Doppelganger Blood (15 page)

Crossing his arms over his broad chest, the
Centaur asks, “If we are not able to defend ourselves and she,” he nods his head in my direction, “is evenly matched, we are all doomed.”

I scowl up at the large being. “Didn’t your mother teach you to think positively?”
Next to me, Kallen clears his throat to cover a chuckle.

“Are you implying optimism will save the day?”
the Sasquatch asks snidely.

I believe I’m going to side with the
Centaurs when I have time to deal with the war between them and the Sasquatch. “No, but if we believe there is no solution to the problem, then we will find no solution to the problem.”

“I
believe what my daughter is trying to say,” Dagda begins.  I give him a sour look which he ignores.  “Is that she is not ready to give up the fight.  Nor am I.  She may be currently in a stalemate with her doppelgänger, but that has not stopped her from keeping all of you alive.”

“It is her dedication to keeping the lot of you safe that guides her when her
doppelgänger attacks.  If she had no goal other than the defeat of her foe, Xandra could use her magic more forcefully and perhaps put an end to this whole business,” Kallen growls to the Sasquatch.

The King of the
Sasquatch holds his androgynous head high and asks, “Are we to live out our days amongst the Fae then in hopes that Xandra will be able to keep us all safe forever?”

“
Do you know how much time you have taken away from any planning we could do simply because you want to be a jerk?” I ask. The Goblin King snickers and Queen Addylyn covers her mouth to hide her broad smile.

“Sit down,
Sasquatch,” Quinn says. “Your opinions have been noted.”

“I will not be told what to do by the likes of you,” the
Sasquatch growls.

“We really are not accomplishing anything as long as you refuse to move the conversation forward,” Jadyn says
to the giant fur ball.

“Now I must take orders from a trickster?”

“Neither my brother nor I are tricksters,” Jadyn says.  Clearly, the Sasquatch has not made a friend.

“You have forced me to take drastic measures,” I tell him. Or her. Using one of my favorite tr
icks, I take his voice away. “You can have it back when we all believe you have something to say that is worth hearing.”

“Xandra,” Isla admonishes quietly. “This may not be wise.”

Yeah, I’m pretty sure it’s not. But I’m also sure I don’t care at the moment. To be fair, though, I scan the room. “Please say aye if you would like me to give his voice back.” A resounding silence fills the room. The angry Sasquatch storms toward me but he doesn’t get very far. Before I can even think to draw magic, Kallen has already used his magic to lay the Sasquatch out on the floor. I give him an appreciative smile. I get a slight nod in return.

“Can we draw up some kind of
treaty to propose?” The Goblin King asks. “If we and the Dragons can work things out anybody can.”

In a perfect universe this would be true. Unfortunately, I don’t believe any of the universes are perfect. “I really don’t think she’s in the right frame of mind for a peace treaty,” I say. “An entire universe wanted her dead. That’s not the type of person who is interested in keeping the peace.”
  Besides, I already asked her to stop.  She declined.

“Then what do you suggest,” Ellu asks.

“We need to find a way to send her home,” I say. I know I’m supposed to kill her for being in this universe but I really don’t see myself doing that. Who could?

“We do not even know how she
came to be in this universe,” the Elf Queen says. “How are we supposed to send her back?”

Actually, I do know how she got here. Again, it’s probably best
to keep the whole Divine Grace thing myself. Or at least share it with as few people as possible, meaning I can only talk to the people I care about. “If she could get here there is definitely a way to send her back.” Maybe I should tell them about the Divine Grace. No. I don’t think so. 

I notice Isla, Dagda and
Kallen are trying not to look worried. What did I do now?  “Are you certain this is the path you are supposed to take?” Dagda asks me.  Apparently, he is still very much on the killing side of things.  “Do we not risk the possibility of her returning if we do not put a more permanent end to the situation?”

“Here, here,” a grouchy voice says from the doorway.  Still a little green around the edges, my pale grandfather finally joins us.  I’m sure he’ll have useful input.  Sarcastic?  Me?

