The Touch Of Twilight (31 page)

Her upper lip curled in a sneer and she shut her eyes dismissively, though her countenance held a stiffness it hadn’t before. Her spine straightened, her awareness of me making her self-conscious when what she really needed to be was wary. Ah well, I thought, turning my shoulders. Live and learn.

I unfurled the mask, whipping it like a skipping stone so it clattered across the floor and struck her thigh hard enough to leave a bruise. She yelped, eyes flying open as I began my slow stalk, keeping to the perimeter of the room. To her credit, she stayed where she was even though my heart rate was up and my fury scented the air. I kept my stride even.

“You want what?” she said, still dismissive, pale dreads standing out like long corn husks against her loose black clothing.

“Some quality time with my newest, bestest girlfriend,” I said in Olivia’s highest dulcet tone, throwing in a breathy sigh to punctuate the difference between my soft words and my aggressive actions. An invisible wall soared high and solid in my wake. I could feel it like it was tethered around my waist, beginning to take on drag. My goal was to make it around the entire room before Kimber realized what I was doing. My voice, my words, my looks—all the things she’d underestimated—helped. “After all, you’re the only one who understands what it’s like for me under that mask. You’re the only one in this big ol’ world who shares my ill
chi
.”

All right, so it was a bit of overkill, but she’d fall for it a little longer. I cut my fourth wall short, reinforced them all with a quick pulse of my thoughts, then cut a direct path to Kimber, where I hovered too close, too long, before lowering myself into a mirrored cross-legged position. Our knees touched. I smiled sweetly. Kimber scowled, pushed back fractionally, and handed me the mask.

“I don’t think so.”

“Just put it on. Just once. I want to know what you see. Is there ash raining on the city as it goes up in a conflagration? Is there mutiny among the remaining citizens? Wait, I bet it’s the way they’ve turned to cannibalism, right? You look like you’ve seen the absolute worst of it.”

Her serene expression had been blighted, and her lips had thinned into nonexistence. “I said no.”

I thrust out my bottom lip. “Please?”

She cursed under her breath, stood smoothly, and tossed the mask onto my lap. “Begging,” she said as she turned toward the door. “You’re fucking pitiful.”

By the time she hit my first wall, my pitiful self was standing as well. She reared back—confused, shocked, pained—and turned to me holding her nose.

“Come,” I said, motioning her way, all the pleading drained from my voice.

“No.” Her voice was strained now; she was trying to push down her panic, still holding on to her low estimation of me. “I’m not going to—”

“I’m not talking to you.” I cut her off, still motioning, still concentrating. The wall behind her struck her backside first as it continued its slow glide my way. I hadn’t learned to control the speed yet, but I could erect them, I could move them, and I could shrink the space inside them so thoroughly they could crack a nut. I smiled, and the other three walls shimmered as they began to close in.

“What are you doing?” She was panicked now, pushing back with her weight, heels stuttering as the wall continued inching forward.

“Don’t be afraid. We’re in the sanctuary, after all. Someone will be along to help you…shortly.” Chandra hadn’t tried to stop me, but she knew when I left the lab I hadn’t intended to make nice with Kimber. “Maybe I’ll even let them.”

She was fighting it fully now, all that arrogant Zen master bullshit absent under the realization I could do something she could not. What can I say? Surviving something like walls materializing to trap you inside them, which I had, made the mastery of the skill a priority. I stopped all four walls when we were only feet apart, where they vibrated with an intensity that raised the hairs on my arms.

“Pretty, aren’t they?” I said, voice breathless again as I admired my work, my bald appreciation causing them to materialize, though they still flitted in and out of view like a cell phone gaining and losing reception. “But of course they’re more than they seem. Their outward beauty belies their strength. Geez, that reminds me of something else, actually.” I tapped my chin, like I was thinking about it, then snapped my fingers. “Oh, I know what it is…me.”

My voice dropped, my chin lowered, and I took three quick steps forward. Kimber’s arms went up, but she struck out too soon, and I kept coming. I thought her shock might give me a greater advantage, but she had good instincts, and didn’t roll readily. Her forward kick to my solar plexus landed squarely, but as I flew backward the wall behind me absorbed my impact, bending with my weight like a cushion, and I was bounced forward again to return the favor with twice the force. The wall behind Kimber didn’t bend, bow, or break, and the impact rolled through her body with a force that caused her heart to momentarily stutter.

