by G A Chase
“Mostly speculation based on how I would have interpreted events in her shoes. You were too big a part of Devlin’s transformation for his disintegration to have been a mistake in her readings of the old baron’s journals. She’ll be itching to try again without you.”
Sere looked out at the wide-open swampland. She didn’t see another human in any direction. “We suspected as much. Doodlebug says she sent Aloysius’s soul to hell.”
Gerald held the pole so tightly, the tip quivered. “She was supposed to consult me about using a close family member. Aloysius is my grandson.”
“I’m sorry. Any idea why she’d make a move against you?”
He secured the hook to the reel. “To make sure she has my attention. I realize it may not be possible, but I would consider it a favor if you had your warrior do what she can to protect Aloysius.”
Lying wasn’t part of Sere’s nature, but leaving certain information out of her explanations didn’t cross that line. Still, Gerald deserved to hear the whole truth. “I’ll do what I can, but if he turns into the next devil, I may not have a choice but to destroy him.”
6
Sere got back on the road, relieved that she’d secured Gerald’s help with Doodlebug and had not gotten tossed into an iron vault, hauled off to jail, or any of the other dozen scenarios that had played out in her mind. Dooly’s group of gutter-punk buskers would have to prove they were worthy of the gig, but so long as they didn’t royally screw up, Doodlebug would attend the party. And with Gerald keeping an eye out for her, even if something did go wrong, Sere would hear about it.
I’ve done as much as I can for step one. The bigger hell issue was getting Sanguine out of the vault. The poor angel had been trapped in there for far too long. Talking to Doodlebug had knocked loose an idea in Sere that couldn’t seem to fully form. Sanguine wouldn’t just be sitting in the vault, waiting to be rescued. I saw her in there, so I know she’s conscious. She must be doing something.
Sere reached into her saddlebag for her phone. The snake guarding her possessions nipped at her fingers like an overly protective mother snapping at her daughter for talking on the phone while driving. “Lay off. I need to tell Bart what I’m doing, and I’m not pulling over. Slip your scaly head out of the bag and have a look if you’re so worried. There’s not another vehicle for miles.”
As she pulled the annoying block of technology out of the leather bag, the snake stuck his head out and hissed.
Sere scrolled through the list of names on the screen and tapped on the bar labeled Bart.
“How’d it go?” His voice never sounded as lush and lustful over the airwaves as it did in person.
She tucked the phone under her skullcap helmet. “Gerald is going to help to an extent. I’m headed to the office.”
“Are you riding your motorcycle while talking on the phone again? I can hear the engine.”
“Yes, Dad. You sound just like my snake. I was only calling to let you know everything worked out okay and that I’m headed to see Fisher.”
“I’m not going to argue with you while you’re driving. You going all demony and swinging the motorcycle like a woman possessed isn’t going to make your trip any safer. I’ll text Fisher to let him know you’re on the way.”
She dropped the phone back into the gator-skin saddlebag, wondering how much trouble she would be in if the damn thing hit the pavement instead.
As an employee of Montgomery Fisher, CPA, Sere sucked, and she knew it. As if to drive the point home, every time she stepped foot in the offices, Linda, the ancient receptionist, glared at her. “Any new clients to report?”
“I did land the Scratchy Dog nightclub account.”
“That was months ago. I assume you want to pull Mr. Fisher back out on some harebrained scheme that will land him in the hospital again. CPAs aren’t supposed to face life-or-death situations—in case they didn’t teach that in whatever accounting school you attended.”
She didn’t have time to pursue the unending argument. “I just need to talk to him.” She didn’t wait for Linda to relay the request.
Fisher got up from his desk as Sere barged in. “How many have escaped this time?”
She closed the door behind her, not that she believed that would stop Linda from eavesdropping. The intercom system was about as sophisticated and secure as two tin cans connected by a string. “I need you to do your financial bloodhound thing, but without the money aspect.”
He fell back into his chair with such force that the purple suspenders of his seersucker suit flapped against his chest. “Come again?”