“I believe her ticket here was a onetime deal,” I say. I am positive the Seraph who helped her has been dealt with. I hope, anyway.

It’s Isla’s turn to try to put me back on the killings side of things. “When you became aware of the situation, it was
made evident there is only one way to resolve this.”

Technically, the S
eraph didn’t say that. She strongly encouraged it.  But why must I become a killer?  I’ve come up against some pretty nasty beings and I’ve never killed one of them.  Not one.  There was always another way and there must be another way this time, as well.  I just need to figure out what it is.  “I prefer to think of that as a last resort,” I say to Isla.  The Sasquatch is mouthing something at me but I doubt it’s anything I want to hear, so I keep his voice safely tucked away in my magic.

Kallen’s entire body stiffens.  “She’s here.”

Not again so soon.  “Are you positive?”

“Will you listen to the bloody wanker!” a scratchy voice calls out
from the hall.  “She’s trying to kill me!”  Taz?  She’s trying to kill Taz? 

Leaning close to Kallen, I say, “Seal the door after me.  Keep everyone in here.”  He nods with the grimmest expression I have ever seen on his face.
  He would like to keep me sealed in here, as well.  It is a great force of will which keeps him from trying.

Pushing Grandpa aside because he’s still blocking the doorway and is now gaping at the Tasmanian devil practically flying toward the room, I step out and feel Kallen’s magic close the door behind me.  I pull magic to slow Taz down so he doesn’t slide into the door or me.  His sharp nails don’t have any traction on the smooth floor.

Scampering behind my legs, he wheezes, “Other…Familiar…wants…me…dead…”

“She sent her
Familiar to kill you?” I ask, dumbfounded I hadn’t thought of this possibility.  In my defense, she hasn’t had her Taz with her the times I’ve seen her so I kind of forgot about him.  Oops. 

From the direction of the great hall, Taz’s twin is stalking toward us.  I move forward, not wanting to get trapped against the door.  “If you leave now I won’t hurt you,” I say to the approaching animal.

“Who will stop her from hurting me if I do?” the other Taz growls.  The nearer he gets, the better I can make out the missing patches of hair and the scars he wears.  One of his ears is practically gone and his tail is a lot shorter than my Taz’s is.  What has she been doing to the poor thing?

“She hurts you?”

“Her, or her magic,” the devil says.  “Depending on her needs.”

The sad thing here is he sounds like this is perfectly acceptable behavior.  “She shouldn’t be hurting you.  She’s doing it by choice, not because magic dictates it.  Look at my Familiar, not a scratch on him.”

“Actually, I have three,” my Taz says. 

“Not helping,” I tell him out of the corner of my mouth.
  I’m sure they’re tiny and he probably got them running from the other him.

“Your meager excuse for a Familiar is no standard to live by.  He would have been used up and ground into dust a long time ago in our universe.  The weak don’t survive.”

I’m going to bring this up the next time Taz complains about something I’m doing.  Providing we both survive.  “Well, things are different here.”

“So I see,” the other Taz says, coming to a halt and baring his teeth.  “Are you sure it wasn’t
Goblin magic that created such a pitiful creature?”

“Oh, dear.  A Familiar cowering behind its Witch.  What a lame excuse for a universe this is.  It needs someone strong to shape it into what it could be.” 

I am beginning to hate the sound of my own voice.  And the sight of me as my doppelgänger comes around the corner.  “What’s that, your evil playground?”  Ok, that was lame.

“We don’t need to be enemies,” the other me says.

I groan and shake my head.  “Is this the part where you say we can be sisters and rule the universe together?  Because this me would never say anything so contrived.”

“Neither would I,” she says with a wicked grin.  “I was simply going to offer to keep you alive if you stay out of my way.  You and your pet can live out your lives here as long as you never get in my way again.”  By pet, I don’t think she means Taz.  She means Kallen.