It would’ve been enough—she was pinned and practically submitted—but I wasn’t feeling merciful. Yanking on her conveniently swinging dreads, I clamped the mask over her face with my other hand, muffling her protests.

“Tell me what you see when you look at me now, Kimber. Because I’m not begging, and I’m certainly not pitiful.” She shook her head, pushing against me, then tried to shake it faster when I stilled it, hand on her chin. “Tell me!”

The sound of the world rupturing came on the heels of the impact that knocked me down. Cowering on my knees, I wrapped my arms over my head, the pain inside so great, my gray matter must have swelled in seconds. As vessels throbbed against my skull, and the ripples of vibrational impact ate my scream, I thought of death, wished for it, because nothing could hurt as much as being caught in the lengthening furrows of destroyed sound.

Concussion after concussion beat at me, each stronger than the last, but relief never came. It was at the precise moment that I gave up, blind with pain, deaf and mute and numb all over, that silence crashed over me. I must have been screaming the whole time because my vocal cords were sore, but nothing came out now but a guttural squeak.

A voice sounded next to me, sweetly. “She can only speak if she puts the mask on willingly.”

I jolted on the ground, whirled despite my body’s protest, but when I saw the doppelgänger, my empty hands fell limply to my side, and my mouth dropped open.

“Force it upon someone and they can’t speak or reason,” she said, froth spewing to the ground as she took a step toward me, her mouth moving to imitate mine and speak at the same time. The grotesque and smooth mutation would have been fascinating if not so worrying. She had, I realized, begun to look like me. The
me
beneath Olivia. “Or breathe.”

But I wasn’t listening to the words. In fact, I’d forgotten Kimber entirely.

“How did you get in here?” I whispered…barely.

The doppelgänger smiled with her razored teeth, motioning to my walls. “You left an opening. I walked through it.”

She certainly had. And she sealed the opening behind her. Whatever it was making her my ethereal twin also allowed her to manipulate my thought matter. I swallowed hard.

Not, I thought as she took another step forward, a comforting thought.

Okay, so I wasn’t entirely trapped. I could dissolve the walls I’d made with a directly channeled thought, but all my energy was understandably concentrated on the being in front of me…too strong, too unpredictable, and far too close for my comfort.

“I meant how did you get into the sanctuary?”

“I’m everywhere you are. I’m like the air you take into your lungs and the carbon dioxide you breathe out again. I’m a part of you.”

“And let me guess,” I said wryly, gaining my feet and backing away as far as my walls would allow. “You want me to be a part of you too.”

She thrust out her bottom lip, chagrined. “You’re referring to my little slip in control, aren’t you? I was rushing things a bit, I know, but sometimes it’s easier to take what you need. Devouring a still-pulsing heart is like mainlining pure power. It would allow me to hide in plain sight, or appear and disappear without restriction, heedless of worlds or planes or boundaries. Like you, I’m impulsive sometimes. That…and so goddamned hungry.”

Her voice dropped, and my mind flitted to the conduit I no longer possessed…not that it would work on a partially materialized doppelgänger. Besides, what would happen if she
was
a part of me? Would I suffer if I shot her? I covered my confusion with a snarl. “Stop licking your lips. It ruins the apology.”

“I don’t expect you to forgive and forget. I never do, and we’re made from the same cloth, so to speak.” She chuckled at that, though I had no idea what it meant. “So I’ve decided to appeal to your reason instead. We should do this properly.”

She tilted her luminescent head, the curve of her skull shaping and reshaping itself in layering bubbles. Even her skull was morphing more quickly in approximation of the old me. Her snapping, effervescent hair had shortened, the droplets releasing themselves above the shoulders, and she looked taller, her build paper-thin, but taking on more substance with every passing moment as the gaseous sheen shifted over, around, and through her frame. It was eerie to see my features taking shape in a pearly phosphorescent ooze. The Tulpa’s words slid through me.

Wait much longer and you won’t even have the ability to choose…She’ll just take over your life.

So should I be thankful that her teeth were still blinding white and unnaturally sharp? I didn’t know, so I continued keeping my eyes on her when Kimber groaned wordlessly behind me.

