by G A Chase
In light of her recent run-in, she couldn’t ignore the danger of being caught by some associate of the beer-loving biker gang. “I suppose you mostly get Harleys in your shop.”
His chuckle sounded far more genuine this time. “Want to guess why they call me Big Larry?”
She shrugged at his non-sequitur question. “My first guess was that the shop name referred to your father.”
He knelt down next to the bike for a better look at the problem. “Nope. My dad was a loudmouth good-for-nothing drunk. As a kid, I got picked on by damn near everyone. They used to call me Runt. A girl I knew started calling me Big Larry to get the assholes off my back. Since I’m clearly diminutive in stature, we left it to their sexually charged diminished mental capacities to figure out what she was referring to.”
This time it was Sere’s turn to chuckle. “But surely they must have caught on when they saw you in the gym showers.”
“This was in elementary school. With my friend’s help, I quickly developed a reputation for being a lady’s man. Being seen as the first out of the puberty blocks gave me enough of a head start that no one questioned my nickname later in life. The assholes that used to call me Runt all ride Harleys now, so you can imagine not many of them turn to me when they need repairs.”
Sere breathed a little easier hearing that Larry wouldn’t be the one to betray her to the biker gang. She leaned down next to him beside the bike. “So is this something you can fix?”
“Oh, sure. I can get the engine apart tonight. I’ll have to send to Baton Rouge for the parts. If I get the order in early tomorrow morning, I should get what I need by late afternoon. I should have you back on the road by Wednesday morning. Are you staying in town? Kelly has some short-term-rental rooms available.”
Sere looked down the main street, wondering who would possibly be looking for an Airbnb so far from civilization. “Is her cooking really so good it attracts tourists?”
Larry lowered his head to hide his laugh. “You’ll never catch me saying anything but praises about that woman. She’s the one that gave me my nickname. However, I’ve yet to meet anyone who came to town for one of her meals. Mostly she rents to city dudes out here for a gator adventure tour. The bayou docks are about a half mile down that side road.”
Perfect. With the confirmation from the drunks at Bubba’s that there was still something lurking in the swamp, she needed a way to sneak out there without drawing further attention. Lefty wouldn’t risk his alligator hide unless he was trying to draw her attention. “Since I’ll only need a spot to toss my bedroll for two nights, I’ll make my own arrangements.”
“Suit yourself.” He pulled out a work-order notebook from his overalls. “How about a number where I can reach you?”
She took the pad and scribbled down the number Joe had given her in case of emergencies. “This will get you in touch with Joe Cazenave. He’ll take care of the expenses.”
Larry looked at her with half-closed, suspicious eyes. “So you won’t give out your phone number, aren’t willing to let me know where you’re staying, and wanted to make sure I was on the level. You on the run from someone, pretty lady?”
Though at every moment, she feared hearing a motorcycle engine from down the road, and though she could use an ally, letting on about her situation to a stranger would be a tactical mistake that would earn her a hard glare from Joe. “Not enough to pass up on one of Kelly’s world-famous pies.”
“Parish famous maybe. I know enough about women to know when not to push. Give me a hand, and we’ll get your bike loaded into my truck. When it comes time to pick up your ride, my shop is at the other end of town. You can’t miss it.”
Once the bike was loaded and strapped down, she pulled her saddlebags off the back and bedroll off the front fender. Seeing Larry pull away with the Triton was like watching a doctor wheel a relative into surgery. Don’t be stupid. It’s just a bike.
Sere draped her red-and-white-checkered napkin over the remaining crumbs of her rhubarb pie. Cleaned up and well fed, she did her best to not appear suspicious as she glanced out the side windows of Kelly’s Diner. It’s been over an hour. Each of those dicks is probably back at the bar, licking his wounded pride—or changing the story to make himself out as the victor. Either way, I can’t imagine any of those lazy fucks lasting this long on their loud-exhaust bikes. All roar and no stamina, just like their riders.
