by G A Chase
As one of the first inhabitants of Agnes’s dimension, Lefty was the preeminent swamp king, but that didn’t mean there weren’t other beasties in the water who might want to take a swipe at Sere. She scanned the sky for threats, but all she saw was the constant rain. If she could avoid being spied on by birds, she just might make it back to the land of the living and Bart’s welcoming arms.
Lefty dove just far enough under the water that Sere’s body was also submerged, but by lifting her head, she could breathe without being seen. With his massive body blocking her view of the river bottom, she couldn’t tell if other critters were following her out to the deep swamp. In spite of the threats ahead and behind, all she could think about was Bart. Joe had been right. If it hadn’t been for his death, she wouldn’t have realized how short her time was with the muscular hero. Bart could be killed just as easily as Joe had been. Every day apart was one she’d never get back. Even if he did live a good long life, their hours together were finite, and the longer she existed the lower percentage of her life she would have spent with him. She felt foolish for having wasted so many conversations in argument and snark. I’m going to be better with him. I have to be.
She lifted her head for air and found she wasn’t being pummeled with rain. The eye of the storm, which hovered above the hell mouth, allowed her a moment of atmospheric peace. When Lefty lowered his head toward the dark crystal-clear water, Sere took a deep breath and grabbed tightly to the rows of scutes that ran down his back.
She’d suffered more than her fair share of crossings between dimensions. Being born might well have been the first, but unlike most people, dying wasn’t the last for Sere. That final life event had only proven to be the beginning of her interdimensional crossings, though she barely remembered it. Being yanked out of Guinee, however, felt like drowning. All she’d wanted to do was scream against the undertow that dragged her from the life and death she knew to the hell her father ruled over. When she’d finally come to, it was in another body in another dimension at a different time. At least passing through the hell mouth allowed her to maintain her identity, but the experience of feeling every molecule in her body and every spark of her soul transmuted to another dimension was no less terrifying.
As if diving to the bottom of a pond to cross through to a mirror world at the bottom, Lefty did a somersault underwater and surfaced in life.
Sere knelt on Lefty’s back and gasped for air. Initially, little seemed to have changed. It was still midnight, and the storm that had broken at the hell mouth continued to leave her in peace. She crawled to Lefty’s side and peered over the edge. Much to her relief, as the giant gator swam away from the crystal-clear water, no alien creatures followed.
Her first indication that she really was back in life was the sound of the outboard motor puttering toward her. She scampered up to Lefty’s head for a glimpse of Bart. It felt like months since had passed since she’d been in his arms.
The battered aluminum hull that emerged from the water hyacinth looked like it had been through a war. Instead of the nice flat front designed to glide over the water, the bow was so badly dented and scraped that Sere wondered why the craft wasn’t taking on water. As Bart straightened it up toward her, the boat listed to starboard.
“I’m guessing you didn’t just encounter crawfish this time,” she said.
He swung the boat hard around to line it up with Lefty. “I ran into a school of twenty-foot-long catfish. Those are some mean suckers. They kept ramming into me like rutting bucks.” He reached down and pulled up a three-foot fish spike. “This one got caught in the aft transom. How was your trip to hell?”
“Not much better than your trip out here. I survived.” She jumped from Lefty’s back into the boat. She stepped lightly over the bumped-up metal. Her heart felt like a magnet that had latched onto its mate. She didn’t stop until she was in his arms.
He pressed his magnificent body firmly against hers. “Nothing followed you?”
She shook her head against his chest. “I think between Doodlebug and Lefty, we managed to avoid being seen by Jenna. Hopefully, so long as she thinks I didn’t leave, she won’t mess with the hell mouth.” Water sloshed against the soles of the frayed and saturated dress shoes. “How likely is this boat to get us back to civilization?”
He kept one arm around her as he reached for the controls and gave the motor some gas. “So long as it’s moving, I don’t think it will sink.”
