by G A Chase
She put her hands on his waist to keep from falling. “You never answered about how you found me.”
“It wasn’t all that hard. There’s a flock of birds squawking and flapping just outside this wing of the building.”
Being crushed between Smoke and the wall while trying not to step on his cape made each step an ordeal. “Great. So the Cormorant knows I’m here. If we’re going to get to the vault before she moves it, we can’t take forever getting up these stairs.”
“You’re right.” He stepped back, pulled off his cape, and wrapped it around her shoulders. “Get to the restaurant as fast as you can. I’ll try and distract these wraiths. My bet is they’re the ones the birds are focusing on, so if I can keep them occupied, you might be able to sneak past the Cormorant.”
Leaving him to face the fire demons alone didn’t sound like the safest move, but he had a point about distracting the Cormorant. “Don’t get singed, magic dragon. You’re all I’ve got to move that vault. Without you, this whole mission will go down in flames.” She swung the cloak over her head and scampered up the stairs.
After climbing three flights as fast as she could, Doodlebug lowered the hood of the cape so she could get a look at the in-between dimension. Far below, the screams from the wraiths and the heat from the flames still reached up to her, but she was clear of the conflict. “I need to see if it’s just the guardian ghostly goblins that Smoke is keeping occupied or if the Cormorant is focusing on him as well. If not, I’ll be climbing into a trap.”
She pressed against the door to the twenty-first floor and pulled a sickle from her belt. “Let’s see if Smoke’s as smart as he thinks he is.” She slipped the blade through the crack and edged the iron hatch open. Whatever strange world the in-between dimension held, it stayed on its side of the entrance. She quickly opened the door wide enough to slip through then positioned the blade to hold it open.
Stepping away from the landing with the hood lowered put her deep underwater. She held what little breath she had left and struggled toward the surface as the cloak and swords dragged her down. I really need swimming lessons.
At the surface, she swung her arms toward dry land. She feared her splashing would call forth whatever magical entity the in-between dimension had been designed to contact, but she made it to shore without encountering any mythical mermaids or leviathans of the deep.
Once out of the water, she noticed the cloak hadn’t even gotten wet. “I have to remember to pull the cloak over my head next time.”
From the tall trees and lush hillsides, she guessed she hadn’t dropped in on any of New Orleans’s pasts. “I don’t need to get distracted by this damn magical realm. I need to find a window in the World Trade Center.” She pulled the cloak completely over her head and walked toward where the edge of the building should have been. So long as she had the fabric shading her face, the in-between dimension appeared as a translucent hologram projected along the tall, narrow room of the World Trade Center. She rushed to the floor-to-ceiling window and looked down toward the river. Three stories below, the birds were still fixated on what was happening inside. “So far, so good. Keep it up, my faithful dragon.”
In her haste to be back on the mission, she spun toward the lake so fast that the cape fell open. A man in deerskins blocked her path. “My Lady of the Lake!” He fell to one knee. “I saw you emerge from Dozmary Pool and have followed you hence.”
You have got to be kidding me. Though she hadn’t spent time studying history, hearing some mythological stories—like how Arthur had come to possess Excalibur—were unavoidable. “I don’t have time for this nonsense. If you’re not already king, you’re about to be.” She pulled the katana from her back. “Here. Take this. Use it in good health.”
The lad accepted the gleaming blade with both hands. “As you command, I vow to use this sword only for good.”
Whatever. With him kneeling in adoration, she slipped past him. Holding the cloak tightly around her head, she didn’t stop running, even when she encountered the water. At the bottom of the projected lake, the iron hatch loomed like an abandoned submarine. As she busted through the door, she pulled the sickle from the frame.
Doodlebug hated losing the katana that Sere had given her, but a sword was only a sword. Getting attached to possessions was as dangerous as befriending doppelgängers. One day, there would be a parting, and she didn’t need an emotional anchor holding her to the past. “There are a lot more swords in hell. At least that one became a legend.”