“Can I get you anything else, hon?” Kelly stood next to the table. Her quick glance to see what Sere had been focusing on made Sere believe the woman wasn’t just referring to what was on the menu.
“I think I’m fine.”
Kelly flipped the order form closed and put it back in the pocket of her apron. “The meal is on me tonight. What should I say if anyone comes looking for you?”
You don’t miss much, do you? Sere thought. “As little as possible.”
“You were never here. I’ll pass the word to Larry as well, though most people in this town underestimate his observational abilities. Are you sure you won’t take up my offer of a clean, safe place to sleep?”
The notion that being inside somehow equaled being safe had long baffled Sere. “You’ve already been more than generous.”
Kelly continued looking around the diner as if making sure they weren’t overheard. “I know the signs of domestic abuse when I see them—fresh bruises, constantly checking every face you see, not trusting anyone, and traveling without much more than the clothes on your back. I also know when someone’s not comfortable accepting help.” She slid a small stack of twenty-dollar bills under Sere’s napkin. “If you have to stay on the run, you’ll probably need a little cash.” Sere tried to object, but Kelly put her hand on Sere’s shoulder before she could get the words out. “Whatever you were about to say, you can just stuff it. Stay here as long as you feel safe. I’ll bring you a fresh iced tea.”
Sere kicked the saddlebags and bedroll at her feet. “If I do end up sneaking out, would you mind stashing my things until I come back for my bike?”
“Of course, hon.” As the overly caring woman moved on to the next table, Sere pocketed the money. Never know when it might come in handy.
She sat nursing her continually filled iced tea until she saw dented trucks with mud-covered wheels and fenders—complete with alligator blood dripping from the open tailgates—turn out of the dirt road and into town. Finally. A half dozen of the pickups swung into the diner’s parking lot.
With a quick nod to Kelly, Sere slipped out the back door. If the woman suspected one of the gator hunters or his guests of being Sere’s abuser, she might be even less willing to listen to the poor sap complain when his boat went missing.
Sticking to the shadows of the cypress trees, Sere skirted the dirt road down to the swamp. Between Joe’s paramilitary training in covert reconnaissance and her upbringing in hell’s swamp, Sere felt more at home in the vegetation’s dark corners than in the well-lit diner.
The sound of water gently lapping at the wooden pier was like a loving lullaby welcoming her home. She hunched down behind a live oak covered in Spanish moss while she waited to be sure everyone had left for the night. Only a hoot owl high up in the tree seemed to notice her presence. To confirm she was alone, Sere tossed a rock out into the water. The only response was the owl, which flew off toward the splash.
She sat in wait for an additional five minutes. Joe’s training, which had begun when Sere first entered hell at the age of seven, was so firmly ingrained that she could outsneak a black panther and was nearly as distrustful. When her heart rate and respiration indicated there was no threat—logically or instinctively detected—she crept toward the dock.
She eyed the line of johnboats like a customer inspecting the merchandise at a whorehouse. Engine’s too big—must make a lot of noise when aroused. Scrawny—I don’t need some boat getting all wet on me. Nice big flat bottom with plenty of storage—you’ve got potential. She bent down to inspect the last boat’s motor. With a slap to t
he rounded housing, she proclaimed, “You’ll do. Hope you’re up for a rough ride tonight. It’s going to be a long one.”
She had the control-box access panel removed and the boat hotwired faster than a fraternity brother opening a freshman girl’s shirt and snapping loose her bra. With little more than a tug of the rope, she unraveled the mooring line from the dock cleat. As she sat on the boat’s railing, she gave one good kick against the dock. The boat quietly drifted out into the bayou. She hurried back to the controls while scanning the shore for any indication she’d been noticed. So far, so good. With the gentlest of touches to the throttle and steering wheel, she had the boat clear of the last vestige of civilization.
