by G A Chase
“You cut that a little close,” Sere said.
Doodlebug touched the two cuts on her neck. “No more so than usual.” She lifted the old-fashioned pistol to her face so Sere could see the secret weapon. “I snagged this from Andy. The only problem with it is I have to entice the harvesters to come close for any kind of accuracy, but it is more effective than slicing and dicing with knives.” She checked the gun then returned it to the back of her jeans before gathering up the two sickles. “I’m getting quite the stash of weapons.”
Dooly, who usually sat quietly in the corner during Sere’s interviews with her doppelgänger, seemed drawn to the gun. “Where do you get bullets?” she asked.
“This old flintlock relies on gunpowder and shot. There’s an antique-weapons shop in the Quarter. I suppose I could upgrade to a revolver, but I prefer to take my knives and guns off my opponents rather than steal them. Ammunition, however, is fair game.”
The professor fidgeted with his equipment. “A flintlock makes sense. Brimstone and the other components of gunpowder wouldn’t be hard to find in hell.”
Sere focused more on what her eyes were seeing than on channeling Doodlebug so she could turn to the professor. “I guess gunpowder manufacture is one more thing you can add to Andy’s shenanigans.” She turned back to the view of hell through the eyes of her champion. “You’ll need to put your revenge hobby aside for a bit. I need you to head out toward the swamp. Some of Agnes’s creatures are escaping through the portal.”
“Do I look like some kind of big-game hunter?” Doodlebug asked. “I wouldn’t know the first thing about killing creatures. Have a look at my real. We’re city chicks, not swamp sluts. You go out there.”
“I’ve been to the hell mouth,” Sere said with exasperation. “I know you can’t take on all of the swamp’s animals. That’s not what I’m asking. My fear is that the doppelgängers will form up with the monsters and come riding in on gators like a Mongol horde on horseback. You need to find an ambush site along the highway and stop the demons before they have a chance to get to the hell mouth. If Marjory figures out that I’ve got my hands full with hell’s animals, she might take the opportunity to stage an invasion. Gather up all the weapons you’ve got, and don’t let anyone get farther than the Kenner freeway exit. The paranormal bridge that woman created can only handle nineteen doppelgängers at a time, so at least there will be a set number you’ll need to deal with each day. The hell mouth opens at midnight, so if you can hold the horde off until eight in the evening, the demons shouldn’t have enough time to work through the swamp.”
“It’s always midnight here, in case you’ve forgotten.” Doodlebug kicked the harvester’s head over the wrought-iron fence like she was scoring a soccer goal.
“I haven’t forgotten anything,” Sere said. “With your connection to Dooly, you should have some sense of time’s passage. You’ll only need to be out there for a few hours each evening until we fix the tear. I can’t afford to let Marjory take advantage of this latest problem.”
“I thought she was working on rebuilding her devil,” Doodlebug said.
Sere wondered how it could be only less than a week since she’d dismembered Devlin Laroque. “Hopefully she is, but that’s not an assumption I can afford to make.”
Doodlebug looked through the rainsquall. “If you’re going to send me all over hell each day, I could use some wheels. The few vehicles still driving around in the hurricane aren’t the kind of confined spaces a girl would enter voluntarily, if you get my drift.”
Sere understood all too well. Harvesters were always on the lookout for an easy way to trap their victims. And without wheels, getting out of the city could be a daylong activity. “Rounding up transportation for you isn’t going to be easy. Sending stuff from life to hell isn’t like throwing coins in a wishing well.”
“Why not? Lefty swam me down to hell with this sword.” Doodlebug held up the katana Sere had given her. “Strap a motorcycle on his scaly back and send him on down.”
