by G A Chase
Doodlebug stared back out at the storm and the unending bursts of lightning. “My real enemy is Marjory Laroque. And without Sere, all I have on my side is a crazy bird lady who thinks she’s a god.”
The only real answer was to find the vault before the Cormorant knew Doodlebug was after it and before Marjory found a way of stealing it. “Sanguine Delarosa might be the only one who could talk some sense into that bird deity. Legend has it that hell’s angel might even know how to close the gate between dimensions.” The idea of closing the hellmouth sounded even more ludicrous when spoken out loud, but Doodlebug was down to her last straw of hope. She stretched out on the luxurious couch, wishing that sleep was an option. “I need to clear my head so I can think. I can’t just agree to join forces with the delusional deity out of desperation.”
10
As the mirror of a gutter-punk teenager who’d run away from home at an early age and made some pretty questionable choices regarding those she trusted, Doodlebug knew her limitations. Even with the training Sere had provided, planning a strategy to thwart the most powerful woman in New Orleans—in both the earthly version and that in hell—wasn’t part of Doodlebug’s skill set. One thing was clear; she needed advice.
Talking to Dooly was less than useless, though Doodlebug supposed she ought to make another trip out to the cemetery to record her latest observations. Being unable to trust the doppelgängers she had once protected meant she might not be much longer in this doppelgänger rendition. If she were to start all over again, it would be nice to know at one time she’d been a badass warrior and defender of the unfortunate—a group she would undoubtedly be joining on her next reincarnation.
She got off the couch and started pacing. “I’m not dead yet. Instead of focusing on my enemy’s advantages, I need to figure out what I have that they don’t. Sere said to find the vault I need to look for some change in hell’s structure. Maybe one of the past versions of me left some mention of hell’s conditions in the journal that I could use as a basis for comparison. It could be a start. Otherwise, I suppose I’ll have to check in with the swamp witch again.” Unfortunately, she only had a bird’s-eye recollection of where the ghost of a woman lived. “Friggin’ dragon.”
She headed to the bathroom suite, which was more a weapons locker and motorcycle garage than place to freshen up. She took the two curved harvester sickles from the dresser and slid them between her woven belt and army pants. The flintlock pistol required more attention. She dismantled the firearm on the makeup vanity and inspected the parts before giving the gun a good cleaning. Once she’d reassembled it and was satisfied the ancient weapon wouldn’t jam, Doodlebug stashed it in the back of her pants. From the bathroom sink filled with black powder, she replenished the leather bag she kept slung over her neck and shoulder like a purse. As a final preparation, she slipped her arms into the back holster containing the katana sword Sere had given her. With the bomber jacket hiding most of her personal arsenal, she double-checked her armaments in the full-length dressing mirror. “Ghosts and goblins, harvesters and freaks. Time to get back to work.” Being twice as far from the cemetery as she’d been in the Crown Astoria, she wheeled the Honda Blackbird out from its parking space next to the bathtub and onto the run-down Canal Street.
Outside the hotel, the wind, rain, and lightning demanded attention like a buffet restaurant full of screaming toddlers. She pulled the helmet’s leather flaps over her ears and tightened the strap before firing up the blacked-out motorcycle. She leaned low over the gas tank and shot out onto the main thoroughfare that cut through New Orleans. By moving fast, she hoped to keep her desire for battle in check. Harvesters fluttered into her path like revelers demanding beads from a Mardi Gras float. “I don’t have time to play.” She aimed the bike at the nearest black-caped figure and smacked into him. His dismembered, desiccated bones rattled against the curb like poorly aimed parade throws.
She made a hard right to put her into the Quarter, followed by a left that aimed the motorcycle at the cemetery a few blocks away. “I’m done sneaking around.” She built up as much speed as the bike and conditions allowed, popped the front tire off the ground, and crashed through the cemetery’s iron gate. She slid the motorcycle to a stop in front of an open mausoleum awaiting the recently deceased then backed it inside the improvised garage.
As monstrous goblins of every description swarmed through the cemetery’s gates, Doodlebug came out of the crypt with sickles in hand. A pack of mongrel hellhounds, drooling and clawing, shot out from the pack.
“I guess I need to start bringing doggy treats.” With a firm backhanded swing of her blade, she sent the leader crashing through a flat slab of marble next to her while bleeding from his gut.
The others hesitated just long enough to allow a three-headed creature nearly as tall as Doodlebug to make his way to the front. His snarling and hissing as much to himself as at her left her wondering which head was in charge. She grabbed a leg bone from the grave the first hellhound had bashed open and heaved it down the street of the dead. One of the beast’s heads remained focused on her, but the other two yipped at the sound of the femur bouncing off the marble-strewn ground. The beast tripped over his own feet chasing after it.
The hounds gathered around a rougarou. “My dogs are going to tear you to pieces.” The half-human half-dog spoke with the Cajun accent of someone born and raised in the swamp.
Doodlebug took both swords in one hand and reached for her gun. With only one good shot, she usually held the weapon in reserve, but putting down the swamp werewolf just might dissuade the others from advancing. She aimed the old-fashioned gun at his head and pulled the trigger. As the smoke cleared, he fell backward, lifeless, into his pack before dissipating. “Next. Surely Marjory has developed some goblin worthy of fighting. Don’t tell me you all are the best she has to offer.”