To avoid the sound of the outboard engine traveling across the open water and alerting the inhabitants of the raised hunting cabins, Sere steered the flat-bottomed boat into the nearest tree-lined river. The winding path out to the deep swamp would take the better part of the night. By morning, someone was sure to notice the missing boat. The hunters would be keeping a sharp eye out for her while they checked their traps, but that would be in a good ten hours. She just needed to avoid catching the attention of some fool and having him tear off through the bayou at night after her and getting his dumb ass hopelessly lost in the process. She already had hell’s denizens to deal with. She didn’t need to add an idiot with a gun to the list.
The farther she got from humans, the less they bothered her. Out on the water with only the night birds, water creatures, and chirping insects as her company, she was back in her adopted home and felt at ease. Moments of extreme peace had a way of allowing memories to surface like swamp gas burbling up out of calm water—and often just as noxious.
“Why, Papa?” she remembered asking. “Why did you bring me back?”
“You were never supposed to die, Serephine. The loas of the dead took you from me too soon.”
Even as a seven-year-old girl, Sere had known when she was being conned. Her father never realized how transparent his lies truly were. But then, maybe it took the innocence of a child to see them clearly.
She’d looked at the soft white skin of her wrists in confusion. The self-inflicted knife wounds that had ended her life and freed her from her father weren’t there. “But this isn’t my body.”
“Your body has been in the ground for over a hundred years, my sweet daughter. This new one won’t suffer the ravages of time. You will be my first immortal. Together, we’ll rule this dimension.”
The old bank office where Baron Malveaux had played his evil games on the people of New Orleans was exactly as the girl remembered. “I don’t understand. If we’re not really among the living, where are we?”
“I’ve been cast into hell,” he’d said, “but the fools who think they control me don’t realize what they’ve done. I will rule this new kingdom just as I did the last. Hell must have a devil.”
Sere swung the johnboat hard to the right, hoping the change in direction might also distract her from her memories. “You were a goddamned fool thinking you could steal souls from the loas of the dead. That is what confirmed you as the devil. If you’d just served your time and made your penance at the seven gates that Sanguine, Kendell, and their friends guarded, they would have set you free.”
Sere cut the boat down to quarter throttle to avoid getting caught up in the water hyacinths. What would have happened if you had behaved? she silently asked her father. Would the budding romance between you and Sanguine have helped you understand love? Would you have still let hell’s only angel raise me?
Of the people who’d helped Sere grow from a small, scared girl in hell to the badass demon hunter, none was more important than the woman who was the least human of them all. My guardian angel. Tears threatened to make it hard to see the submerged obstacles.
“This is stupid. I’m being a foolish, emotional child.” There was work to do and danger to face. Not for the first time, she appreciated the brilliance Sanguine had shown in convincing Joe Cazenave to participate in her education when she was young. Even though the early sessions had been over the communication link between life and the hell she had been forced into, the man had a way of making his physical training more real than that of the most ardent drill instructor. Joe would slap me silly for allowing my thoughts to wander at a time like this.
She focused her attention on the path ahead. The green glow she’d seen on the horizon at home hadn’t come with GPS coordinates. Navigating the boat as much by instinct as by her memory of the event, she searched the stars for the familiar constellations that she’d used as road markers to the glow’s location.
It still might be just a chemical-plant fire. The logical explanation, however, didn’t relieve her of the nagging worry that something had followed her out of hell. And once one demon figured out the path, others were sure to follow. And I was so damned careful.
By dawn’s first light, she’d traveled beyond all signs of human activity. She let the motor idle while she searched the shore for any hint that someone had ever ventured out this far: a fence post, an empty beer can, or even a lone nail in a tree. She shut off the motor and listened to the sounds of the swamp. Not even a distant boat motor. The bow of the johnboat nudged onto the shore. She hopped out with the painter in hand and tied off the craft to a young tree that bent over the water’s edge. The island was much the same as every other low-lying landmass in the bayou. Vegetation so completely covered the shore that the transition from solid ground to water was hard to detect. Her foot sank six inches into the mud. The silt was rich with the smells of rotting plants, unseen animals, and memories of home. She lay on a downed tree trunk to enjoy the early-morning sun and sounds that had comforted her since Sanguine had first introduced her to swamp living.
