The Devil's Daughter Complete Box Set, page 106
part #1 of The Devil's Daughter Series
Bart squeezed through the opening and tested the first stair. “I’d guess with the amount of rain hell receives, most of what you’re smelling would be covered in water where you come from.” He grabbed the two-by-four railing and gingerly descended below the half wall and into the ground.
Though she’d just as soon have remained out of what looked way too much like a grave, she eased down the closet-like entrance and into the root cellar. Sitting along the sides were the eight drugged-out street kids. IV bottles hung from the rafters with tubes trailing down, ending in the comatose arms. “Well, each one of them is smaller than the average gator, but the hunters will still have to haul them up those stairs.”
Bart bent down next to the closest body. “They’re chained to the wall. The locks are straightforward enough.” He pulled a leather pouch from his jeans pocket and selected a long thin piece of metal.
“You sure pack a lot into those skintight pockets.”
From his half smile, she suspected he wanted to give a less-than-appropriate response, but he just said, “You never know what you’re gonna need.” A metallic click preceded the sound of chains falling to the ground. “Take the needles out of their arms. We’ve already moved the totems in hell, so whatever Marjory has locked in the bank basement must already be showing signs of change. Once these dudes are free of the drugs and restraints, we’ll turn the rescue over to Riley.”
101
Chapter 16
Riley was already parked next to the Ducati when Doodlebug and Bart snuck out of the shadows. “You owe me for those kegs.”
Bart threw his leg over the bike’s seat. “And I’m sure Red charged you full price.”
“Extra, actually. He doubted the empties would be returned, so he dinged me for the hassle of dealing with his distributer.”
Bart fired up the bike as Doodlebug hopped on. “Bill my bar.” He hit the gas before the woman could reply.
Based on the tightness of Bart’s muscles under her grasp, Doodlebug suspected the next adventure might not run as smoothly as the last. “What will we be up against?”
His shrug made the bike tilt. “The ex-cop security detail shouldn’t be a problem, and I’ve got a plan for the camera system in the tunnel. It’s what we find in the bank basement that has me on edge. For an old woman used to high-stakes business deals, Marjory’s a smart cookie when it comes to physical attacks.”
“Tell me about it.” Doodlebug’s run-ins with both versions of the woman had been dangerous enough. She held on tightly as Bart swung the motorcycle through the city streets.
The run from the Garden District to the cemetery in the Tremé took only slightly longer than going from the bar to the mansion. He parked next to the church that in hell had always acted as witness to Doodlebug’s antics in the cemetery. “I’m so used to seeing goblins among the crypts that I feel like I should be pulling out a sword.”
He reached in the back of his leather riding boot and pulled out a long knife. “It’s not as impressive as chopping off a head with a katana, but it’ll do the job of slitting a throat.”
She patted the knife tucked under her belt. “I’ve still got the other one you lent me.”
“I’d hand you back your pistol, but I’m afraid you might use it. Take the second knife. Two are always better than one. I’ve got plenty of others.” He reached into the front cowling of the Ducati and pulled out a serrated assassin’s blade to replace the one he’d handed her.
The handle felt good. “I’m honored you trust me with it.”
He watched the street from beside the masonry wall. “Just don’t get any demonic ideas about laying into me the way you did Joe.”
She set the two knives under her woven belt next to her hips. “How many times am I going to have to apologize for doing what I had to do?”
“For the rest of your life.” He sprinted out toward a gap in the traffic, and like a runner who’d missed the starting gun, Doodlebug struggled to keep up. When Bart got to the brick-and-stucco wall, he turned to face her, holding his hands together at belt height. “Give me your foot.”
With an extended stride, she landed the toe of her shoe against his waist. As she bent her leg, she was instantly catapulted toward the top of the wall. It took hooking all four limbs around the crumbling bricks to prevent her from going over.
