The Doppel-Crosser: Chapter Two By HENSPURS cockscomb@juno.com A Shape-shifting Amazon reveals herself. The romp was invigorating to me, but to Freda, hours of fucking left her exhausted and sore. I let her sleep. Freda moaned as she nestled in the tangled sheets. Watching her spread out there on the bed in gratified peace, I envied her. I had to think of what to tell her when she woke up. Of course, it would be a mixture of lies and truth, but mostly the truth. I think she deserved the truth. What I had given her was absolutely real. She dreamed. Meanwhile, I thought. I remembered. In a room as dark and large as this one, I searched my tortured memory for a nightmarish incident. Why, why did I survive that dreadful evening? * * * I hadn't been Dorcas then. I was masquerading as an apprentice book-binder and found myself deep within the tome-crammed libraries of a mystic order, appraising great old volumes with worn spines. Others were in the room with me; important people. One of them, I supposed was a doppelganger. We didn't reveal ourselves to each other. Maybe the man closest to the reading table suspected me, but treated me to no clues. It wasn't a good time to get careless. Voices outside the door. Too quiet for anyone else, but with my telepathy honed for sneaky conversation, I got most of what the unannounced visitors were saying. "If this fraud is exposed here and now, he'll fight like ten men." "We are prepared for that." A reputable monotone answered. "He could also escape. Or take hostages." The monotone came again. "All things considered, it's either now...or never." At that, the closed door burst inward, banging the wall. The attack was two-pronged. Hidden soldiers stepped quickly into the library from two other hallways. "What is this?" Four studious-looking men in academic's robes straightened from their bent postures. I pretended to look surprised, almost dropping the thick book I held. Almost. No easy way out. The exits were blocked. Wheel-lock pistols were drawn and leveled. A tall, severe-faced figure in dark huntsman's livery strode past the guards. The leader, I thought, a woman. Given her attitude, she fairly ignored the cadre she had brought with her. Casually, and without warning, she ran one of her own men through with a curved short-sword. "Fake," she said. "Wait! Wait!" One of the scholars reeled in protest, snatching up a book as a shield. Gun muzzles tracked him. "Wait!" She ignored him, running through his colleague with a sword-thrust as neat as it was ruthless. Two bodies, now looking something less than human sprawled on the hard timber floor, oozing fluids that weren't all red or bloodlike. Two doppelgangers killed. How many were actually here? Besides me? I had no way of knowing. I didn't move. Panicked, another scholar whirled and ran for the window, intent on breaking the frame. The firm, decorative lead bent as he threw his weight against it, but the lattice didn't give. Bullets in the back made him twist as he struggled. The last round bored through his head. Unbelievingly, I watched another of our kind die. In the rush and noise, the remaining scholar grabbed a gun of his own from under a curl of parchment and brandished it, finally targeting the woman in charge. She raised her arms, short-sword and all. To everyone's surprise, including mine, she shot from the hip. A stout wheel-lock roared and flamed and smoked, drilling the gun-wielding academic in the chest. The ranks of guards, one busy with reloading his weapon while the others kept watch, looked up in puzzlement. Grim as always, the woman lowered her full sized arms. The third, shorter arm, mostly hidden in her cloak, kept the gun at the ready. The gun was made to fire two shots. Three hands, I thought. She's deformed. But in a useful way. Holding his hand over the bullet-hole, the doppelganger scholar at the table spouted a multi-colored gout of fluid and then launched himself at her. He didn't faze her. Stopping his charge with a sweeping blow, she turned aside with dancer's agility, getting in a high kick to his back. Her little hand holding the gun tucked in. Her opponent, though wounded, hefted a chair over his head and brought it down. She caught a chair leg in one hand and then pulled the chair toward her, flipping onto her back to drive her hard-heeled boot in the same region she had shot the doppelganger. The chair hurtled aside, all grips on it relinquished. Gushing fluid, her opponent fell to the floor, raising his withered, gray-colored hands defensively. The woman preened herself before speaking. Rising again, her additional hand brandished the gun, popping off its second round at the doppelganger at the window. "Theder Smene is my name, you nightcrawlers. Those of you who are lucky enough to survive what you got in this room will face much worse treatment under interrogation." Her third hand lowered the gun and disappeared under her cloak. "But...you're one of us!" Gurgling, the latest victim's eyes bulged like those of a large fish and he sank to his crooked legs. "A new directive has come." The one called Theder Smene told him grimly. Surely, she was going to kill me next. Snarling in rage, another of the guards I was convinced was on her side, roared a curse and fired his own gun at the woman. The speeding round hit something under her cloak with a metallic clank. A hidden buckler. No doubt the third hand was in charge of that little shield. She threw the