A long-toothed great cat that prowled between the mausoleums locked her yellow eyes on Doodlebug.
“Here, kitty, kitty, kitty.” Doodlebug waved her sickles at the animal, but the beast didn’t change pace or focus. “I guess you don’t want to play.”
The hell-cat lunged at Doodlebug with such speed she barely got the blades back in both hands and in front of her face to ward off the two-inch-long fangs. She closed the curved swords around the feline’s teeth and swung it to the ground.
“What drug were you on—catnip?”
The cat sprang to her feet and bounded onto the roof of a crypt. The animal’s growling made it clear she wasn’t fooling around. Within the tight spacing of the marble mausoleums, the sound seemed to come from all directions.
Doodlebug forced her sickles between the walls of a tomb and its front stone, where they would be easily accessible. “Time to get serious.” She pulled the katana from her back. Slowly turning around the street of the dead, she tried to identify the cat’s position. A dark form in her peripheral vision made her swing hard to her left just as the cat pounced onto her back from the right. With claws the length of steak knives, the creature dug hard into Doodlebug’s flesh. From its open mouth, the breath of death made her choke. In desperation, she tried to force the sword over her back like she was reholstering it in an attempt to stab into the animal’s mouth. The cat’s teeth clamped down on her wrist, wrenching the blade from her hand. “I am not dissipating this way.” She grabbed the creature’s paw and ran backward to slam it into the front of a crypt. In their tumble to the ground, the animal loosened its grip, allowing Doodlebug to crawl forward from the marble wall and reach for her sickles.
Before she could free the blades, the cat flew out of the crypt, with its front paws aimed at Doodlebug’s neck. I’m really done for this time.
Flames lit up the cemetery. A webbed claw descended from the sky and closed around the cat’s body. With a firm toss, the animal was thrown clear of the cemetery’s walls.
Every remaining creature hunched low at the gate before skulking away. “Looked like you could use some help,” Smoke hissed
from on top of a tomb.
She kept watch of the gate to make sure the goblins weren’t reforming for another assault. “Took you long enough. I have a quick errand to do, then if you don’t mind, I could use a lift out to see Chloe.” Asking for the dragon’s help made her throat close up on the words. She was just relieved she’d gotten them out without choking.
“Be quick about it. There’s bound to be another wave of goblins coming for you.”
“Right.” She stashed the sickles back in her belt, retrieved her katana, and scampered down the tomb-lined pathways to the orphanage mausoleum. With Smoke standing guard at the gate, she got down on her knees and pulled out the bricks before reaching inside. All she felt, however, was the top of the pine box. “It has to be here.” She feverishly clawed enough of the mortared-in bricks out until she had a clear view of the child’s coffin, but she still didn’t see the diary. “Dooly, if you slid the book so deep into this grave that I can’t reach it, I’ll glue that band to your head.” She wiggled into the marble niche and ran her hands over every inch of the pine coffin’s top and down its sides.
“We can’t hang around here much longer,” Smoke bellowed. “I’d rather not get into a flame-hissing match with Marjory’s cigarette lighters.”
“Damn goblins.” She struggled out of the grave. Dragons with bodies ranging in size from large dogs to small horses were flying circles around the cemetery. She jetted through the streets of the dead as the ring of flying monsters constricted with Smoke at its center. Doodlebug ran up one of the crypt’s angled roofs and vaulted onto Smoke’s back. She was still getting her feet under her when he hit the wind.
“Lay against my neck, hang on tight, and shield your face,” he hissed.
In spite of his warning, she peeked out from the protection of the wing-like ruffle. A pack of dragons was descending on them like a fighter squadron. Smoke sucked in so much air, his jowls expanded under her grasp as he spread his humongous wings to their full width. With one good flap he brought them even with the half-dozen flying lizards coming at them head-on.
Fire erupted from the leader’s small snout before he got his mouth open for the real pyrotechnics. He aimed at her exposed face but misjudged the distance. The fire fell short of singeing a single rain-soaked hair.
Smoke arched his body and took one slowing stroke of his wings.
“Maybe this will help.” She took the leather pouch filled with gunpowder and sprinkled it like glitter on the pursuing dragons.
With his head towering over his opponents, Smoke let loose the bellows of his lungs through his snout. The two tightly focused bursts of fire enveloped the pack of dragons, setting the black powder ablaze. Their screeching, tumbling retreat landed them into the next wave of attackers. The whole pack fell with tangled wings to the graves below.
With the enemy in disarray, Smoke stretched out his neck and beat his wings so hard, even the wind from the hurricane at Doodlebug’s back diminished. He bent his head and flew straight up toward the clouds. She checked over her shoulder to see if they were being followed, but the flying lizards were sprawled out in the cemetery like drunks on Bourbon Street. “Looks like Marjory’s latest experiment in raising a flying attack force was nearly as pathetic as her attempts to create an immortal.”