She wiggled around to face him, but instead of standing motionless next to the wall, he was running the back toward the street. Once there, he took off back toward her at full blast, and she realized her part in the maneuver. Doodlebug stretched her hand down the side of the wall. With a vertical run followed by a firm grasp and tug of her wrist, he ended up towering over her.
“You go down first.” He lifted her off the bricks and had her dangling over the inside wall of the cemetery before she could reply. Then he lay prone on the narrow ledge and lowered her as far his arm would stretch before letting go of her wrist. She hit the ground only seconds before he made a tumbling landing next to her. “The crypt we need is at the back of the cemetery.”
“What about the zombies? They aren’t going to be able to make those acrobatic moves over the wall, especially not if their partners are overweight gator hunters.”
He pulled out his lock-pick kit. “I’m sure you know how to use these. Don’t open the gate until Riley shows up. Tell her to get the idiots as far into the grounds as she can manage. Whatever they do, they cannot be seen.”
“Got it. I’ll join you as soon as they get here.”
“That should give me enough time to get the caskets out of the tomb.”
With gator hunters and zombies in position, Doodlebug snuck back to Bart. The man was covered in what she hoped was dirt, but from the smell, it was probably someone’s long-dead relative. “You know, I think that’s really creepy. And that’s from someone used to living in hell.”
He brushed the dust from his leather pants. “I’ve been down worse pits.”
She gawked at the impossibly small hole in the bottom of the crypt. “You have to be kidding me.”
As his way of answering, he squeezed into the marble structure, held his hands against the walls, then lowered his feet into the opening. “Never been down an ancestors’ pit before?” He kept shifting downward until only his head stuck out of the ground. “I think I feel Great-Great-Granny licking at my toes.”
A shiver went from Doodlebug’s feet to her scalp. “You’re not going to frighten me with ghost stories. I just happen to be a little claustrophobic, if you must know. Entering a tight space in hell is an invitation for decapitation.”
His head disappeared like a whack-a-mole. “There’s more room down here in the tunnel. Whistle to Riley before you come down. She’s gonna have her hands full getting those gator hunters to do their jobs. You might not have a problem with the dead, but those burly drunks spook easily.”
Fortunately, the woman was only a mausoleum away. Doodlebug gave a quick nightingale call, and Riley was instantly beside her. “What the hell is he thinking? My guys will never fit down there.”
“Your boys don’t have to,” Bart said from underground. “Just lower the stoners down. I think that’s about all you can do. Either we’ll win and be able to haul the limp bodies ourselves, or we’ll lose and it won’t matter.”
Riley stood upright and shook her head. “Fine by me. I can’t get out of this city fast enough.” She eyed Doodlebug. “Looks like it’s just you and Bart, little girl. Good luck.”
Doodlebug stared at the hole, envisioning the tunnel being much larger. “Take my hands and lower me down.” She dropped down, Riley hovering above and Bart waiting below like two different dimensions separated by a hole. Illuminated by Bart’s flashlight, the newly brick-lined tube dripping with ground water looked way too much like a sewer. “Why must every place you take me smell like death?”
“Kind of an occupational hazard. Hand me your phone.”
She pulled it out of her army pants and handed it to him. “Why?”
“Because as a doppelgänger, if you try to use mine, it won’t work.” He pulled his phone and did some technological magic with the two rectangular blocks of plastic. “Hold the screen up to the first camera you come to and press Play. Do not look at the screen. It will broadcast a burst virus that will disable the security system. Since you’re also computer based, if you’re not careful, it could disable you as well.”
She took the phone back, feeling like she’d just been handed a live grenade and told to approach the enemy’s line. Holding the screen away from her, she crept along the curved brick wall. Outside the glow of Bart’s flashlight, the tube was as cold and dark as a harvester’s heart. At a bend, she spotted the dual gun-like cameras pointing down both sides of the tunnel. Had Bart ventured another ten feet, he’d have been picked up by the security system—if he hadn’t already earlier in their incursion.