“Yeah, that’s not going to work for me.”

She laughs and I’m quite disturbed to hear how much like a donkey she sounds.  I
never sound like that, do I?  I’ll ask Adriel.  She’ll give me an honest answer.  “I killed your pet in my realm, you know.  As soon as Raziel told me about the choice he had to make, I sought him out.  First, I made him my slave and he did anything I wanted him to do.”  I get the impression she’s not talking about dusting.  “When I tired of him, I severed his head while I was kissing him.”

I honestly don’t know what to say to that.  To
be able to commit such an act is unfathomable to me.  The depravity of it, the pride she takes in it, it is too much for my brain to comprehend.  The only words I can think to say are, “You know, the Cowan realm has some really good psychotropic drugs.  We could fix you.”

I really hope it hurt her head when she hit the wall as much as mine hurt hitting the door behind me.  I am now sprawled on top of Taz, who for once isn’t complaining about anything.  The other Taz was smart enough to get out of the way. 
He’s probably used to his Witch Fairy’s bouts of rage.  “I believe we’ve established that anything we do to the other happens to us.” I mutter, getting to my feet again.

Looking much better off than I do, my
doppelgänger growls, “The difference is I’m not afraid of the pain.”  At least I feel it coming this time as magic slams me back down. 

My mind is racing, trying to think of something I can do
to her that won’t hurt me.  She’s right, I don’t like the pain.  Putting my own wicked smile on, I pull magic for a counterattack.  I sense her bracing for impact but she’s not expecting what I do.  Below us both, the floor dissolves.  We are above the archives here and it’s a twenty foot drop to the floor.  Unless I grab the rope I created which is now attached firmly to the wall.  I am jerked to a stop mid-air but my doppelgänger is only just able to cushion her fall before she hits the ground.  She gets up growling.  Yup, she is actually growling. 

I search my brain trying to figure out what she’s going to do in retaliation.  It’s an easy guess that she’s going to cut my rope so I have plenty of time to cushion my
own landing.  It sucks when the bookshelf falls on me, though.  I am barely able to put a bubble around me so I don’t get squashed like a bug.  Hundreds of irreplaceable scrolls fall around me, many turning to dust on impact with the floor.  Maybe bringing her to the archives wasn’t such a good idea.

Managing to push the bookshelf back the way it came, I overcompensate and it falls the other way, creating a domino effect.  I grimace as I think of the knowledge
lost as more books and scrolls are ruined.  What the hell was I thinking?

My
doppelgänger is not troubled in the least by the loss of information.  This is apparent from the way she tries to set me on fire.  Oh, come on.  “Really?” I demand, rising from the ground safe within a magic bubble.  “You are willingly to burn yourself?”  That unpleasant donkey laugh is the first reply I get.  I definitely need to know if I ever sound like that.

“To rid myself of you?  I would suffer any pain.” 
I can’t see her and her voice is coming from farther away now.  Oh no!  She’s heading toward the dark magic section.  Getting to my feet, I tear after her.  With her black soul, she’ll have no trouble entering the area.

So focused is she on her destination, she’s not prepared for me to physically attack her.  As soon as I make contact with her, I teleport us out of the archives.  Out of the palace.  We end up
tumbling onto a lonely stretch of road far from anywhere.  I remember travelling this road on the way south to the Giant territory. 

My
doppelgänger screams in frustration.  “How can a universe exist where I am such a pansy?”

“How can a universe exist where I think pansy is a cutting insult?” I ask
, crawling away from her.

My doppelgänger glares at me.  I can see her mind working trying to come up with a plan.  When that malicious smile forms on her lips, I know she has one.  Looking around, she says, “This particular realm is awfully important you.  Me, on the other hand, I’ve never been a fan of Fairies.”

My gut clenches.  The Seraph’s words come back to me, slapping me in the face.  This other me performed genocide in her universe.  Would she?  Could she?  My heart sinks as the answer lodges firmly in my brain.