The courtroom murmured uneasily. “Good fecking job, I say,” Gabby commented loud enough to grab everyone’s attention.

“Lucas, do you wish to pursue charges against the defendant for resisting arrest and harm to officers?” The judge commented.

The prosecutor looked at Gabby before looking back to the judge. “It’s doubtful. I’ll need to check with the lead prosecutor. He looked toward the jury for some reason.

“Their part is over, we’ll need to grab a second jury at another time if you wish to pursue those charges unless he choses just to have a summary ruling by judge.” The judge scribbled on paper as he talked.

Lucas made a shrugging gesture with both palms up.

The foreman of the jury spoke. “Do we have video of his interaction with Steinbrow?”

“Wait, the lead prosecutor was the foreman of the jury?! Isn’t that a massive conflict of interest?”

I became aware of Elijah glaring at me. The air felt very oppressive. More so than anytime I had faced off against a night creature.

The judge looked up. “Am I to take it you would like to call a mistrial?”

Registering Elijah’s baleful glare and Lucas’s and the judge’s previous possible concern about Elijah becoming upset at the death of Elvis, I began to feel a certain concern about Elijah’s background, “I withdraw my objection.”

Elijah resumed humming to himself joyfully. After a few seconds I identified it as literally Beetoven’s Ode to Joy.

A small boy wandered into the courtroom. I was struck by a familiarity again. He dressed like he belonged in a prep school, with the addition of a badge on a fashionable lanyard around his neck. His poise as he moved was like that of a runway model. I guessed it was Stinebrow. Perhaps I’d noticed his movements as he shadowed me. I guess I’d done a fair amount of damage to him if he was kid sized. Dopplegangers could repurpose cells to shrug off damage. I killed quite a bit of tissue with the thermite.

The judge finished his notes. “At this time the jury is dismissed.”

The jury began to file out of the room with the exception of the lead prosecutor. Some of the gallery had left too, but more began to linger noticing Stinebrow.

Stinebrow marched up to Lucas, “Did he take a deal, or do we get to choose?” He looked down at the broken table. “What happened to your table?”

Lucas looked up. His jaw clenched. “What happened is that he’s better at cleaning up the trash than you. Do you have any idea how sick the fucks he offed were.”

“What does that have to do with anything?” Stinebrow asked.

“The jury found him not guilty.”

“What do you mean not guilty? He lit me on fire. He lit several officer’s on fire.”

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Lucas snorted. “You know what, I’m curious, let’s see the USB recording you had. We never did look at that.

My hijinks from the earlier evening were now played on the screen. Lucas groaned when the vampires fake twitched at the garlic. “Gods’ damned drama queens,” he muttered.

Gabby and her friend cheered when I lit them up.

There was a minor gasp when the last one charged me. And a dismissive snort when he got lit on fire. “That rig you got is really handy. Are you selling?” Gabby asked.

“Sure, I’ll give you a discount.” I replied.

Stinebrow made his enigmatic appearance on screen complete with his violent proclamation. The audience laughed as he got lit on fire. It seems doppelgangers were not popular.

“Okay,” Lucas dug into his briefcase. “After reviewing that, I must ask, out of the two of you, whose kneecaps grow back?” Lucas starred at Stinebrow.

His hands fluttered angrily in front of him. “He is a criminal.”

Lucas replied, “The jury disagreed…”

I tuned out for a second. The hand flutter. I had seen it. The way he stood and the facial expression.

“Lucas,” I broke into whatever conversation they had been having. “Could you play some files from my yellow drive? It’s one entitled ‘Boogeyman’.

Lucas's eyes narrowed, in question but he followed through. The first one came on the screen. A tween girl leading a slightly older boy into a narrow dark room. Stinebrow went still.

“Not this one,” I said. "I think it’s the third or fourth down."

“What’s special about this one?” Lucas asked.

“I was always iffy about this one. Whoever it was always appeared as a tween girl. She would lead children that had a criminal history into ambushes where they would get snared and then decapitate them. Yeah the kid’s were bad, but they should have gotten time to maybe grow out of it. It only ended on the yellow, because I thought the guilty party was a kid themselves.”

Lucas played the next video. The kids wandered into the frame. The boy looked like they were about to leave. The girl stamped her foot and her hands fluttered angrily in front of her body. Just like Stinebrow. That was it. The girl stood like him, the facial expression. The confident walk after the kill. Lucas looked sharply at Stinebrow. “I think we may need to ask a few questions about what you do on your time off.

“That’s not evidence of anything.” Stinebrow snarled. He looked around the room noting everyone’s expression. And their disbelief. I missed it when he lunged at me.

His arm morphed into something like a stinger piercing my chest. I barely heard the suction noise as he removed the invading limb causing blood to to trickle out. I guess without a heartbeat, it just doesn’t spray like a Tarintino film. I collapsed on the ground. There was a commotion as Lucas attempted to tackle him and was batted out of the way. The judge banged his gavel, but the doppleganger formed tattooed runes on his skin that glowed with a mystic light. Whatever the judge conjured up wasn't stopping him.

I couldn’t see much else happening as Elijah filled my vision. I felt a cold magic claim my body coaxing my blood to circulate just a bit more. The sound of the world faded as he whispered. “I feel like I owe you a thanks for helping me win my case. I could give you the gift of unlife if you wish.”

Dark immortality did sound interesting at the moment, but being undead didn’t always seem like a boon. He seemed unperturbed while the court descended into chaos. I saw the bailiff fall over after Stinebrow did something involving a giant snake head. My vision darkened more at the corners limiting even more of my sight. It seemed like Elijah just didn’t care what was going on. And Stinebrow avoided him. I thought back to Elijah’s glare and how Lucas had seemed minorly afraid. My voice came out a whisper despite the effort I put into it.

“Pass. I just regret…not finding the doppelganger that killed Elivis…” It was difficult to speak with a gaping wound in your chest. “Thought it was him.”

The world began to dim more, or maybe that was the darkness spilling out of Elijah. I watched his face distend into a nightmarish void of spiked teeth with probing leech like tongue. I had time to note that if I wasn’t already dead, I’d have been terrified…