Doppelgangers

Part Eight of "North of Midnight," a Spell Weaver Novella

lady_in_red13/Shutterstock

Need to read an earlier episode first? Click the button below for an episode list (with the earliest at the bottom).

Where we left off: Alexandra and her allies follow their fleeing enemies into a supposedly old house that didn’t exist the day before. It turns out to be a trap, and they find themselves transported into darkness.

I could no longer see the interior of the house at all. All I could see was darkness with just a hint of the deep purple shade of Formorian magic flickering nearby.

I could still hear fiendish laughter all around us, but it sounded so uniform and repetitive that I began to wonder if it was an illusion rather than actual laughter from nearby enemies. I took the risk of asking the obvious question, hoping no one was listening to us. The setup seemed more like intimidation than spying.

“Where are we?” I asked.

“There’s too much magic around us to tell,” said Khalid. “But we don’t seem to be in the house anymore. Beyond that, I don’t have a clue.”

“Antonio’s magic is becoming erratic,” said Jimmie. “Since it and the sunlight from the sword are the only real protection we have, we need to figure out how to keep him going.”

Though my experience was more limited than theirs, even I could see the flickering of Antonio’s light. The area it covered also seemed seemed to be shrinking, as if the darkness were pressing in on it.

“What about power sharing?” asked Lucas. “I know Antonio’s not part of that bond with us, but when you guys first rescued me, remember how I sort of hacked my way into your network? I think I could hook Antonio in.”

“I thought that was the communication network, not the power network,” said Khalid. “I don’t remember for sure. But look at him. Do you think he’d be receptive?”

Antonio remained expressionless, though his facial muscles seemed to tighten as the darkness closed in. There was no way to tell whether he could hear us, but he certainly wasn’t responding in any way.

“You’re…networked with each other?” I asked. This group seemed to average a new surprise about once each half hour.

“Yeah, we’ve been that way for about three years or so,” said Khalid. “We can talk without being heard.” He looked around suspiciously, but he appeared to regard the laughter the same way I did—a way to throw us off rather than an indication that anyone was close enough to listen. “That’s one network. We can also share power with each other. Even those of us without much magic can share our strength with a caster, making spells more powerful or long-lasting. But, Lucas’s one-time hack aside, none of us know how to include others. Tal is the one who set the networks up, and—”

“I know,” I said. “He’s not here.”

Antonio made a sound that might have been a moan. Sweat was dripping from his forehead into his eyes. Perhaps he was straining too hard to maintain the protection around us. But short of being able to read minds, I didn’t know how any of us would tell what was going on.

“Maybe if we could get his attention,” said Khalid, though he looked doubtful. Antonio’s light was fading fast, and the darkness felt as if it were cutting off our air supply.

“What if I kiss him?” I asked. Or did I? The words came out of my mouth and sounded like my voice, but I hadn’t made a conscious effort to speak. I blushed, though I doubted anyone could see that—or would have cared if they did.

Much to my surprise, everyone took that suggestion seriously. “What’s your thinking?” asked Jimmie.

I didn’t want to admit that I didn’t have any thoughts on the subject, that I hadn’t really spoken those words. But the situation was too dire to me to hold information back.

“The words just sort of came out. I didn’t think about them at all.”

“You could be a seer,” said Khalid. “Or, if not that, maybe your subconscious mind perceived something about Antonio. You’ve felt his magic. Maybe it created a connection of some kind between you.”

“Anyway, it’s worth a try,” said Jimmie. “His power draws on love, so a gesture like that—”

“I don’t love him,” I said, though the words sounded hollow, even to me.

Khalid gave me one of his infuriating winks. Everybody else had the manners to pretend to believe me.

“Even so, it can’t hurt to try,” said Lucas. “But if you’re willing, do it now.” He gestured toward the darkness. “I don’t want to find out what happens when whatever surrounds us breaks through.”

I wasn’t sure how I felt about Antonio, but we were running out of options. Frankly, at this point, I would have kissed faux Dracula if it would have gotten us out of this mess.

That said, I would rather not have had an audience, but I felt silly asking the others to turn away. I positioned myself in front of Antonio, put my arms around his shaking body, pulled him closer to me, and pressed my lips against his.

His lips trembled, and they felt unnaturally warm, as if he were feverish. But if he noticed me, he didn’t react at all. I might as well have been kissing a statue.