Lefty kept pace with the slow-moving johnboat. Begrudgingly, Sere pulled out of Bart’s embrace to lean over the side. “I need you to keep an eye on the hell mouth but from the other side this time. You’re a good boy, Lefty. I couldn’t have escaped hell without you.”
She reached out and patted his muscular jaw. The monster from hell lowered his head so far into the water that only his eyes remained above the surface. Then he turned away from the boat and back toward the open water.
“Are you expecting more trouble to come bubbling up?” Bart asked from the controls.
She watched her gator’s tail swing side to side through the water as if he were waving goodbye. “I’m not sure what to expect, but hell is the safest place for him. Even with monster crawfish and mammoth catfish to contend with, I still fear one of those gator hunters would like to display my boy’s hide on their wall. More importantly, though, if Jenna saw me riding on him and still sees him swimming in hell, she’ll assume I’m in that dimension.”
Bart swung the boat back into the lane he’d cut through the water plants and reached for a rifle. “We’re going to come on those hell fish pretty soon. Unlike the crawfish monsters, they seem content to just hang out and eat whatever strays into their territory, including us.”
She grabbed the rifle and took position at the bow. As much as she would have preferred to spend the trip in his arms, fighting for their lives made a worthy second-best activity. “Why is returning home always so difficult?”
“I’ve yet to go anywhere with you that wasn’t an adventure.” He tossed her the boat’s painter. “You’ll want to hang on. Those monsters like attacking from below. If you’re leaning over the bow when they hit, you might end up in the water again.”
Without hell affecting her thoughts and emotions, Sere was far less interested in diving into another fight. She tied the rope to her ankle before leaning over the front of the boat. “Any suggestions on how to deal with a catfish from hell?”
“Your best bet is to shoot it toward the back of the head where it meets the spine. Just be ready for the damn thing to thrash. Even when they’re dead, their nervous systems keep them active for quite a while.”
Peachy. She scanned the bottom of the river for movement. “Hey, how did the hunters do with the crawfish-and-turtle invasion?”
“They’ve been eating like King Neptune at Riley’s, to the point where the health department is threatening to close her down if she doesn’t get the right permits. Word’s getting around that she’s serving something special.” He nodded toward a field of tall grass that extended into the water. “I ran into a bad nasty hanging out around that bend.”
“Got it.” She raised the rifle to her shoulder and peered through the scope.
“Don’t bother trying to hit it from here. Wait until we get closer.”
She used the magnifying lenses to inspect the shoreline. “Is that a cut about my aim?”
“Not this time. Those catfish take a direct hit to kill.”
As she and Bart approached the slight curve, the tall grass flattened into the water. “I see him—or more aptly, he saw us.”
“Wait until he gets close to the hull,” he said. “Just don’t let him skewer the side with his spikes.”
The beast came at them like a torpedo, straight and fast. “Not very stealthy, is he?” She cocked the rifle and took aim at the bulbous head just inches under the water’s surface. When the huge catfish was five feet from the side of the boat, she pulled the trigger. The bullet skipped off his head like a skip
ping rock. Quickly, she recocked the gun, stood up for a better angle, and shot just as the rock-solid head pounded into the thin metal. Blood boiled up through the water like steam out of the stacks of a paddle wheeler, following the fish as it dove under them.
The boat tilted over so far that Bart fell from the controls to the gunnel, riding along the edge of the water. “A little warning next time?” Without someone at the wheel, the boat heeled and turned toward the shore.
“How did you manage to fight these monsters off on your own?” Sere chambered another round. The fish that had hit their boat was flailing behind them, making it hard to see under the water’s surface.
“Not well.” Bart got back to the controls and spun the boat out toward the center of the river. “But I had a little help.” He nodded toward the deep water ahead. The gently churning ripples indicated there was something happening on the river bottom.
Sere aimed at the whirlpools. “I don’t understand.”