She hoped it was only her imagination that the fighting below was growing louder. “I can only expect Smoke to hold them off for so long—dang that Pendragon kid.” Bolting up the stairs two at a time, she glared at each floor’s door, hoping not to encounter whatever chaotic magic lay behind it.
At the thirty-third floor, she hunched over, hands on knees, and gasped for air. Sere had taught her how to control her body’s reactions, but nowhere in that training had she run up so many stairs in such a short time. “I have to get it together. Whatever’s past that door isn’t going to give me a pass just because I’m out of breath.” She forced her muscles into a standing position before willing her heart and lungs into a more dignified rhythm. The noise from below seemed to follow her all the way up the tower. “No time for dillydallying.” She busted through the door, remembering to stick a sword in the jam just in case.
She didn’t know if she should be relieved or concerned that the restaurant on top of the World Trade Center looked exactly like it should in the in-between dimension. Singed walls from a long-ago firefight, overturned voodoo totems and tables, and the smell of melted carpet filled the circular room that once rotated around the tower. But much to Doodlebug’s dismay, she didn’t see an eight-foot square iron vault. “Damn it!” She pulled the hood of the cloak over her head in frustration.
The room turned noticeably brighter with her head covered. As with the ghosts in the cemetery, the building’s randomly dispersed energy made every nerve ending in her body vibrate. She hit the floor just as bolts of lightning wider than her waist blasted out from the center of the room, through the upturned totems, and out into the storm.
With the room lit up from the pyrotechnics, she eased the hood off her head. “Nothing. The lightning inside the room only happens in hell’s dimension.” She turned toward the windows. Even though the strikes weren’t inside the room, they did manifest once outside the windows. “So even though I’m not in some mythical realm, this room is an in-between dimension.” She turned back to the center of the room, shielded her eyes, and eased the hood back up. In the center of the electrical discharges stood a glowing orange iron vault.
She felt a bit like a hellhound who’d chased down a battering-ram vehicle and didn’t know what to do with it. One of the dozens of lightning bolts erupted straight at her, but when it encountered the magical cloak, it arced around her body. “Well, that nixes my next idea of taking the cloak off and throwing it over the vault. Dammit, Smoke. I really need your advice.”
A screeching from outside made her turn toward the window. Between discharges of lightning, the giant dragon was doing battle with the Cormorant. “I guess you’ve got your hands full. I hope you downed a lot of Chloe’s concoction before leaving the stairwell wraiths. I’m going to need you in full dragon form to drag that iron box out of this room.”
The flock of birds circled behind their mistress as if ready to dive into the restaurant and take the vault at the first opportunity.
“What am I supposed to do now?” Instinctively, Doodlebug reached up for the headband under the cape’s hood. “Time to check in with the professor. If he doesn’t have an idea of what to do with this magic box, at least my failure to save Sanguine will be on his shoulders.” To make contact, however, she had to actually be in hell and not some weird in-between world. She looked back at the vault. “I’ll be right back.” Pulling the last sickle from her belt, she headed for the door to the observation deck.
14
“This is without a doubt the dumbest thing I have ever done.” Beyond the hurricane, randomly discharged lightning bolts, flying warrior birds, and the dragon-and-Cormorant battle, heading outside to stand unprotected while thirty-three stories off the ground wasn’t Doodlebug’s idea of a good time. “Maybe it’s a result of jumping to my demise too many times, but I really hate heights.”
She pushed open the double glass doors and stepped into the storm. The wind whipped the hood off her head, forcing her to grab the headband to prevent it from flying off. Don’t drop the damn thing. Setting the sickle under her foot for safe keeping, she used both hands to secure the fabric farther down her head. “Dooly, I need help.”
“I figured as much when Kendell took away my beer. You know—”
“Shut up!” While struggling for her life, Doodlebug wasn’t in the mood for Dooly’s ramblings. “I’m upstairs with the vault. What do I do now?”