“Don’t be shy about using tongue,” said Khalid, earning himself a shove from Jimmie.

“When you kissed him, his magic brightened a little,” said Lucas.

I’d been too uncomfortable to notice at first, but Lucas was right. The aura around us was brighter, and the darkness seemed just a little further away.

“On some level, he must be aware,” said Jimmie. “Try it again.”

I felt as if I’d somehow been transported into a fairy tale, but I couldn’t argue with results. I hugged him and again pressed my lips against his. I might have been mistaken, but I thought he kissed me back a little.

“Enough of this!” said Elatha from somewhere in the darkness. “They seem to have found a way to strengthen their defenses. We need to try a more direct attack.”

“It would be too easy to kill them by accident,” replied Dracula, who sounded tired. He and Elatha were uneasy allies at best.

“Try one more time,” said Lucas. “You know, third time’s a charm.”

This time, I kissed him more fervently. Given how attractive I found him, that wasn’t hard. I still didn’t know how much of what I was feeling was magic, but I could sort that out later.

Antonio blinked, and his eyes focused on me. “What’s…what’s happening?” he asked, his voice hoarse.

“Stay focused,” said Lucas quickly. “You have much more powerful magic now, and it’s helping us survive.”

The glow, which had flickered for a moment, stabilized, but Antonio looked more frightened than any of the rest of us. Knowing everyone else was depending on him, and having no idea what to do, would have to be frightening. I’d been having similar feelings, so I knew.

“You’ve been using love magic to protect us,” said Jimmie. “But you seemed to be having more trouble with it just now.”

“I feel…tired,” said Antonio.

I still wasn’t sure how magic worked, but he’d been radiating energy for several minutes. I supposed that must wear a person out pretty quickly. My ability to see magic hadn’t been that tiring so far, but Antonio’s ability probably required more exertion.

Elatha, who had evidently grown tired of waiting for us to fail, appeared suddenly in the darkness, most of his natural light kept cleverly inside of him. He swung his sword through Antonio’s light, and Antonio fell to his knees.

Khalid fired an arrow, but Elatha, anticipating that move, vanished back into the darkness before it could hit.

“Something’s wrong with Antonio,” said Khalid, quietly but urgently. I looked at him and saw that Elatha’s interference had provoked the death curse inside of him to surge again. I could see its darkness pressing down his internal light. Too much of that, and Antonio could die.

“Power share—now!” I said. I was in no position to command them, but none of them complained.

“Lucas, see what you can do about hooking Antonio into the power sharing network,” said Jimmie.

“That isn’t going to do you any good,” said a familiar voice I couldn’t quite place. Out of the shadows stepped both Viviane Florence and Carrie Winn. They seemed unnaturally calm. But at least, they hadn’t been harmed.

“How can you be free?” asked Khalid suspiciously. “You’ve been prisoners for hours.”

“We have seen the light,” said Viviane in a tone that would have done any religious fanatic proud. “We understand now.”

“Understand what?” asked Jimmie.

I looked as closely at them as I could. They weren’t blurry around the edges, so they weren’t illusions. But I hadn’t been able to see their magic before they were abducted, so I had no idea what it was supposed to look like. What I saw within them was the deep purple of Formorian magic and something else, even darker and more sinister. I couldn’t imagine what I was seeing was their normal magic.

“They aren’t…themselves,” I said.

“We are better than we were before,” replied Carrie. ‘But to return to our original point, you can’t power share effectively with Antonio. He lacks the experience to make himself receptive.”

Carrie Winn presumably had the background to know that, but her voice sounded so much more casual than she had when I first met her. She had also seemed in charge. The woman who stood before me sounded like someone else’s faithful servant.

“Possession,” muttered Khalid.

“Nothing so crude,” said Dracula, stepping close enough for us to see him. “Put that down,” he said to Khalid, who had already nocked an arrow. “You need to hear what I have to say.”

‘You will be glad you did,” said Viviane in a voice that sounded more like a commercial spokesperson than the doctor—and Lady of the Lake—that I knew she was.

Antonio had somehow managed to keep the light going, but it was flickering again. I put my hand on his shoulder, which was all I could do right now. The light brightened a little.

“Possession is frankly too tiring,” said Dracula. “I did that with Janice from time to time, as you know. But it was exhausting—and distracting. However, I’ve been holding a little surprise in reserve. Over the centuries, I’ve managed to master the ability to create a doppelganger.”

