Ghost of Doors (City of Doors) (25 page)

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

S
O 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 nothing. 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.

“Listen. I…I love you, Marie,” he said. “I love you. I was wrong. I don’t expect you to forgive me. But it’s true. I love you, and I ruined everything. Not just for us, but for the whole city. I could have helped you as you’d always helped me. Maybe we could have figured out SUN’s plan sooner. I don’t know. Now we’ll never know. But I love you, I always loved you, and I’m sorry.”

She blinked. The opening of her eyes shone light into the darkness, the burning glow from two new suns shone as she exposed them to the void. The glow swallowed his sight, but he basked in it, because it meant that she was awake. She was alive. “I love you, too.” The words rumbled toward him, her promise like the rolling of waves on the sea, just as deep and constant.

“I know. I know, and I’m sorry, Marie. I should have told you long ago.”

She reached out to him, long, slender arms made of night, and he instinctively reached toward her, longing to embrace her. It was all instinct, something he didn’t need to control and couldn’t control if he had tried. It was the soul’s deepest desire, or only purpose, if you will: He could not fight the desire to be born. The weightless flight of the soul brought him to her, and he felt himself guided not just to her but through her, deep inside her to a place where there was nothing, but that nothing was its purpose, a space eager to be filled. He seated himself there, his essence settling into it like water finding its level, not taking over or taking from her, but creating a partnership of form, an empty vessel filled. And then they were whole, the two of them, seeing through the same aqua eyes and pushed, stumbling, a lamb finding its feet, toward the street outside the glowing door. Once on the other side, the door shut behind them. Looking up, they saw a stone face—what had once been Marie’s face—above the door crumble and fall away. “I…feel strange.” She said. Or thought. He could hear her thoughts equally as well as hear her speak. Both sounds came from outside of him, both the exact same hushed tone of a person talking to herself.

“I feel strange, too,” he replied to her in thought, “but better than I’ve felt in a long time.”

Their heart raced in a communal excitement. “What are we going to do now?” she said. “Everywhere I look I see blue doors. SUN must have done what they did to us on a massive scale.” She turned invisible and ducked into an alleyway to keep from being noticed by the zombies wandering the streets. “We have no army to fight back with. We’ll be killed.”

“We have to find Pilgrim,” Wolfgang told her. “We have to find my father’s body and bring it to Doors. There’s got to be a way to put the souls back in their rightful bodies and free the trapped monsters. Or we die trying.”