short-sword as deftly as though it were a knife, getting the evidently human guard low in the abdomen. Real red blood spurted. Her own men hated her? Her own men didn't know she what she was? How could this be, I wondered. She scanned the room, her eyes resting on me for a moment. I only looked back through my thick, borrowed spectacles, genuinely stunned, waiting for her or another to kill me as well or at least consider me suspicious. Neither happened. "We have work...elsewhere," the woman droned. And so they did. Ambushes similar to the library attack happened in that town hour after hour. I got out alive. I don't know why. * * * Perhaps today I would discover why I lived. Dorcas, judging by all the attention I gather in her form, is a beautiful, sturdy woman, but personally, I find the female orgasm an outwardly undramatic experience. So, when I'm with someone I favor, I cheat. Oh, do I cheat! Freda was impressed. I needed her impressed. I needed her to think of me favorably. So I spared her nothing, even if the act was unnatural. "A freak's love." What human can ejaculate pints of fluid in a single go and still fake an orgasm? And then do it all over again in a few minutes? And then again. I've learned to. In a man's body or not. Freda found out, much to her delight. Of course, the encounter hadn't started well. That voice of hers! Still, it was her house. And always, always that damned gun. A woman likes to feel safe, I suppose. Even with a freak. Dorcas was the first time I'd tried to be a woman. I think I made a good choice. Humans seem to like Dorcas. She (from what I make of her) is disarming enough to get away with a lot of things that would otherwise require force. Make no mistake, I am strong. The trick is to hide that strength from humans. I have no compunction about hiding my might and vigor from other creatures. Without the aid of tools I once had to knock in, break loose and lever free thirty bricks to slip through a jailhouse wall when slipping through bars and evading guards would have been too dangerous. The effort of holing the brick wall in silence took me a little less than three hours. I still had enough energy to run forty miles and make good my escape. I would never be so careless as to be apprehended again. Groaning in her sleep, Freda rolled in bed, her hand grasping for something in the sheets as she dreamed. I hadn't needed a servant's help to escape the locked bathroom. Configuring a single fingernail into a more useful shape, I picked the simple lock as I had been doing for months, twisting that digit in unnatural ways to release the catch. Now, we were both in the bedroom beyond. The bedroom door was also locked, but that, of course, wouldn't defeat me. Freda woke two hours before first light, smiling. "Freda, I will have to leave for a while," I said to her in bed. My fingers were in her hair, arranging a chignon. The lady of the house had been fucked good and hard, but she was the type that didn't stay fucked. "Must you go?" she closed her hands over mine. "Others of my kind intend to meet." That alone failed to impress Freda, but the next admission made her stir and sit up. Her naked tits stared at me like another pair of eyes. "War is coming," I told her. "Each of us has to secure a safe house in at least four other towns. I have to hear details about new threats against our kind. As safe as I am here, this won't last. Once again, I have to do my part to ensure the survival of our people." "What are you, Dorcas?" Freda sat up, breasts jouncing. I supposed she deserved the truth. "Without you and the rest of mankind...nothing." Freda sat higher up. She was in love with now and to heat me speak that way hurt her feelings. "Nothing?" "We are empty." I took the pitcher from the bedside stand and turned it upside down. "Unfinished. Groping to fill our existence with something other than lonely thoughts." I got out of bed. Freda stayed in, her eyes following me as I paced. "Stay here, Dorcas. You don't have to do anything." "There is only so much idleness that intelligent beings can endure without going mad," I told her. Now Freda grew intense and emotional. "Make me what you are." She turned her head to look me in the eye. "Please, make me what you are." I had no choice other than to say, "That is impossible, Freda." She was thinking about the double penis I had created for her. Remembering how wonderful it felt. I could read minds. All doppelgangers have the trait. The ones who live long always keep that skill sharp. "What did you look like at first?" Humorlessly, though the thought was absurd, I replied, "Like a man...skinned alive. Bony. Veiny. Aborted." I made evocative gestures. Freda looked on in awe. The look on her face was one of apprehension and mild loathing. "I was naked beyond any human experience of being naked. I would never want to look like that again." "But you could, if you wanted to," she said. "I don't want to, Freda. I don't want to." Something bothered her then. Without speaking, she got out of bed and dressed. While she put on her clothes, I went to work on the locked door, defeating the tumbler with deft twists and pressure of my mutable finger. "Actually, I've come to appreciate the human form. It has a certain beauty." I brought up my arm and kissed my elbow. "But it has unfortunate limitations." Freda didn't seem to hear me. That was all right. As soon as the day grew late, I had business elsewhere. TO BE CONTINUED.