“Turtles and catfish aren’t the greatest of allies—apparently, that holds true in hell as well as life. The big challenge is to stay out of their way.” He spun the wheel, turning the boat toward a relatively calm section of water, and opened up the throttle.
“I’m beginning to miss Lefty,” Sere said. “He would have loved to dive into the fray. Though if I had to choose, I’d take your brains over his brawn every time.”
20
Between fighting their way past hell’s escaped aquatic zoo, returning the no-longer-seaworthy johnboat to Cody, and riding down to the city, it was after dawn by the time Bart shut down his Ducati in front of the professor’s offices. Sere put her feet on the ground but remained on the back seat. “Really? I’m abducted by the cops, dragged to a warehouse to confront one of the most powerful men in New Orleans, forced to a formal unveiling of the new devil, then I kill that devil, get transported to hell, and fight my way out of hell, and the best you can do is bring me back to the lab? I expected at least a celebratory dinner and a few hours of passion.”
Bart stood with the bike between his legs. “This wasn’t my idea, but I promised we’d stop by first thing. Once we’re done with your support staff, I’m all yours—in all the ways you can imagine.”
She patted him on the ass as she eased off the seat. “I’m going to hold you to that.” She waited until he was next to her with his arm around her waist before heading around the building to the front door. “Any idea what they want?”
He shrugged. “After every military expedition, there’s always a debriefing. I’d guess they’re still pissed that we didn’t tell them about your coffee with Jennifer. They probably want to make sure such an oversight doesn’t happen again.”
She tried to contain her irritation. “It’s not like they didn’t keep things from me too.”
He leaned in and kissed her head. “I’m on your side. Tell me you want to leave, and we can turn right around and head to your loft.”
She slipped her hand down to his well-toned butt. “Tempting, but no. I guess it’s best to get this over with. If there’s another problem on the horizon, I need to know about it as soon as possible.”
He opened the door and ushered her in. Chloe, in her layered diaphanous green dress, looked like an absinth fairy as she rushed to the door and wrapped Sere in her arms. “I’m so happy you survived.”
“What does your magic jar tell you?” Sere asked. Of everyone in the room, only the swamp witch would really know if Sere had been successful in partially closing the door to hell.
Chloe gave her a knowing smile. “The waters are receding.”
Sere took a cleansing sigh. “That’s something at least.”
“You really outdid yourself.” Kendell leaned against Myles next to the bank of computers. Based on their rumpled clothing—the same that they’d been wearing when Sere had fled from the bank—and their bloodshot eyes, they hadn’t slept since Sere had been transported to hell.
“I didn’t have much of a choice.” Sere looked around for the badass housewife but didn’t see her. “I’m assuming someone took Jennifer home.”
“I did,” Bart said. “I dropped her off on my way to find you.”
Polly sat in the chair opposite the professor. “She called a little while ago to say Henry bought the story. We’re in the clear as far as her family is concerned.”
“How is she?” Sere asked. Traveling through hell was hard enough on her, and she’d spent most of her life there. She couldn’t imagine how someone living a typical suburban life would take it.
Polly pursed her lips. “She’s doing as well as can be expected. I think she compartmentalized the adventure. When we talked about it before she left, she sounded like she was recounting a movie she’d just watched.”
The professor cleaned out his pipe like he was going to need a smoke very shortly. “You can’t talk to her again, Sere. Even your psychic bonds might tip off Jenna that you’re not in hell.”
She had assumed as much. “You were right, and I was wrong. Is that what you all want to hear?”
“No.” Kendell leaned forward out of Myles’s embrace. “We didn’t have Bart bring you here to chastise you. We’ve had a lot of anxious time to talk things over. We should have told you about Jenna as soon as you escaped hell. I suppose that was my fault. I still saw you as our little girl, and that meant my imagination got the better of me when I thought about how you’d take the news.” She looked around at the others in the room. “It’s time we came clean. Ask us whatever you want to know.”