“She told me you were a smart girl, a nice girl. Well, not nice. But good. Good-ish.” She was still drinking in my features, her own shifting so that even the words ran over themselves with that rippling voice.

“What are you talking about? Who?” I said sharply, though more out of a need to buy myself time than any real interest. I was silently repeating the Tulpa’s mantra to myself, though having trouble remembering it now that my impulsive and dangerous double had broken into my sanctuary. And he’d been adamant that it needed to be exact.

“I’m supposed to be patient and wait for you to offer your energy to me,” the doppelgänger was saying, interrupting my mental gymnastics. “Then I can return to where it will redouble upon itself, assimilating so that flesh and bone knit together in strong mortal weave…but that all takes so much time. That’s why I stumbled before. And why you need to help me.”

“Okay,” I said, playing along. I had the mantra now; I just wasn’t sure I wanted to use it. If I did, I’d belong to the Shadow side…no turning back. For the time being, I was just glad I had it at my disposal. I was shit at multitasking multiple attempts on my soul. “Just tell me exactly what you want.”

That had bubbles blowing off her like steam. Her teeth, the only solid thing about her, snapped together in a cruel parody of a smile. “Don’t be a fucking idiot, Joanna!”

Oh God. How did she know my real name?

“You’re supposed to be smart! She said you’d understand!” She was whining now, alternately furious and desperate, exasperation making her sweat so perspiration rolled like pearls down her face. “Everything we say and do and think is channeled into one thing. Vibrations. Energy. I’d burn the energy, the magic in it, if I even suggested it. I’d touch on the exact same vibrational matter I need you to, but in a different way.”

“And matter is all that matters.” I was murmuring Chandra’s words to myself, but the doppelgänger heard.

“Exactly so! So if you would just
think
. Then you could do it now and I’ll be stronger, faster, more, real, him, me…” Her entire face flashed, like lightning trapped in a bottle, and layers of light bled in her gaze, white orbs rolling like marbles. She was becoming frantic, and had almost lifted her arms, reaching out to me with razored nails before catching herself and pulling back. She wrung her hands, and bubbles frothed between her palms. “Do it properly, okay? It’ll be faster that way, almost instant. Formal isn’t necessary, no, but proper. Informal, common. That’s a given.”

She tilted her head to the other side when I said nothing, airy eyes swirling with mist, earnestness making them wide. “I won’t kill you, and we’ll be friends. Because friends give, and given is best. Anyone can inherit it, so inheritance means nothing.”

I licked my lips, not relaxing even if she didn’t look like she was going to kill me at this moment. Another moment was coming on fast. “I just need, um…a little plain English here.”

That didn’t piss her off like I thought it would. “Plain English! Exactly so!” The doppelgänger licked her beautiful lips, and I took a step backward. She still looked hungry. “I need a noun. One noun, two aspects, right?”

I half expected her to pull on her ear and say,
Sounds like…
So I waited for the pantomime to play out. And waited. I swallowed hard. “Come again?”

She ignored me, still rambling. “The first aspect is the sense—you know a lot about senses, right?—and then there’s a referent…but of course that’s already inside you. Your Shadow side…but you still need another…”

And it was all going so well until her words trailed off in a hiss. Her teeth elongated in her mouth, saliva dripping, and she looked right through me like I was nothing more than a bag of bones.

“Flank her,” came the order from behind me…and I realized she was looking at Warren, who’d burst through the Orchard’s door, the rest of the troop close behind.

“Not yet,
Phantom
,” the doppelgänger snapped at Warren, and he looked stricken at her tone. She turned back to me, eyes fierce white marbles. “Just give it to me. One noun, two aspects, a sense and a referent. All you have to do is think! Quick!”

Oh yeah—that was going to happen with my fanged and clawed double salivating in front of me. I shook my head, swallowing hard. “I’m sorry. I don’t know—”

“Idiot! Stop apologizing.” She no longer looked like me. Her face was almost roiling, it was morphing so quickly into different oval, heart, and square-jawed aspects. Her eyes alternately slanted and rounded, and her skin looked thinner, weaker, in some places than others, like a balloon squeezed at one end. “Do it now, or I’ll tell everyone here your real name.”