She grabbed the yellow notepad from in front of him and drew a box with a stick figure inside. “We’ve had no success at all in finding the vault in hell, so I’m trying to focus on Sanguine instead. We know she’s locked in the box that’s isolated from its surrounding dimension, but she’s a physical being, so she needs to be kept alive somehow.”
He leaned forward like a nerdy kid who’d just been given a complex thought puzzle. The first thing he did was draw wiggly lines that didn’t touch the vault. “Suppose this is the surrounding dimension.” He then drew two lines from the box to the outside world. “To power something up, there needs to be two lines: a positive and a negative.” Finally, he drew a little lightbulb over the stick figure of Sanguine. “When I’m searching for answers in the financial world—and can’t see directly what the money is being used for like lighting this bulb—I look for where the money is being pulled out and returned. If you can’t see the light, figure out which socket is drawing power and follow the cord until you hit the lamp.”
Sere stared at the diagram in confusion. “Without seeing any change, though, how do we know where to start looking? I really don’t see how this helps.”
“It shows that your original premise is incorrect. Sanguine isn’t fully isolated.” He pointed at the positive side of his drawing. “Power is coming in. If Marjory’s demon experiment of making you swallow a pellet showed us anything, it’s that you and Sanguine are connected. I think it’s safe to assume that she’s either being powered by you or Jenna. Either way, that’s the power in and won’t help us much in finding her since all you could see when you paid her a visit was the inside of the vault.” He pointed at the other side. “Here, however, Sanguine might have an influence. She can’t completely stop the flow of energy, but if she could hold onto it for a moment then release it, she might be able to send a message.”
“It would be like she was sending an SOS.”
“Exactly. The problem is she would need to put the energy out there in a way Doodlebug could see it. An SOS isn’t much good if no one can detect the signal.”
“Something has to change.” Sere leaned over the desk and kissed Fisher on the cheek. “You really are the most brilliant person I know. All I need to do is tell Sanguine what to do then let Doodlebug know what to look for.”
He blushed ever so slightly. “This superhero sidekick gig does have its perks. How do you expect to get a message to Sanguine?”
Sere knew of only one method, and Fisher wasn’t going to like it. “You’ve trusted me with your life more than once. Think you’re up for handling the other end?”
In Sere’s seldom-used office, she cleared off the random junk from her desk while Fisher locked the door. “I don’t think this is a very good idea. At least let me take you to the professor’s lab, where he can get the pellet out of you when you’re finished.”
She sat on the hard Formica top. “Professor Yates will just give me a thousand reasons why I shouldn’t do it, and before you mention calling in Bart, don’t. He loves me too much to let me descend into hell alone. If anything goes wrong, I can’t be responsible for saving another soul. Getting Jennifer out of that dimension was hard enough. You’re the only one I trust to let me do what I need to do.”
The professional finance guru popped one of the shotgun shells out of Sere’s four-barrel blaster. “Don’t forget, I’ve swallowed one of those pellets m
yself. The results weren’t something I’d recommend.”
“That was different. You were trying to isolate the demon spirit inside you. I’ve had one of these things inside me before too. I know what I’m doing. I’m just going to slip down the power cord, have a quick chat with Sanguine, then work my way back to my body. Once I wake up, then you can take me to the professor’s offices for a checkup. I’ll deal with his anger after I know I’ve done all I can to locate Sanguine.”
Fisher squeezed one of the pellets out of the orange shell then pulled a sewing kit from the pocket of his blue-striped white jacket. “In my bachelor days, I got pretty good at mending suits. New Orleans can be hell on clothing.” He fashioned a small thread basket around the pellet. “I’m giving you five minutes, then whether you’re conscious or not, I’m pulling this thing out of you and calling Bart.”
“I know you better than that. You’ll be calling Bart the moment I slip into the other dimension. It’s okay. I just need enough time to tell Sanguine what we’re up to.” Sere took the tethered pellet and swallowed it.
