he added, "you've really become one of them, huh? Just like a human. Human husband, human kid... Why have you given up on yourself? Using a glorified slingshot is really pathetic." He turned the weapon over while keeping it point
ed at her. "Wait, this isn't a gun like the apes normally make. This does something special, doesn't it?" Lorelei didn't answer. Did he feel justified in using it because she had wanted to use it on him? Did he ever feel responsible for anything, or was it always okay because it was a reaction to what someone else did, an eye for an eye?

  "I should test it."

  "On yourself?" she asked.

  "Ha, ha. Nice try." He took aim at her forehead.

  The fact that she did not want to kill him saved her own life. "NO!" she screamed, but it was too late. The shout was lost in a screech and hiss from the gun, which discharged a brief lightning strike into Lorelei. Paralyzing pain tore through her and she fell backward into the nearest object in her path--the little table in the entryway with its gleaming marble top. And falling into the table is exactly what she did, because she didn't break it or bounce off it as she landed, but instead was absorbed into it. As the blinding pain faded, she found herself looking up at her son, the evil Wolfgang, from the prison of the table. She spoke but he did not react as if he could hear. There was nothing to slam into or move against, it was like she hung suspended in a room where the walls were always just beyond her reach.

  But she could hear him. He loomed over her above the table, eyes wide and eager with alarm and pleasure. "Wow," he said. "I really do love surprises. I hope that impostor of mine loves them, too."

  Chapter 2

  HIS FATHER'S FROWN TENSE AND unwavering, Wolfgang recounted his tale of the self-destructing door while his father eased himself down the narrow stairs from the loft in his laboratory. The thunder of a train rumbled somewhere overhead through the subway tunnels, the cool dank of the stone walls and ceiling high above evoked the scent of flowing fresh water. Opportunistic, thin layers of fungus returned foxfire for the dampness and contoured the farthest reaches of the room in swaths of eerie blue-green. "Maybe it didn't happen at all," he said. "Maybe it was an illusion."

  The horrible smell from the burning door returned to mock Wolfgang in its reality, but even smell, taste, and touch were not out of bounds for strong magic, fake feasts being a favorite deception of the fae. If it was all in their victims' heads, anything could happen. A simple trick of the brain. Pilgrim pawed the wooden floor.

  "Come again, Doc?" he said, "You think MOON would bother flexing their magic muscles like that? What would be the point? Don't they have enough people to just take the street if they wanted it?"

  Dr. Schäfer shrugged and turned away from them to adjust an upholstered leather office chair. "Who knows? They have so much power right now that they are probably toying with us with every thing they do." The chair creaked under his weight as he sat. "Testing us. Experimenting." The crows feet around his eyes carried the weight of his worry. He adjusted his glasses as he turned to his only son and asked, "You're going through with this, aren't you?"

  The glare briefly stole Wolfgang's reply. "To the Hindernis?" Dr. Schäfer nodded. "Yes, Dad." Wolfgang gripped Vogelfang tighter, the halberd with the axe head shaped like a raven's beak and the hook shaped like a wing glowing weakly in response to his agitation. It almost never left his side, and if he left it somewhere for some reason he would feel like he had forgotten his arm. He had grown up beside it, the notches on its shaft marking off his growth in the form of the near misses from his opponents' strikes.

  "Aar will not save you," his father said, invoking the ancient name of the weapon and rebuking its glow with a trembling finger. "Not from the...things you will run into there, Wolfgang--things unlike the...the people you know here. There they are wild, dead, or something in between. Uncontrollable. Not worth the time for SUN or MOON to deal with. Luckily for us here, they do not--or cannot--leave the forest. The Hindernis is some kind of lost world and no one from the outside can last long enough in it to study it the way it should be studied." He looked uncertain, mistaking perhaps the horror on Wolfgang's face for disbelief. Satisfied after a moment of observation, he continued, "And, speaking of studies, you should take me to this burnt-out door so I can get a look at it. I'd like to see it for myself. Your mother didn't come out to look?"

  "She wasn't home. We thought she was here."

  "Well, your mother is a grown woman. She can take care of herself." He tried not to sound worried, but Wolfgang knew him too well. The fact that she had not come immediately to the laboratory if she had abandoned their home because the street was turning did not sit well with Wolfgang either. But if she needed help, he was certain she would call for it. She did not hate life enough to stand against MOON alone. "I followed you into this world. And I would love to follow you out. But I don't think I can. Not at my age. Not even with a weapon like you have there." His eyes fixed grimly on Vogelfang. "You're not the only person to try this, you know. Most people fail."

  "Most," Wolfgang agreed, "but not everyone."

  "I failed," the doctor admitted.

  "You? I didn't know you tried."