“That sword belonged to me when I was a girl growing up in hell.” Though Sere didn’t know everything about the dimension—or even close to it—some aspects, she did understand. “The hell mouth is only open to hell’s creatures. I’m a doppelgänger, you’re a doppelgänger, and all the professor’s figurines are doppelgängers. Lefty is a creation of Agnes Delarosa. Her construction of hell is full of dark magic. No one on this side of the divide fully understands what she was up to. Any physical object sent from this world would somehow have to mesh with her curses. You and the sword were meant for each other.”
“So the answer’s no?” Doodlebug asked. “Why can’t you just say that?”
“Because I don’t want you hounding me every five minutes like a little girl who wants a pony for Christmas.”
“I’d settle for a unicorn.”
“Wouldn’t we all,” Sere said.
10
Sere sat on the professor’s workbench, struggling to regain her senses. Being hooked up to someone else had a way of distorting her perceptions—especially if that entity was wandering the streets of hell. “With Doodlebug on lookout, I think we can set aside the worry of an impending demon outbreak. I could sure use a simpler way of checking in on her, however.”
“Have you got your phone with you?” the professor asked.
Sere nodded toward her saddlebags on the metal-and-vinyl chair by the door. Bart took the cue and reached into the top flap. Though the snake on guard hissed, he didn’t interfere with the pilferage.
“I’ve only used it once,” Sere said as Bart set the phone next to the professor. “It worked well enough, but it feels like it’s about to burst into flames just by being next to my head.”
The old scientist started connecting wires to the end of the block of technology. “I wouldn’t recommend talking on it all day like some high schooler, but then, I don’t put much trust in regular cell phones either.”
“What are you doing?” Polly asked as she leaned over the professor’s shoulder.
“Sere can already call into my equipment in this lab. With the work you’ve been doing with the Doolybug girls, we’ve got a pretty good connection to the office in hell. It should just take a little tweaking for Sere to call hell’s monitoring system directly and talk to Doodlebug if she happens to be in the shop.”
Sere’s head was clearing from the connection. “While you’re messing around with hell’s telecommunication network, is there any way you could rig up a call-forwarding system? Eventually, Marjory is going to reach out to Andy.”
“Good thought.” The professor aimed the stem of his pipe at her. “Since Andy wasn’t much more than a looped projection, he won’t be hard to imitate. We’re still a little light on understanding what he was up to, however.”
Sere hopped off the table and stretched her legs. “Anything you can do to keep Marjory busy with her little paranormal anatomy project will give me that much more time to work up a counter to her next move. I don’t want you to stop her, though. I need her to think whatever she’s doing is working right up until it all falls apart. If she suspects she made a misstep—or someone’s interfering with her plans—she’ll keep repeating the experiment until she gets it right. If she’s going to give up on her quest, she needs to believe she followed the baron’s instructions to the letter and it still didn’t work.”
Kendell leaned against the doorframe with her arms folded across her stomach. “Any insights on the rift between dimensions that Fisher described?”
The way the woman kept her head down made Sere feel bad for laying into her earlier. Fucking emotions. She had a hard time dealing with her own, but being responsible for creating them in others was even worse.
“I made a friend,” Sere said. “She’s a swamp witch. I’m hoping she has some insight into what’s happening.”
Kendell stood a little straighter. Her eyes gleamed as if someone had turned on two amber porch lights. “You made a friend? That’s wonderful.�
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Sere was still putting off developing a friendship with the woman, but the advantages of having someone close who understood hell outweighed the inconvenience of an occasional cup of tea. “Chloe believes whatever is causing this latest problem is like a knife that’s cutting into hell. She says it crosses all three disciplines: Wicca, voodoo, and the professor’s paranormal technology. At first, I thought it was something I accidentally did, but then she said it would have to be deliberate. Do you have any idea of what she could be talking about?”
Kendell bit her lip. “Sanguine is a swamp witch being held in a paranormal cage, but she’s not part of the voodoo community. She left that part of the baron’s incarceration to me. Besides, she wouldn’t be trying to cause the apocalypse. Your father would have tried anything to gain power, but his black soul is in the deep waters. There are his journals, but what Marjory is trying to create doesn’t involve Wicca.” She bit her thumbnail and gave Polly a meaningful stare. Polly, and everyone else in the room who might have some insight, actively avoided eye contact with Sere.