As she lay down on the desk, her awareness slipped from her body. The power cord to Jenna in hell that passed through the vault was like a transparent filament running through a bobber on the water’s surface before descending to the hooked fish below. Like a drop from the fishing pole’s tip, Sere slid down the line to the obstruction that kept her on the surface of hell.
The dark, cold room was as desolate as she remembered. Like an angel statue made of stone that someone had stored and forgotten, Sanguine sat against the iron wall with her wings spread and her knees tucked under her chin. “You’re back.”
Sere hated that her guardian angel and mother figure had languished for so long in the interdimensional jail cell. “We have a plan to get you out of here. As a swamp witch, what do you know about the power that’s sustaining you? Can you influence it?”
“What do you think I’ve been doing from the moment I was trapped in here?”
Sere slunk down to the floor. “How?”
“The only direct way I know: the storm. I can’t tell you how that energy manifests, only that the key is the storm. The hurricane is based on my grandmother’s spirit. I can feel her in the bands of energy. She listens to me.”
Sere didn’t see how Doodlebug was supposed to detect a change in a hurricane. The damn things were notoriously unpredictable. “I’m sending a young doppelgänger girl to find you.” She watched Sanguine’s face for any betrayal of emotion. “Jenna is after me. She’s calling herself the Cormorant. A whole religion has formed around her as some avian goddess.”
Sanguine’s wings quivered. “How much have the others told you?”
Sere never could hide anything from her angel. Every thought or suspicion was played out on her face like a flashing billboard. “That you watched over Jenna while you were raising me. I suppose I should thank you for choosing me over her.”
The angel crossed her arms over her knees. “It wasn’t like that. From the moment I met you, you’ve been the most important being in my life. I hated your father for what he did to you. It’s what drove us apart.”
Sere had been a child when she was pulled into hell. Her early memories of her father—before she’d committed suicide and landed in the voodoo realm of Guinee—had been like a dream she knew she’d had but didn’t remember. She had been too young to fully understand what was happening as Kendell and her gang had combated her father, hell’s new devil. Sanguine’s role in the struggle had been the most confusing of all. “Who was he to you?”
“Not the devil—at least not mine—though he kept his humanity in play like a huckster running a shell game. The cups were constantly in motion, and I never knew under which one he’d hidden the ball, but I was certain his heart was there somewhere. Kendell and the others were less sure.”
“He fooled everyone,” Sere said.
Sanguine hunched her wings. “No, he did have a soul, but it wasn’t revealed until you showed up.”
“Are you saying I was the ball?”
Sanguine’s smile had a way of lightening the darkest corners. “More so than you might expect. I had hoped by loving him I could help him find his way to redemption, but I wasn’t his love. You were. In the end, he offered up his soul in exchange for yours.”
Sere had heard the story enough times to know that Baron Malveaux had not gone quietly into the deep waters. “Kendell and Myles drug him in chains, kicking and screaming, through Guinee to his ultimate demise. I’d hardly call that a willing sacrifice.”
Sanguine shrugged her shoulders as if highlighting her humanity over her angelic nature. “Even the devil needs an advocate. I guess I’ve been his.”
The cold from the walls was sucked deep into Sere’s heart. “And what if the others had listened to you and spared him? Would you have left me to be raised by the devil and devoted your life to protecting Jenna instead of me?”
Sanguine’s sigh ended in a frown. “After all of the years you and I spent out in the swamp, you have to know me better than that. I bonded to you the moment I met you. All of the good that I thought I saw in your father—and that he tried to hide—was on clear display in you. I sacrificed my life among the living to raise you. I’d do it all over again.”
Half-truths made Sere’s skin crawl. “Kendell said they tried to rescue you once, and you chose hell even before I came on the scene. She said you missed those wings and magical eyes too much.”
Sanguine ran her hands over the ivory-white feathers. “I had a mission in hell, but I was also irresistibly drawn to your father. Looking back, I think I always had a sense that you would show up. The conviction was like a woman who knows she’s about to get pregnant even before having sex.”