“Doppelgangers aren’t real,” said Khalid. “The old stories developed because some people met others who looked very similar to them. A genetic coincidence.”

“Ah, but there were real doppelgangers in ancient times,” said Dracula as if their existence were an established fact. “But unlike races such as the faeries, who might have been created by magic at the very beginning but reproduced sexually after that, doppelgangers are always produced by magic. You think they are myths, but that’s because the spell needed to create them is rare and complicated.”

“And pretty useless, if you ask me,” said Jimmie. “No one is going to buy those two as authentic.”

Doppelganger Viviane shrugged. “Not now, perhaps. “When we first link to a person, we are…imperfect duplicates. The physical body settles, and then other aspects, like magical abilities and memories, gradually become closer and closer to the original, until they are, for all practical purposes, identical.”

Dracula gave us a toothy smile, “I know it’s not as quick or elegant as your blood double spell. Don’t look so shocked. After that wedding fiasco—in which Elatha’s son was involved, you’ll recall—the spell is common knowledge in the faerie realms. Unfortunately for me, so are methods to detect and counteract it. I needed a different approach.”

“Why tell us all of this?” asked Lucas.

“Because you have a choice to make,” replied Dracula. “A doppelganger normally destroys its original once the process is complete. But that need not be done. I’ll have to keep you prisoners, of course. But I’ll spare your lives. I’ll even find some way to keep your circumstances as comfortable as possible.”

This was why Dracula hadn’t wanted any of my new friends killed. He needed them alive to create doppelgangers of them.

“I suppose you’ll ambush the others as they return,” said Lucas.

“And offer them the same deal,” said Dracula a little too quickly.

Lucas looked at Jimmie, Khalid, and Antonio, who nodded. “I’m sorry,” said Lucas. “But we will never make any agreement with—”

The four guys sagged a little, as if a great weight pressed down on their shoulders, and Antonio’s love magic exploded outward, its light brilliant but somehow not blinding—at least to us. Dracula shrieked and covered his eyes. The two doppelgangers weren’t quite as affected, but they backed into the darkness—or tried to. Our surroundings were now much more gray than black.

Antonio trembled. Even though I wasn’t standing right next to him, I could tell he was still straining, despite whatever contribution the others were able to make. I raced over, threw my arms around him, and kissed him with as much fervor as I could manage.

The light brightened, and Dracula shrieked again.

But the light was already dimming. I wasn’t sure if it was Antonio’s inexperience wielding magic or just that his power level wasn’t really that high, but it was clear he couldn’t sustain what he was doing much longer, even with my help.

I took my lips off Antonio’s long enough to yell to Lucas, “Include me!”

I was sure he’d know I meant to include me in the power sharing network. I wasn’t at all sure he could that, but he’d made the connection with Antonio quickly enough. I had at least a little magic to share, maybe enough to buy us a few minutes more.

I felt a tingle, and I also felt much more tired than I should have. I found myself leaning on Antonio for support.

“We need to find a way out—quickly.”

Since I was hearing Lucas’s voice in my head, he must have connected me to the communications network as well, but I supposed that was all for the best. Our enemies might not have been listening before—but I’d bet they were listening now.

I looked around, but aside from the doppelgangers, Dracula, and a hint of Elatha’s magic, all I could see was gray fading to black. The area around us was utterly featureless.

“If they brought us here by portal, we’re dead,” said Khalid, his tone more solemn than anything I’d heard from him before. “Unless it’s a fixed portal, in which case just stepping on a particular spot might send us back. Look for something at ground level that seems to stand out.”

I wasn’t even sure where ground level was exactly. As far as I could see, there was no ground. But we were clearly standing on something.

Antonio’s light was now flickering. He was shaking more, and I felt even weaker than before. We were giving all we had.

It wasn’t enough.

I spotted something just a few steps behind us—a faint, roughly circular purple glow. It wouldn’t have been visible at all in the overwhelming darkness. Only Antonio’s light enabled me to see it.

“Right behind us by about a dozen steps,” I said, praying I was right.

We started to shuffle in that direction. Faster would have been better, but none of us had much speed left.

Antonio slumped in my arms, and the light faded to a dull gray. Shadows moved in all around us.

---

“North of Midnight” is related to the Spell Weaver series.

(Subscribers receive a certain number of free ebooks, depending on which tier they select. See https://billhiatt.substack.com/about for details.)