“Don’t sweat it,” Sere said. “I couldn’t come up with an answer either.” She owed Kendell—and the whole group for that matter—more than an unanswerable question. “I know I get snarky, but I do trust you all. Maybe I play my cards too close to my chest. Just know that I’m trying to protect you every bit as much as you’re trying to look out for me. Once we’ve got the hell mouth back under control, I’ll put Doodlebug to work on finding Sanguine. All of you together know more about the fundamentals of that dimension than I ever will. And since Kendell is the only other person to be stuck inside that damn vault, I’ll need you to instruct Doodlebug on how to find it. Our little warrior princess is going to need all the help she can get in locating and freeing our winged angel.”
Kendell’s eyes glistened in the morning light. “If that’s your way of telling us you love us, we love you too. Now, where do we stand with Marjory Laroque?”
Sere wished she had the luxury of dealing with only one problem at a time, but the raising of a new devil wasn’t an issue she could afford to ignore. “I left a pretty big mess in that bank basement. She’ll have her hands full of blood and guts trying to stick Devlin back together. Until she has something resembling a body, I doubt she’ll try to make contact with hell. Rebuilding him must be her primary objective.”
“And once she does?” Kendell asked.
“Bart and I left a little surprise inside the mangled mess of Devlin Laroque. If Marjory does get him back together, I doubt she’ll find the paranormal pellet Bart fired into him. That’s our long game with her. I don’t just want her devil to die; I need the experiment to fail so completely that she gives up on the whole idea of achieving immortality. But that means I need to get to the creature while he’s still adjusting to his body. Having the stone removed through your flesh is a pain that’s hard to describe. If Devlin thinks his suffering is just the result of adjusting to the doppelgänger body, I’ve got a shot at removing it without him screaming bloody murder.” Sere doubted she had as much time as she was outlining in her plan. “That means I really need to know how far along Marjory is with her quest. When it comes to figuring out what’s going on in this life, Fisher has been my secret weapon, though I hate to lean on him while he’s still recovering.”
Bart grabbed his leather jacket off the chair. “I’ll ride out to check on him. If he’s not at the offices—which he really shouldn’t be but probably is—I’ll head over to his house. Ann seemed to accept the story I worked up, so hopefully, she’ll at least let me in the door.”
Bart must have instinctively known he was the better candidate for that task. Though Sere had literally had a hand in healing Fisher, she suspected she wouldn’t be Ann’s first choice of visitors to her convalescent husband. Bart, however, had a way of charming even the most devoted woman.
“Don’t push him, but anything he can figure out regarding what Marjory is up to would be helpful,” Sere said.
“So, regarding the hell mouth problem, you’ve got the gator hunters containing the latest outbreak.” Myles started ticking off items on his fingers. “Doodlebug preventing demons from working their way to the open hell mouth like shoppers on black Friday. And Kendell working with Doodlebug to figure out what’s become of Sanguine so we can start sewing up the tear.”
“Once we’re done here, I’ll head across the river to see Chloe,” Sere said. She didn’t like handing over so much responsibility, but there was no other choice. “Hopefully, the more she knows about what’s going on, the more likely she’ll be able to come up with a permanent solution. Without figuring out what she meant by the knife, though, I’m not hopeful of being able to implement anything she devises.”
“Sounds like we’re back to improvising temporary solutions,” Polly said. “At least until we get Sanguine back. She’s really the only one who fully understood what her grandmother built.”
“It’s a start,” Myles said. “The next problem is Marjory Laroque. Other than distracting her with the professor’s bells and whistles and having Bart work with Fisher on figuring out Marjory’s next move, is there anything we can do?”
“Watch my back,” Sere said, though she had no idea how they’d manage it since even she wasn’t sure what her next move would be.
