Doppelgangster - Laura Resnick [130]
“He’s right,” I whispered to Max.
“Indeed.”
Lucky would never hurt us. But that creature wasn’t Lucky, and we didn’t know enough about doppelgangsters to be sure it would never hurt us. Under duress, Gabriel might be fiddling with the recipe, so to speak.
When Lucky spoke again, his location had changed once more. He shouted to us, “I’ll deal with this mook! You two, go. Go!”
“Nelli, come!” Max commanded sharply.
Max grabbed my hand and dragged me through the dark. Nelli came with us, her feet stepping on ours, her whining giving away our location. Perhaps the next time we confronted Evil, I thought, we should leave Nelli at home. We slipped past shadowy pews and a hulking shape that was probably St. Monica. Behind us, I heard the sounds of clattering wooden pews, cursing in Italian, and then a crash of glass—candleholders I guessed—as Lucky and his doppelgangster chased each other through the dark church.
When we reached the end of the aisle, we walked into a staircase. We didn’t know where it led, but we followed it blindly, ascending above the vast, dark area where Lucky and his doppelgangster were engaged in deadly stalking.
“Max, we can’t just leave Lucky,” I whispered urgently as we crept upward on the spiral staircase.
“We must! This is a delaying tactic,” Max whispered back.
“It’s a deadly tactic.” I was panting as I dragged Nelli behind me. She had decided she didn’t like climbing unfamiliar spiral stairs in the dark to an unknown destination. “That thing is armed with a knife! A real one.”
“The preparations we made before we left the lab will protect Lucky from the fatal curse.”
“What’s going to protect him from that thing stabbing him in a struggle?” I said.
“If Lucky gets the knife away from it—”
“That’s a big if, Max!”
“—it will disintegrate. Lucky knows that. The creature doesn’t.”
“That seems like an awfully slim advantage!”
“That doppelgangster is a trap, a distraction!” Max was climbing the curving staircase rapidly, just ahead of me, dragging me as I dragged Nelli. “The priest wants us to stay there and remain ensnared in dealing with that problem, rather than proceed. We must find Father Gabriel’s—oof!”
I froze when I heard him go splat. “Max? Max!”
He said faintly, “The stairs end here.”
I carefully climbed the remaining couple of steps, then felt around in the darkness. I found Max’s arm and helped him rise. Nelli shoved past me, then she stumbled a few feet later, too. As I made my way across the uneven floor, my heel caught on a broken tile.
“We’re in the choir gallery,” I said. “Be careful. The floor is need of repair.”
“Yes, I’ve noticed that.” Max still sounded winded. “We must find a means of illumination!”
I moved through the darkness with my hands up, palms outward, hoping to find a wall and then to move along it in search of a light switch. Somewhere below us, there was a terrible clatter of pews and some shouting. I glanced over my shoulder and saw, in the church below us, the flashlight flying through the dark. It went out when it hit the floor, leaving the church in complete darkness again. So Lucky had at least gotten the flashlight away from the doppelgangster.
An ear-splitting shriek of organ music made me jump out of my skin. Nelli barked. I bumped into something tall and hard, but not very stable. It fell over with a crash.
As the jarring wail of the organ faded, Max said, “I do apologize.”
“Ow.” Realizing what I must have bumped into, I bent over and felt it. “Max, I’ve found a candelabra.” I hauled it upright and felt my way along its branches. “I think it’s got—yes! Candles!”
“Excellent!” Max stumbled over to the sound of my voice. He took one of the thick candles between his hands, chanted in another language for about thirty seconds, and then blew.
Nothing happened.
“I, uh . . . I’m feeling rather stressed and distracted.” He sounded embarrassed.
“It’s all right. Don’t rush.” My heart was pounding. “Take your time.”
I flinched when I heard the crash of something heavy downstairs.
Max tried again and this time