“How would I know?”
Doodlebug really wanted to strangle the girl. “Ask the others.”
Kendell sat in front of Dooly and stared hard into the girl’s eyes as if she were trying to see right down the connection to Doodlebug. “Have you had any indication that Sanguine knows you’re there?”
“Only if throwing bolts of lightning at me is her way of saying hello.”
“You’re going to have to move the vault, and not just physically,” the professor said. “It has to be completely in the hell dimension.”
“Tell him he’s not helping. It is in hell’s dimension. I can only see it while I’m wearing Chloe’s magical cape. When I take the hood off, the room looks like a firefight just ended. My current problem is approaching it without getting zapped by a bolt of lightning.” Doodlebug wondered if anyone in life had a clue as to what she was facing. Smoke made a banking turn, shielding her from the Cormorant’s sight.
But the birdwoman’s flock of followers wasn’t as easily distracted. A black bird that looked to be all beak dove at Doodlebug like a lawn dart. As much out of frustration with the living as with the threat of being skewered, she stepped out from her hunched position against the glass wall and swung at the bird with her sickle. With a loud screech and spray of blood, the creature plummeted from sight.
“Somebody tell me something useful, or I’m heading back into the restaurant. I’ll just start throwing beer bottles at the vault until Sanguine hears me.”
“You’re going to need to cut the power supply to it,” Kendell said. “It’s the only way to get a message to Sanguine.”
Doodlebug couldn’t imagine where the control room might be in the tower, or if it was even inside the building. “You have to be kidding me. Isn’t there some way to make contact with those computers?” She was seriously beginning to wonder if the professor’s equipment was good for anything at all.
Kendell continued to stare into Dooly’s eyes. “Not without tipping Marjory off to what you’re doing. Even talking to you now runs that risk.”
“Ask her how she got out.” The story of Kendell having her soul abducted by Baron Malveaux had always sounded more like a fable to Doodlebug than history, but at this point, she was willing to latch on to any straw of hope she could find.
“That was different. It was just my soul. Myles sent our dogs, Cheesecake and Doughnut Hole, down our connection.”
A group of birds made another pass at the building. Even with her sickle, Doodlebug was going to have a challenge knocking them all out of the sky. As they crossed the far railing, a burst of fire from Smoke turned them into blackbird flambé. Fighting helped Doodlebug think. “What if Sere and Jennifer are locked inside the vault the way you were? Jennifer might be comatose, but Sere hasn’t turned to dust. That means the two women’s souls aren’t lost to Guinee. I’m not talking about freeing anyone, just getting a message into the vault to shut down the pyrotechnics.”
“She might be onto something,” the professor said. “Bart is over at Fisher’s office right now, watching over Sere. His connection to our girl is just as strong as Myles’s was to Kendell when he sent the dogs in.”
Kendell was already on her phone before the professor finished his thought. “Bart, you’ll need one of Sere’s paranormal bandages. Tie one of your hands to Sere’s with it. She shares some of your blood. I’m hoping that connection will allow you to get her a message. She needs to shut down the lightning display. Doodlebug is right there. Do it quickly.” She got the message out seemingly without taking a breath.
A bolt of electricity passed so close over her ear that Doodlebug could smell the singed hair. “The sooner, the better.” Though getting the vault out of the Cormorant’s talons would free them from the World Trade Center, Doodlebug worried they would just be forever on the run without some idea of how to open it. “One problem at a time,” she said to herself before turning her attention back to the headband. “Once we’re out of here, where are we supposed to take the vault?”
Dooly watched the professor as he gnawed at the stem of his pipe. “If Doodlebug is right about Sere and Jennifer being inside the vault with Sanguine, there’s only one safe place in hell where the dimensions line up such that all three can leave the box safely. We don’t want Sere and Jennifer turning into untethered ghosts in hell.”