She crouched low and tried to blend her movements in with the stream of water that ran down the center of the shaft. Directly below the two cameras, she popped up, aimed the screen at the one facing in Bart’s direction, and tapped Play. The flash of light made her turn away and cover her eyes with her forearm. When the glow faded, she took the phone away and shut it off before stashing it back in her pocket.
“Okay. It either worked, or it didn’t,” she called out to Bart.
He peered around the tunnel with his flashlight. “Good job. I don’t see any signs of life. If they’d spotted us, there would be a flood of goons coming at us.”
She stepped out of the trickling stream. “There’s something I don’t get. With all of the flooding, what’s with all of these underground rooms and passageways the Laroques fancy so much?”
Bart crept forward with the flashlight, looking like some cheesy model on an old-time book cover. “I asked Fisher about that once. According to him, Baron Malveaux funded the city's drainage system. As part of the agreement, he was able to connect his hiding places to the pumps. This tunnel, for example, was listed in the historical documents as a connecting tube that went off course instead of in terms of its actual purpose of connecting bank to brothel. That CPA really knows his stuff.”
“So it’s clear sailing from here to the basement?” she asked, doubting it was going to be that easy.
His snarky half laugh of derision told her all she needed to know. “I’ll go first. Lag behind me a dozen paces and keep to the sides of the tunnel. Since Gerald promised to pull his crew, I think it’s safe to assume anyone you see is out to get us. If some dark figure emerges from a hole in the wall, don’t hesitate to use the knives.”
She pulled them both out so they’d be at the ready. “Where do the holes lead?”
“Basements mostly. Just because the city lists this tube as nonfunctional drainage, that doesn’t mean contractors don’t hook up to it anyway. Since Sere and I broke in last time, the Laroque family has bought up most of the businesses and rebricked the accesses. However, contractors in New Orleans can dig a hole faster than termites moving through rotting timber. Now, keep your eyes open and your mouth shut. Sound carries down this shaft like a megaphone.”
Though a big man, Bart bounded from brick to brick like a kid trying to keep his tennis shoes dry. Doodlebug struggled to keep up without splashing in the stream of muck, meanwhile keeping an eye on him and anything that might materialize between them.
A dark figure tumbled so close in front of her that she nearly plowed into him. Her first instinct was to call out to Bart, but then she remembered about the megaphone effect. The brute rolled across the stream to the other side of the tunnel before springing upright and giving chase to Bart. Rather than following him across the water, Doodlebug built up as much running speed as she could manage against the rounded floor, sprinted up the side of the tunnel, then sprang her legs out straight and catapulted onto the intruder’s back. With both knives already in her hands, she sliced through the bastard’s hard sinewy neck.
The goon reached for his throat. Instead of words, only blood and gurgling erupted from his mouth. As he headed toward the brick-covered ground and a noisy splash, she wrapped her legs around his torso, leaned hard toward the wall, and rolled his massive body over hers. The resulting thud was enough to attract Bart’s flashlight a couple dozen paces ahead, but she hoped any potential threat farther down the tunnel would remain oblivious.
Bart heaved the brute off of Doodlebug and plunged his knife into the bastard’s carotid artery. “Nice takedown. We need to keep moving. Somebody’s sure to miss this mass of flesh eventually.”
By the time they reached the bricked-up wall at the end of the tunnel, with its newly installed iron hatch, Doodlebug’s blades were dripping with blood from the half dozen hidden assassins they’d run into. “Now what?”
Bart knelt on the bricks and put his ear to the door. “I don’t imagine you know how to crack a safe?”
“Sorry, there wasn’t much call for bank robbers in hell.”
He pulled out his phone. “Fisher, we’ve got a problem. There’s a security door to the basement. It’s new. Think you can find me the combination?” After a moment, he pulled the phone forward, aimed it at the hatch, and took a picture. He put the device back to his ear. “Right.”
“Well?” Doodlebug asked in exasperation.