Sleep, like food, was something Sere only partook of when it suited her purposes. What others called dreams, she knew were her connections to other dimensions. If she was going to discover what happened, she’d need to see the problem from both sides. Being so close to the hell mouth, however, made it hard to relax. “I don’t even know what I’m looking for. If there is a demon out here, I’m not going to find it just tooling around in a motorboat.” She closed her eyes and welcomed whatever alternate reality presented itself.
Sere pulled the hood of her black rain slicker down over her forehead. Hurricane Agnes, which had been raging for nineteen years, continued her unrelenting pummeling of the French Quarter. Only the devil Malveaux had figured out how to move time forward in hell in order to escape the storm, and with his dastardly soul finally consigned to the deep waters, the hell that had been created for his incarceration had returned to its natural state.
“I fucking hate this place.” Water filled the street and cascaded like waterfalls into her galoshes. “You’d think with this much rain at least the water would be clean. Fucking city sewer system.” She crept out of the side alley. As badly as the weather sucked, at least she was able to confront it on her own terms.
The Quarter on a Monday morning—as it was hell, it was always Monday morning—was exactly as she remembered it. The workforce, from wait staff and retail clerks all the way to CEOs and bank presidents, walked the cobblestoned sidewalks on their way to their jobs. Must be a nice day in the land of the living, Sere thought as she inspected their attire. Not a single person was wearing rain gear. The wind-driven walls of water soaked every doppelgänger as though some demented supreme being were acting like a nasty boy on the roof with an arsenal of water balloons. Walking the streets at a leisurely pace while hell took its toll, however, was only the beginning of the marionettes’ tortures.
Sere looked up from under the vinyl hood. Not one of the window openings in the wood-and-brick restaurant across the street contained a pane of glass. Customers diligently sat at their tables as waiters struggled against the storm to deliver the trays of food. The hurricane tore through the open space like a weather bowling ball battering the human-shaped pins. From the looks of anguish on their faces, the doppelgäng
ers must have had some level of self-awareness.
“At least y’all are still whole.”
A mosquito the size of a hummingbird zoomed out of the maelstrom and landed on one of the women seated near the entrance. It lowered its hypodermic proboscis into the bare shoulder and drank its pound of blood. Though the woman continued her conversation with her companion, her eyes were glued to the demonic creature. Sere lost sight of the restaurant as a cockroach the size of a pedicab splashed water on her with its scurrying feet.
A cold chill ran up her back and made the hair on her neck stand on end under the heavy slicker. She wasn’t alone. Quickly, she made an inventory of her weapons without changing her stance. Jack shit. Wonderful.
Creepy, cold tendril-fingers raised goose bumps on her shoulder. Gotcha. She reached up and grabbed the withered bony hand close to her neck, turned her body, and flung the distorted doppelgänger into the street. The momentum landed Sere in the river of sewage. As she stood up from the sludge, she shed her rainwear. Fighting in baggy plastic was a good way to end up wrapped tightly in her clothing and tossed in the river.
She could almost feel sorry for the typical doppelgänger condemned to living out whatever activity the real-person equivalent had planned for the day. The ones who’d been distorted by hell into demons, however, were like prisoners promoted to guards. They had lost whatever humanity might have been projected into them and acted on pure hatred. Violence was the only form of communication they understood. The black apparition pulled out two long blood-drenched swords from under its cape and lunged at her.
“Fucking harvester. You’re not going to sell my body parts as fresh produce at the French Market.” She ducked low and kicked at the bottom of his black vinyl cloak.
The demon did a somersault over her head and landed with a loud splash behind her. “Don’t resist me, and I’ll just take an arm or maybe one of those thin, muscular, pretty legs. You’ll hardly miss it.”