“Right.” Without him naming the place, Doodlebug knew he was doing what he could to keep Agnes’s swamp island a secret from anyone who might be listening in.
As with all the battles Doodlebug had fought, being on top of the World Trade Center took on a time dimension of its own. With her sickle, she cut down birds like she was playing a demented arcade game. No matter how many she sent tumbling over the edge, however, another flock was always on the horizon, ready to take up the fight. She found that as long as she stayed between the two ghastly looking wooden voodoo sculptures that peered out from the restaurant windows, the lightning bolts didn’t hit her.
Smoke was having a much tougher time of it. Having spent decades in hell, the Cormorant could fly circles around the newly formed dragon. He had fire-breathing skills on his side, but the big bird flew so tightly to the tower that if Smoke used his flame-throwing nostrils, he might incinerate Doodlebug with his fury. He too seemed to have noticed the power emitters and did what he could to avoid the blasts of electricity, though as he made banking turns to protect her, she could smell the burnt reptilian scales, which indicated he hadn’t been entirely successful in avoiding Sanguine’s rage.
A breakaway contingent of seagulls came at Doodlebug like she was an unwrapped loaf of bread. She cleaved two of them in half, but the third ripped a hole in her shoulder before smashing into the glass wall.
Smoke made a close pass. “No lightning.”
She looked around at the storm. He was right. The bolts had stopped. “Cover me.”
She ran back into the restaurant and searched wildly for anything strong enough to tie to the vault. In the center of the round room, a nautical-themed bar was separated from the restaurant by a thick, ornamental ship rope. “I hope that thing isn’t all show.” She yanked hard to get the nailed-down hemp free of the splintered posts.
She had to drag the heavy line to the iron vault. Though no longer glowing, the building energy inside the box made her skin tingle. Along the top edge, long runners that looked like drawer slides were left over from the vault’s original placement within the tower. “No good.” She held up the end of the rope as if it would call out to where it belonged. The locking wheel in the center of the door didn’t look sturdy enough to support the weight. She looked around the room, wishing there was someone to offer advice, but all she saw was the glowing fires of wraiths in the stairwell, waiting for her to return. “Screw it.” The heavy line barely fit between the spokes of the wheel, and with the line being as thick as her arm, there was no way to tie it off.
Outside, Smoke was still battling valiantly, but even he could only last for so long, and she needed him to perform one more heroic act of stamina and bravery. “I’m really so
rry about having to handicap you even more.” She pulled hard at the end of the rope and walked backward toward the door. As she reached the wall, she picked up the other end of the rope and yanked the two sides out to the observation deck. “I couldn’t tie it off,” she yelled at his chin as he made another swooping pass.
Smoke’s two vice-like claws grabbed the two ends. “Get away from the glass and grab on to my tail,” he roared.
Doodlebug raced away from the wall as fast as she could. The great dragon only slowed slightly as the line went tight. Screeching and crashing, the vault destroyed more than slid along the floor of the restaurant. When it exploded out of the wall in a shower of shattered glass and metal, she jumped from the edge of the observation deck and clamped her arms around Smoke’s tail with all of her might. She hooked her feet onto the spade tip like she was using the foot pegs of her motorcycle, but she didn’t dare open her eyes.
You’re seriously not this much of a wuss. Though she hoped it was her thought and not Dooly’s, it came as Smoke’s voice in her mind. Even so, she pulled off the headband and stashed it back inside her shirt. “I certainly don’t need Dooly’s drunk ramblings at a time like this.”
The wind in her face increased even as the rain stopped pelting her. From her lightheadedness, she knew Smoke was performing another of his swan dives. She clamped her legs hard around his tail, pressed her cheek to his scaly flesh, and willed her eyes to open. Dangling under them, the vault hung over the water on the two twisting lines like a giant fish refusing to be reeled in.
The dragon leveled out and whipped his tail so fast she squealed in fear. A flock of pursuing blackbirds dove past where her body had been. “This is going to be a long flight.”
