I woke up in hell. Or at least in a shit ton of pain surrounded by haze of red light. Given my previous experience dying from a lightly minced heart, one would see how I might arrive at that conclusion. I had just resolved to find a Koch brother to kick in the balls for the next hundred years when my eyes began to finally focus. Brightly colored glyphs glowed on the walls, bed, and wrappings around my body. I wondered whose sick joke it was to make them alternating shades of scarlet.

“I think he’s awake.” I recognized the voice, but his face was different when he was no longer in half-form. Lucas was sitting next to the judge. They both placed their books down next to a small lamp on a table.

“You look slimmer without your half-form.” I said to Lucas. “Is it hard to maintain?”

“I have been meaning to ask,” The judge interjected. “Why are you always wearing your half-form when you're opposing counsel to Elijah?”

Lucas grinned. “I told him it was an old tradition to display your ascended traits while in court.”

The judge snorted. “Yeah so old we don’t do it anymore.”

Yeah, it is a little difficult for me to hold the form, but he’s a terrible lawyer and vampire fangs are a pain in the ass to talk around. It makes his case look worse. Also I found it funny.”

“I did think it strange he always had his fangs on display.” The judge replied

I cleared my throat. “Well that mystery is solved, how about one or two more? Where am I and what happened?”

“It was a good idea to get Elijah invested in the fight. Vampires as old and powerful as him are all a little… well almost autistic. Some things just don’t occur to them. Stinebrow was a powerful fighter. That's why he got the job.”

“Your magic couldn’t touch him?” I asked.

“Those runes he formed on his skin disrupted the amplifiers and ritual focus artifacts in the courtroom. The normal wards wouldn’t work and if I threw something heavier it might have hit others. He killed the bailiff before Elijah stepped in and took him down.”

“So I guess, after that you got me to someone quick enough to magic me up a new heart?”

The judge and Lucas looked at each other.

“There is something you should know about Elijah…” The judge paused for a second gathering his thoughts.

“I’m not liking where this is going.” I felt a chill remembering his face.

“Oh, Stinebrow was profoundly less enthusiastic than you.” Lucas replied.

The judge raised an eyebrow and Lucas smiled.

“Elijah, is a bit of what you would call a mad scientist.” The judge explained. “He was really bad about ethical boundaries and would make ‘improvements’ to people without their consent. A while back we sentenced him to learn the laws and do no more experiments until he could win a case.”

“So, in other words I just unleashed something really bad, didn’t I?”

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“Yeah, but with what he did to Stinebrow we have enough to set another condition that should keep him busy.” The judge shuddered. “He used Stinebrow to fix you.”

“What? What does that mean?” I asked.

“Doppelgangers’ magic is mostly in their skin. Elijah skinned him alive. Performed a blood ritual to burn Stinebrow's life force…

“Which Stinebrow was notably still alive to vehemently object to,” added Lucas. “At least until the end when he was begging for the sweet release of death.”

The Judge glared at Lucas. Who made a show of zipping his mouth shut.

The judge continued. "He used the ritual to enhance and change the skin into a heart that he stuck into your body.”

“So now I’m part doppelganger?”

“Well that was one part.” the judge said.

“There’s more than one?” My anxiety was rising a bit more.

“He had Lucas and his girlfriend administer their blessing to you. Unlike popular myth, you actually need two werewolves to create another.” He paused for a second. “So you are a being part doppelganger, part werewolf, constructed by blood sorcery necromancy.”

I looked down at my body. “So what does this mean?”

“It means you’re definitely part of our world now." He smiled and patted my shoulder. "Don’t be worried. We will provide you with training and resources to help you adapt and become a productive citizen.”

Lucas cleared his throat. "Speaking of being a productive citizen, I’d like to talk to you about a job opportunity. You see, our inspector got skinned and ritually immolated again.

“Again?” I said. “How often does that happen?”

“Not often.” Lucas replied. “As far as deaths go, that was at least in the top 5 worst.”

“Only in the top 5? What was the worst?”

“We don’t talk about Hugo,” said the Judge.

“Not while sober anyways,” said Lucas. “There’s a sweetener in this.”

He was smiling. There was no way in hell I would take this job.

“We pulled some records from a few years back. All the werewolves that needed treatment for regenerating an eye near Devil’s Lake State Park..”

_____________________________________________________________________

...(Sometime Later)....

All these powers and I’m still the decoy. I texted Gabriel. She hated the name Gabby.

Well my ankle is still a bit dodgy after someone sliced it apart. The text came back.

We’d found the guy that likely did it. But I had to prove that he would attack humans. We’d kept him under observation for a while. He worked at the park and had a thing for redheads. So I was sporting a coppertop hair-do and pin-up model look courtesy of shape shifting. Unfortunately I didn’t get the memory aspect of doppelgangers, which was for the best in my opinion. Reading his mind might have made me do something I’d regret.

I walked through the foggy woods early in the morning. Back up was at least 3 miles up wind. I had been teasing the guy all week, pouting in front of him, insulting him. He’d started stalking me.

I was rewarded this morning with an ominous growl. I sighed in relief. Then I called to him “Here, little puppy.” I made kissy sounds. “I’d like to play with you.”

The growl cut off. He stalked forward out of the bushes. I felt the flow of my body as I drew on the full might of my aspects. The transformation capabilities from both the doppelganger and werewolf parts allowed me to double my muscle mass. Using the abilities of the doppelganger I had also installed a subcutaneous body armor that I pushed outwards while the flesh on my arms melted away revealing two telescoping pistons that I could punch with. When you can shape shift your body controlling tendons and muscle fibers, why not add some tech and metal instead of bones?

His voice was gruff but I could understand the words mangled by a wolf’s jaws. “What are you?”

“Necro-mecha doppelwolf.” I replied. “ I’m back for round 2.”