“That still doesn’t answer my question about Jenna.”
Sanguine got off the floor. She had to lower her wings to keep them from hitting the ceiling. As she leaned back against the side of the vault, the wings covered the entire wall. “While you were in hell, you were my primary responsibility. With you safely among the living, where you could find love of your own and learn of your humanity, I had planned to turn my attention to Jenna. Instead of embracing what I had to offer, however, she tricked me into this vault so she could pursue you. What she didn’t anticipate was that my love for you both made me a conduit for your shared energy. That’s why you end up here and not in her hands when you travel down the power cord.”
Sere felt bad for doubting Sanguine, though the pseudo-sibling rivalry persisted. “What happens when we do finally free you?”
“I’ll do what I was always meant to do—keep the demons in hell so you can have a life.”
“There’s a strong possibility that Jenna is teaming up with my enemy to create a new devil. One of the baron’s descendants is trying to make immortals out of her family. If anyone other than a sixteen-year-old girl opens the door, they won’t be from me.”
“I’ll be ready.”
The tug at Sere’s gut made her want to vomit, but instead of spoiled food, it was her soul trying to come up. Halfway back to the people she knew and loved, however, she was dragged under hell’s surface. Like a fish caught in tangled lines, she felt pulled in confusingly different directions. Where am I?
The scorching fires of hell made her reach for her shotgun, but along with her body, the trusted weapon was also missing.
“Damn it to hell, what now?” From the flames, Sere was able to make out Doodlebug’s voice if not the girl herself. “Aloysius, I swear if you’ve pulled me back into this bridge of the damned, I’ll snuff out your fire.”
“What’s happening?” Sere was less scared than annoyed at not being able to fight.
“I don’t know,” Doodlebug said. “When Marjory’s bridge gets fired up, my spirit gets called to duty, but no one ever bothers telling me why.”
“Because you don’t need to know.” The voice of Aloysius Laroque vibrated the flames like a breath against a lit candle.
Sere couldn’t believe she’d been so foolish. Fisher had told her to watch for the electrical outlet. She should have realized Marjory’s cord was plugged into the same spot. Flames erupted around her like swords clashing.
“I can’t get you out,” Doodlebug said. “All I can do is protect you from the other demons that make up the bridge.”
Sere focused on the intense flames that threatened to engulf her. “Fuck that. We can turn this setback to our advantage. Take me into the core of the power cable. It’s time you and I freed the spirits Marjory’s demons stole. Now that I’m here, we’re going to burn this bridge to the ground.”
The energy that represented Doodlebug wavered. “I’ve seen the ghosts in hell. Simply cutting the cord isn’t such a good idea. You wouldn’t be doing these lost souls any favors if they don’t have somewhere to go.”
Damn it. Kendell and Myles had made it clear that to give the trapped souls in the alien dimension peace, the voodoo loas of the dead would need to be called in. Only with their guidance could the dead find their way to Guinee, and from there to the everlasting rest of the deep waters. “I need to get a message out of this maelstrom to the professor’s computer.”
“Even if I could, it would be seen by Marjory Laroque. Of course, she’s probably listening to everything we say right now anyway.” Doodlebug surrounded Sere with her flaming essence, warding off the rest of the conflagration, though Sere couldn’t tell if she was the one being protected or guarded against.
If she couldn’t get a message through directly, Sere saw only one option. “I can’t stay out here with the demons. My soul is mostly human. You need to take me to the core of this connection then break contact with the bridge. I’m not originally a part of the cord, but I can hold your place while you’re gone. You need to tell Dooly Buell to talk to Kendell. Tell her we need Baron Samedi’s help.” Calling in the loa of the dead, who wanted to return the spirit of Serephine Malveaux to Guinee, could mean the end of Sere. The loas took a dim view of suicide, and she wasn’t in any hurry to return to face their judgment. Baron Samedi, however, had met with her before and agreed to the continuation of her mission. Turning over the lost souls has to buy me a little favor with those assloas. The flames turned white-hot around Sere.