The openness caught Sere by surprise, but from Joe’s training, she knew she had to focus on the most direct threat. “Outside of this room, who else knows about Jenna?”
The professor packed his pipe from a leather satchel. “When Marjory used her demon to force-feed you a paranormal pellet, we suspected she’d figured out about Jenna. It was the only explanation that made sense. If she could send your spirit back along the power line to hell, Andy might have been able to locate the bird woman at the other end. Marjory has been trying to figure out how you tick, and Jenna is an integral part of that equation.”
Sere hadn’t had time to fully process her previous discussion while in hell. “I thought Sanguine was my power source. After all, the vault is where I ended up during the demon’s experiment.”
Polly grimaced and leaned back in her chair. “And we all let you believe that lie. Sanguine was more like Ben Franklin’s key on a string during his lightning-strike experiment. You traveled down the line but got intercepted by her energy in her container.”
The professor lit a large match and drew on the pipe until a cloud of blue smoke floated around his face. “There are two big questions at this point: is Marjory after Jenna, and if so, is she aware of the danger?”
“And whose side is she on?” Polly added. “Our biggest fear is that Jenna is in league with Marjory. We know Andy wasn’t working alone.”
“She sure as hell is not on my side,” Sere said. From the way the others looked at each other, she knew she still wasn’t getting the whole story. “Out with it. What aren’t you telling me?”
“We’re not sure of Doodlebug’s loyalties,” the professor said. “No one believes she’s working for Marjory, but we suspect she at least knows Jenna. Think back on your conversations, all the way to when you first saw her in your hell dream. Who did she say sent her to you?”
Sere kicked herself for trusting the girl so quickly. The doppelchick had, after all, killed Joe. Sere’s emotions had gotten the better of her. “How am I supposed to remember a dream that happened before all this got crazy? I think she said, ‘the goddess Sanguine,’ but my mind fills in the blanks when it comes to dragging up the subconscious.”
“Could she have said ‘dark angel’?” Kendell asked.
“Maybe. I don’t know. It’s not like you told me to take notes.” Sere tried to tamp down her frustration.
Kendell nodded toward Chloe. “We’ve been talking. The only reason the birds could be
in charge of hell is because of Jenna. Doodlebug has spent all of her time around the Quarter. She couldn’t possibly not know about the human cormorant who rules over the domain.”
The logic made sense, but Sere wasn’t ready to write off the doppelchick just yet. “I have trouble seeing Doodlebug being in cahoots with Jenna. The Doppel Avenger, as she likes to call herself in hell, is out to dismember as many harvesters as she can. According to you, those ghouls work for Jenna. Also, if Doodlebug had been taking orders from Jenna, she could have turned me over to that bloody cormorant at any time while we were in hell. Though I guess that would have also put Jennifer in danger.” All of Doodlebug’s potential influences looked like puzzle pieces that had just been dumped out of the box.
“Jenna might not even know what she’s doing,” Polly said. “She doesn’t have your paranormal education. Sanguine specifically kept her in the dark regarding who she was and where she came from. Though it makes sense that she would know something about Jennifer, how they were connected would be as mysterious as you were to the suburban housewife before you two started interacting.”
Sere realized how foolish she’d been as a child resisting the team’s teachings. “And Jenna didn’t have you guys giving her an in-depth knowledge of her surroundings. So what—Jennifer and me being dragged to hell and attacked was just Jenna’s way of figuring things out? And where does that leave Doodlebug? Was she just used like a hunting demon dog sent to point me out?”
Bart put his arms around Sere’s waist. “Events have been falling into Jenna’s hands since Doodlebug’s arrival. I doubt killing Joe was planned, but his funeral was too tempting for Jennifer to resist. And you did say the demon team took Doodlebug on so she could identify you.”
Sere shook her head. “You’re talking about a level of premeditation that sounds closer to what Marjory would devise. Jenna doesn’t sound that sophisticated.”