Sere headed back to the swamp on the west side of the river. She wasn’t sure what good it would do to meet with Chloe again, but she’d made a promise. For the entire ride, she worried that she was searching for a magical answer to a problem she couldn’t solve.
“It’s not likely she’s going to know anything new—this is probably just a gigantic waste of time. But what else am I supposed to do?”
When she shut down the motorcycle in the familiar parking lot, the snakes wiggled like excited little boys being let out to play in the mud. “We’re not going to be here long, so no taking the roundabout path to Chloe’s cabin.” She showed them her cell phone. “If Bart calls with some new information from Fisher regarding Marjory, we’re out of here, so keep close, or I’ll leave your scaly asses behind.”
In spite of the admonition, the snakes took off through the grass and vines like kids turned loose in Disneyland. She had to hustle to keep them in sight. The sun hadn’t quite made it directly overhead when she spotted the swamp witch’s cabin door nestled under the branches and vines.
“Anyone home?”
The crunching of leaves behind her caused Sere to turn around. From the mud on the hem of her dress, Chloe looked like she’d stepped too close to the river’s edge. She held up a handful of stalks and vines. “Just gathering potion supplies. Midnight let me know you were on your way.”
Even though Sere had been busy following her snakes, she wouldn’t normally miss something as big as a black panther. “I never even heard him.”
The witch pointed to the branches above her cabin. “That’s the point.”
Midnight gave a lazy growl to let Sere know she’d been watched the whole time.
“You are quite the master of the swamp, Mr. Panther.”
Chloe nudged past Sere and opened the door. “What did you find out near the hell mouth?”
“Escaped monsters, a storm brewing, and a pretty determined river current. Looks like you were right about the waters rising.” Sere bent down to clear the drooping wisteria vines above the cabin’s entrance.
Chloe reached above the woodstove for a gallon glass jar set into a small window. “My sun tea is just about perfect. Fancy a glass?”
Sere took a seat on the couch, grateful that she didn’t have to compete with the territorial panther. “Sounds wonderful.” She hoped the comment was something a friend would say.
Chloe smiled as she poured the concoction into two mason jars. The smell of mint and juniper filled the small room. “There’s honey in the ceramic jar on the end table.”
Sere held the makeshift glass between her hands. The tea was still warm from the sun. Though she suspected friendship requi
red more small talk, she really didn’t have the afternoon for chitchat. “Have you made a mental trip to hell?”
Chloe added some honey to her tea then snuggled up in her chair. “How do you feel about birds?”
What a strange question, Sere thought, but she knew witches often had roundabout ways of getting to the point. “They freak me out. Dealing with something that can fly puts me at a tactical disadvantage. There’s no winning against birds.”
Chloe stared at the ceiling as she drank her tea as if the mat of vines were somehow spelling out an answer. “Sanguine has wings.”
“That’s different. I know she’s on my side.”
“And birds aren’t?” Chloe asked.
“Where is this going?” Sere could handle a little ambiguity, but a poke at her insecurities, even from a friend, put her on edge.
“As a ghost in hell, I get images, but I don’t get to ask questions. There’s always an animal type that is in charge in any dimension. In our reality, it’s humans. Right now, in hell, it’s birds.”
At least they aren’t flying out of the hell mouth, Sere thought. “I don’t see how that helps.” She had no intention of returning to hell. Now she had one more reason to loathe the dimension.
“Any good alien-invasion story begins with the foreigners saying, ‘Take me to your leader.’ Now, at least, we know which species to approach.”
11
Sere cruised the side road that led to the freeway. The breeze in her face helped her think. “I’m down to six hours before the hell mouth opens again. At least Fisher will be okay, and Cheesecake seemed able to handle her pup. That just leaves me. I need to find Bart. He’s the only one who can handle my demon side.” Though she had a plan for taking care of her own issues, a strategy for dealing with the new barrage of hell’s creatures still eluded her.
