Doppelgangster - Laura Resnick [131]
In the dim glow cast by the burning candles on the scene below us, it was easy to tell Lucky apart from his doppelgangster since he was the one with the weirdly painted face. That’s how I knew he was the one lying on the floor, while his perfect double was the one standing over him with a knife.
“Lucky!” I screamed.
Lucky twisted and drove his heel into the doppelgangster’s knee. It cried out and fell sideways, rolling away. The creature retained its grip on the knife.
Lucky looked up at the choir gallery and shouted, “I got this covered! Go stop the priest!”
Max and I each held a burning candle. I asked, “Where should we look first?”
“Normally, I’d say the crypt. But that room obviously gets too much use in this church to be a sorcerer’s secret lair.”
“And all those pink bunny costumes . . .” I shook my head. “It just doesn’t say ‘lair’ to me.”
Deciding where to look first became easy when we heard a woman’s piercing scream.
It came from somewhere beyond the east side of the choir gallery. Max, Nelli, and I dashed toward the door there. It was locked. Max gathered his focus and made a circular gesture with his arms, then a flicking motion with his wrists, as he spoke in rhythmic Latin. A moment later, the lock clicked, the doorknob turned, and the door opened to let us through. On the other side of it was a dark hallway. There was a light switch right next to the door. I flipped it. Nothing happened.
“He must have killed the lights for the whole building,” I said.
“He knows the church intimately. We’re strangers here. He counted on this to disorient us.”
The hallway was eerie in the candlelight, but probably ordinary by day. This part of the church didn’t seem to be in use. The floor sagged, the paint was chipped, and the overhead lights looked older than Lucky. There were a number of doors, both to our right and our left. They were all closed. I turned to my right and tried the first door I came to. It was locked.
“These must be the old dormitory rooms,” I said, recalling the secretary’s report from today’s meeting. “I don’t think anyone comes up here.”
“No one but our quarry,” Max murmured.
Nelli’s ear pricked alertly and she trotted to the very end of the hall. She stopped when she reached a door that had, I noticed, shiny new hinges and a new lock instead of the rusting, decades-old hardware that was on the other doors up here. She started growling.
We approached the door. I could hear voices on the other side of it. One of the voices, which obviously belonged to a woman, was agitated and angry. The other voice was lower. Possibly a man. It sounded as if he was chanting.
Both voices ceased abruptly when Nelli scratched at the door, growling louder, wholly focused on whatever was on the other side of it.
Max’s eyes met mine in the dim light of our flickering candles. “It’s time to confront our adversary.”
My heartbeat was deafening. I realized I was breathing like a runner. I swallowed and nodded. “Let’s do it.”
Max put his hand on the doorknob and turned it.
“Don’t move,” said a male voice.
In the dark hallway behind us, I heard the sound, familiar to me from many episodes of Crime and Punishment , of someone cocking a semiautomatic gun to fire it.
On the other side of the door, the woman screamed again.
24
Max and I turned our heads to look over our shoulders at the newcomer. He was a shadowy figure at the other end of the hall.
“Jesus, what the fuck is that on your faces?” he said.
Max and I looked at each other. The elaborate face paint, I had to admit, gave us a rather disturbing appearance, particularly in this dim, flickering light.
Soft footsteps brought the man closer to us, into