Grave Intentions (Darkling Mage 3)

I squinted. “All you’ve done is lick a piece of glass all night and we’re barely even close. I’m ninety percent sure that you’re just making shit up so we mmff – ”

Having Sterling’s hand clamped over my mouth was an odd and frankly terrifying feeling. The best way to describe it was having a dry and weirdly smooth frozen lamb chop pressed over my face. I struggled, my protestations muffled, but he gripped harder. He lifted a finger, pushed it against his lips, then pointed across the street.

Someone approximately my height and build had just ambled across the sidewalk. It was too far to make out any real features, but I could see the same ill-fitting jacket that I’d seen on the apothecary’s security footage, the same strange gait. Other-Dustin kept walking, slipping into the darkness of a warehouse. I kept my eyes glued to his back. At least we knew that the thing couldn’t shadowstep.

“That’s our man,” Sterling said.

Grunting, I slapped his hand away, wiping at my face with the sleeve of my jacket. Who knew where his fingers had been? But more importantly, I had a thumping sensation of dread in my chest. I wanted this horse shit with all these cases of mistaken identity to end.

I didn’t need vampires accosting me in dark alleys when I was just going out for a burger, and I still owed Bastion a punch in the face. Yet I knew somewhere inside me that confronting Other-Dustin was going to result in some kind of catastrophic mess.

I frowned at Sterling as he dipped the shard in his mouth again. “Will you please stop licking that damn thing?” I half-wished he’d cut himself on it, just so he would stop.

He ignored me, his eyes turned curiously up to the sky. “The blood tastes wrong. Almost – artificial. Soulless.”

“So stop licking it then.”

“Never.”

Sterling dashed across the street, his feet soundless against the asphalt. I’d long accepted that I would probably never get used to how fast he could move, just a bolt of leather and silver streaking through the darkness.

Call it cheating, but I felt more secure when the two of us were walking abreast of each other, so I shadowstepped to keep pace, emerging in the darkness of the same warehouse Other-Dustin had entered. Sterling stood there, his face raised to the shadowy walls of the structure.

“Abandoned,” he whispered. “You’d think the owners would make more of an effort. Renovate, sell it on, rent it, something.”

“What do you know about business and real estate?” I hissed. “Plus, shut up. We’re trying to be sneaky about this.”

“I know plenty. Also, no, you shut up.” He raised his nose in the air and took a slow, deliberate breath. “He’s still in there. Flank him. You creep in through the left entrance. I’ll take the right.”

The left entrance being the ramshackle remains of one of those sliding shutter doors, clinging for dear life onto the battered, chipped wall. I should point out that we weren’t working in total darkness. It was shadier there since we were technically in an alleyway between buildings, but there were still streetlights. The moon was out, and for whatever you could see over the glare of a city’s lights, so were the stars.

Yet as I crept all I could think of was how Sterling had once told me that we worked best in darkness, him, myself, and Gil. They used their superior senses, and maybe through some affinity with the shadows, I had better than average vision in gloomy situations myself.

And in that darkness I saw him. Traces of movement came from among the splintered crates and pallets sitting like capsized ships in the shadows. Other-Dustin, this thing that was wearing my face, was rocking on his feet, his hands cupped close to his lips, so close that his cheeks glowed with the same jade-green of the artifact nestled in his palms.

I began the slow, arduous duck walk I knew I needed to use to creep up on him. En route I picked up a loose plank, careful to dislodge it soundlessly from its brethren, weighing it in my hand. One sound smack and I could probably knock the thing out with a Sneaky Dustin Special. But as I approached, I became more and more consumed with the notion that all this stealth, and the pincer attack Sterling suggested, weren’t all that necessary.

The creature wasn’t very bright. Madam Chien’s apothecary was only three blocks away. Other-Dustin was clearly in a rush to spend time with the peach, a fact only supported by how he started petting it like a mouse in the palm of his hand. And when I thought things couldn’t get weirder, Other-Dustin brought the peach to his face, nuzzling it against his cheek. I gripped the board tighter, splinters pushing into my palm. This was going to be easy.

But then his eyes flew open.

Have you ever seen one of those horror movies where the hero’s just brushing his teeth, or flossing, maybe, minding his own business, when out of nowhere his reflection’s mouth curves into a sinister, demonic smile?

That’s what this was. That’s what happened. My heart was punching against the inside of my body, thumping at the sight of my own fucking face grinning at me with too-wide lips and far too much unfriendly intent. And in the jade light of the peach it was easy to see that his eyes were black. Jet black.

Mine were supposed to be blue. His eyes darted at me, like he always knew I was there. He wasn’t supposed to see me coming. He wasn’t supposed to hear me.

He wasn’t supposed to move so fast.

Chapter 8

In only two quick bounds the creature had closed the distance between us, his free arm winding up to strike. No time to panic, or for the yelp to move past my lips. I sank into the shadows, stepping into the Dark Room, the air displacing over my head as the creature missed its blow.

My lungs fought for breath as I shuffled through the tunnel of the Dark Room, board still in hand. It was hard enough to breathe there, and I didn’t need the uncertainty of what I was fighting to complicate things further. But tell me, how would you react to finding a near-perfect copy of yourself that wanted to kill you?

I clenched my fingers tighter over the plank as I reemerged in reality, crouched in a section of the warehouse at least a couple dozen feet away from where I had left Other-Dustin. Sweat slid in trickles down my nape as I surveyed the darkness for the beacon of green light that should have given him away, but he was missing.

Did he escape? Unlikely. The look on his face was thick with malice. No. Not his. It. This thing wasn’t me, wasn’t a man. I refused to accept that it was human. It knew who I was, and it drew pleasure from knowing that I was so disconcerted by its existence.