  Wolfgang cringed from his father's sneer and pointing finger. "Of course I did. Several times." He became distant, his voice as quiet as his footsteps on the concrete floor as he clambered from the chair and took to pacing. "The last time, I was almost lost for good." A wave of his hand dismissed it all as past foolishness. "You were far too young to remember," he explained to his son. "Besides, it's not like you came along. I went alone."

  "Mom didn't come?"

  He smiled. "Mom had to take care of you."

  Wolfgang thought about this. He had never really thought that his father even wanted to go back. Whenever Wolfgang had asked the question, his father had always said that he didn't want to go, that he wanted to stay with him and Lorelei forever. Wolfgang had believed him. But then again, Wolfgang was only a child. What child wants to hear that his father wants to leave? What child would understand?

  "Even if you won't come now, can you help me?"

  "Yes. I can. But the real question is, should I?" Wolfgang did not have a chance to feel hurt, because his father quickly added, "What I mean is, I don't want anything bad to happen to you. I'd rather you forget your plan. Stick with SUN. They'll work with you, help you to survive here. Look how well things turned out for your mother and me."

  Then Wolfgang realized what had happened to his dad--he had settled. He had failed at his dream and settled here for whatever he could get, lectured himself that whatever was in Doors was all he ever wanted. But Wolfgang realized that, even now, his father hadn't convinced himself that was real; the dream was not gone, or he would never have brought it up again. He could have kept the secret until he died. Part of you wants to help me, Dad, he thought. The part that still wants to live free. I don't have the obligations you had--no child, no wife. Let me do this. For us. For the kids I might have someday. You believe in me. I know you do.

  "Dad, please don't take this the wrong way, but I'm not you. I grew up here. I understand this place a little better than you do."

  His father gave him a level gaze that spoke of backroom deals and seedy intrigue. "Don't be so sure."

  "What I mean is, I have advantages that you didn't have. And, no offense, but I'm younger, stronger than you were when I was small." Wolfgang lifted his halberd ever so slightly and the long weapon responded to the rush of blood through his touch by glowing. Thumped against the ground, the halberd threw up menacing sparks in support. "I can do this. You taught me a lot. But I learned a lot from my friends, too." He nodded at Marie, but she did not return the acknowledgment. Ever aloof, a cat in human form, she merely watched him with eyes that sparkled a supernatural gleam. Pilgrim returned a sick expression that begged to keep him out of this.

  "Maybe you didn't learn enough, Chief," Pilgrim mumbled.

  Dr. Schäfer interrupted his son's thoughts. "So, you're never coming back."

  "I didn't say that."

  "Listen, you can't fool me. I was in your place once upon a time, young man. You think you could do it twice? Not unless you became one of..." Aware of Marie and Pilgrim, he expressed himself
carefully. "...one of the Fair Folk. Like your mother. And if you were going to do that, you might as well just wait until you turned and then leave. Then, you'd have your pick of doors."

  Wolfgang felt foolish. "I was going to go and come back," he said, embarrassed.

  "But why? Why would you come back at all? If you make a life there, why would you risk throwing it away?"

  Wolfgang didn't know what to say. He hadn't thought that far ahead. Now leaving seemed more final than he had imagined. His father's voice was more serious than it had ever been before. "You're not coming back, Wolfgang. Not if you succeed, and maybe not even if you don't. At least say goodbye like you mean it."

  "Sorry, Dad," Wolfgang said, quiet enough to keep emotion from spilling into his voice. Vogelfang's glow betrayed him.

  "Nothing to be sorry about," he said. "Not yet." After drawing a ladder along a row of shelves, Dr. Schäfer locked it in place, then climbed up to the topmost shelf and brought down a wooden box. "Now, if you want something from the human world that can be useful anywhere, I believe I have the perfect thing." After placing the box gently upon the nearest table, he set the stage by explaining, "When your step mom took you from the hospital, I had no idea what she was, what was going on. I only knew that I wanted to get you back, and that I needed a weapon. So...running through the hospital, I saw this on a table and took it." Something bronze gleamed underneath as the box lid leaned away, like the eye of a creature waking. A slender knife lay cushioned in velvet, light slithering off its smooth surface. "It's a small surgical knife," the doctor explained, "for those times when a large knife won't cut it."

  Marie rolled her eyes.

  "Seriously, it's for more delicate maneuvering, cutting digits and finer bones. I feel sure it would make a fine weapon," he added as his son lifted it gently from its coffer. "I myself have never had occasion to use it."

  Wolfgang cringed. Something about the knife made him uneasy; it looked like something that hungered, yearned to be fed, not a noble, artistic weapon like Vogelfang. It was made purely for the drawing of blood, while a long weapon like Vogelfang was designed for protection in various ways, to deflect and ward away as well as trip and wound. It was the weapon of a knight, whereas this knife was the weapon of a spy. "Thanks, Dad," he said, "but I'm not sure it's for me."