“Don’t let that failure fool you. Those pesky dragons have nothing to lose. What they lack in skill, they make up for in numbers and determination. Each pack has been fiercer than the last.” He spread his wings and sailed over the streetcar tracks before the little flamers had a chance to recover.
She kept her focus behind Smoke. Two energetic small dragons finally rose from the slabs of marble and flew after them into the electronic fence. One fell to the ground with his wings sizzling. The other wasn’t so lucky. Only a puff of ash blown to oblivion by the hurricane remained of his attempt.
“I would have thought those little dragons would have more respect for you.” She pressed her body down against his neck, her face even with his ear flaps.
“I should have mentioned I’m not liked by my kind. They consider me an outsider for not doing drugs with them in life. And since in hell, I’m not restricted in where I can go like they are, they have something akin to younger sibling envy when it comes to my freedom.”
She sat up on his back. Chloe had been a good source of information regarding hell, though maybe a little too passionate in her investigations. The swamp ghost had claimed to get her information from checking in on hell and records from the previous witches, but any good researcher would prefer as many direct sources as she could lay her hands on. Doodlebug’s firsthand accounting of dismembering harvesters and goblins might find a prime location on the woman’s reference bookshelf. Though that wouldn’t be the worst place for the journal to end up, Doodlebug wasn’t ready to disclose all of her secrets to some interdimensional busybody just yet. “That was an impressive display of flying—and don’t get me wrong, I appreciate the rescue—but someone stole my journal. How do I know you’re not the one responsible?”
“How would I have known about it?” he asked.
Up until her latest foray into the cemetery, she’d done her best to keep the journal a secret. “You could have been spying on me like some creeper.”
“Do I impress you as the sort who follows little girls?”
Doodlebug was well-aquatinted with evasive non-answers. “How am I supposed to know what you’re like in real life? I can’t think of anyone in this dimension who knew about the book. If you’re so chummy-chummy with Chloe, she could have sent you to fetch it for her. Or maybe you thought it would be a nice present for your mistress.”
He spread his wings and glided on the hurricane. “Do I look like I would fit between those tombs?”
His questions were really starting to bug her. “You could have told someone.”
“Well, I didn’t. Until now, I didn’t even know you kept a diary. You can either believe me, or I can drop you at your apartment.”
She twisted his spikes in her hands. “You don’t have to be so surly. A girl has to suspect everyone she meets in hell of trying to get something out of her.”
He arched his body and turned toward the river. “I’m a dragon. I don’t want anything from you. Your virtue is safe with me.”
The World Trade Center sent its lightning bolts high overhead. “Why must you constantly fly us toward destruction?”
Smoke’s body arced from side to side as his head turned from one end of the river to the other. “Do you see any direct route out of the city that isn’t within firing range?”
She kicked the heels of her tennis shoes against his shoulders. “Okay, but you don’t have to fly so close. I wished you’d stop trying to impress me with your brash disregard for my personal safety. It’s not necessary.”
He folded in his wings to his body and dove toward the river’s wave crests. “Fine. Maybe you’ll prefer it down here.”
She had to dig the heels of her shoes into his scales to keep from sliding down his neck to his head. “Stop being an ass. You’re always trying to scare me. By now you should know it won’t work.”
He leveled out low enough that the spray from the waves hit her face. “I’ve never intentionally tried to frighten you.”
Even close to the water, lightning bolts passed so close overhead that Doodlebug felt as though the reactor were trying to knock her off her steed. “Really? Can you honestly say abducting me when we first met was strictly necessary?”
He dragged his toes through the water as if rinsing the smell of cat from his claws. “You and Chloe needed to meet.”
She wished he would stop horsing around. The Cormorant’s spies didn’t venture far out over the river, but a dragon of Smoke’s size was a bit conspicuous. Bugging him about his flying, however, would likely only make him more reckless, so she stuck with her original line of inquiry. “Then why didn’t she pick someplace more convenient? Hauling me out to the swamp is the kind of thing a molester might do. It w
asn’t the best way to make a good first impression.”
“Though she’s a ghost in hell, Chloe can’t materialize just anywhere. I thought she told you that.” He took two hard swings of his shoulders to get them above the levee.
Once across the river, the vegetation grew so dense Doodlebug couldn’t make out land, streets, or homes. “You could have told me where she lived. That way, I would have been able to ride my motorcycle out to meet her.”
He beat his wings so hard and flew so fast, she felt like she was back on her motorcycle. “And risk you being followed by Marjory’s doppelgänger spies? The swamp witch doesn’t want to be identified to Madam Laroque any more than you do. We all have our secrets.”
“I’m just saying—there were options other than kidnapping me.”
“You just say a lot.” He sailed low over the open swamp. “No one forced you to come out here the first time, and this time you asked for my help. How can you be such a badass Doppel Avenger one minute and annoying little sister the next?” He turned into the wind, lifted his head, and tilted his wings to stop his flight before setting his feet on the grassy meadow.
She swung her leg over his neck and let the storm push her down and off his back. “I just don’t like needing anyone for anything.”
“Noted.” The beast kept his wings folded, allowing the storm to beat down on her.
11
Doodlebug traipsed through the forest, trying to remember where the swamp witch lived. “Everything looks the same out here.”