“In spite of what you might think, Fisher doesn’t have every piece of information at his fingertips. He’s going to contact the safe company that installed it, and if that doesn’t pan out, he’ll contact Gerald. If Marjory’s brother is going to be any use, he’ll have to find his own way into the basement. It’s going to take a minute.”
“We don’t have a minute.” She wondered how many times she’d have to randomly twist the dial to get the damn thing to open.
“You know, for someone who not that long ago didn’t even understand the concept of time, you sure are antsy when things don’t happen on your schedule.”
She turned the knife handle in her hand. “Tell me you wouldn’t rather put your manly shoulder to the door and shove it open.”
“Of course I would. But all I’d end up with is a busted shoulder. Sometimes you have to wait for others to do their jobs.”
102
Chapter 17
Sere had had about enough of being in forms that weren’t her body. Flying around breathing fire as a dragon had been cool, but transitioning into a man had given her the shivers. Fortunately, going through the revolving door of the vault to hand the body back to Smoke had been easier than turning into the dragon. The totem’s glass jar smelled of tar and death, but at least she had the phone connected to the professor’s equipment. Twiddling her electrons back into the computer, she noticed every microsecond that passed.
“How are you doing, sister?” Jennifer said, rousing Sere from her depression.
“I’ve been better.” She used the phone app to light up the camera in the professor’s office and see the woman she knew so well. “Thanks for being there to haul my virtual ass out of hell.”
Jennifer ran her hand along the edge of the monitor like she was caressing Sere’s cheek. “Happy to help. I’ll confess, I kind of missed being a part of the action.”
She’d seen enough of the woman’s past to know that opening the door to that conversation might end up with Sere making promises of future adventures—ones that would put the happy homemaker in far too much peril. “I have a confession too. I’ve been jonesing for one of your chocolate chip cookies.”
Jennifer kicked her snakeskin boots up on the desk. “I’ll make sure I have a batch ready for you.”
The boots reminded Sere that she hadn’t seen her slithery companions in far too long. “Nice boots.”
The blush that hit the redhead’s face extended down to her neck. “I’m not intentionally trying to copy you, but when I saw them at the mall, I had to have them. Henry says he doesn’t know what’s come over me.”
Sere worried about how the conservative corporate lawyer was taking the change in his normally stable wife. “I hope you knowing me isn’t causing you any problems.”
Her half smile and head tilt spoke volumes. “He always knew I had a wild side. Our sex life is better than it’s been in ages.”
Sere needed to get the woman off that topic. It had been too long since she’d held Bart in her arms. “Would you mind doing me a favor? Between getting sucker punched in the cemetery, losing my body to Marjory, turning into a dragon, fighting all of hell, and ending up as little more than an electronic ghost, I seem to have misplaced my motorcycle. There are a couple of snakes in the saddlebags who are probably losing their rattles over where I’ve been.”
Jennifer dropped her feet off the desk with the slow deliberation of a girl who’d just been told she was being taken to Disneyland and didn’t fully believe it. “I get to ride your Triton?”
Nowhere in Sere’s search of the professor’s files had she found anything about Jennifer knowing how to ride. “I just need you to find it. My slithery companions can take care of themselves, but I’d feel better knowing there wasn’t a pile of snake-bitten thieves around the motorcycle. My pets can be rather protective when I’m not around.”
Jennifer’s face fell. She looked down and bit her lip. “Should I change my boots?”
“They’re reptiles. They don’t have the emotional connections we do regarding those of our species.” As the words came out, Sere realized she’d included herself in the category of human. “Find my ride, and when I get out of this voodoo jail, I’ll take you for spin.”
The woman gave a smoky look from under her eyelashes that Sere had seen before when spying on Jennifer and Henry’s courtship. “And teach me how to drive it? You do owe me for saving your soul.”
“One thing at a time. I need to get out of here first.”
Polly flipped on the monitor next to Jennifer. “We’ve got a plan.”
