The Devil's Daughter Complete Box Set, page 62
part #1 of The Devil's Daughter Series
One of the snakes wound around the handlebar and hit the turn signal. Both faced the upcoming turnoff.
“Okay. I can take a hint.” She slowed down and took the sweeping curve toward the water.
Sere had a lot to do and a long way to go, but her snakes never steered her wrong. If there was something amiss out in the bayou—and this close to the city—she needed to be the first to know about it. She watched their little arrow-shaped heads. When they pointed toward a gravel parking lot, she swung in and killed the motor. Dust from her tires hung in the air and irritated her eyes and nose. From the highway beyond the trees, the sounds of cars working their way home from the city mixed in with the chirping of night insects beginning their day.
“Now what?” she asked the serpents.
The snakes uncoiled from the handlebars, fell to the ground, and slithered toward the tall grass. She checked her knife and four-barrel shotgun filled with paranormal shells before following the little buggers. The swamp in the late-afternoon light brought back memories of her home in hell; lush smells of dense vegetation so rich she could practically taste it, sounds of animals she knew as friends, and the absence of demons. But that had been while Sanguine was in charge. Without her watching over the dimension, evil had taken over like vines in an untended garden.
As the heat of the afternoon gave way to the cooling breeze of early evening, each sensation seemed to be magnified. At the water’s edge, the snakes turned away from the last signs of human activity. The skyline of New Orleans, which in the parking lot had looked like a faded movie backdrop beyond the trees, disappeared between the branches.
For an hour, Sere followed the undulating path her snakes cut through the grass and mud as the day faded to twilight. “I hope you dudes know where you’re going. I don’t have all friggin’ day.”
“They were answering my call.” A woman walked out from under the tree limbs. Her long, straight, blue-gray hair streaked with black so closely matched the shadows around her that Sere had trouble clearly making out anything more than the woman’s face. Her flowing dress in shades of green matched the vegetation. She looked like she’d been painted to blend into the scenery. “I’m Chloe Aberrant.”
Sere put her hand on the butt of her shotgun. “You brought me out here? Why?”
“I thought you could use a friend.”
She’d never been a fan of evasive answers and was even less so when there was work to be done. “I don’t have any friends, and I’ve got a long night ahead of me.”
“Everyone needs friends.” The woman’s lilting voice harmonized with the swaying branches.
Sere took her hand off her gun. Not many women felt at ease in the swamp, especially at night. “You’re a swamp witch.”
“Where there’s a swamp, there’s a witch to guard it,” the woman said, giving yet another answer that got under Sere’s skin.
“That doesn’t explain how you know me or why you summoned my snakes.”
“The voices of the swamp witches who came before me that echo in the bayou at night told me to find you.”
Peachy, Sere thought. Witches had a way of using magic to explain all sorts of things that didn’t make sense. “What do you expect from me?”
Chloe walked past Sere to the water’s edge. From the canvas bag she wore like a purse, she pulled out a small mason jar and filled it with water. “Watch this.” She snugged the container into the dirt at Sere’s feet.
Again, Sere felt like she was wasting time, but she bent down to inspect the jar just the same. From what little she knew of witches, they had a way of being easily offended and obstinate when provoked. At first, she thought the water rising in the jar was just a trick of the fading light, but when it started overflowing the container, she knew something was wrong.
“Magic jar?” she asked.
“Just your average canning jar with a mirror spell inside. It allows me to keep an eye on the divide between our reality and Agnes Delarosa’s creation. The waters are rising in hell, and unless something is done soon, they’ll start overflowing through hell’s gate into our dimension.”
Sere feared she was being handed another problem. “I’m not hell’s maintenance technician. I don’t know jack shit about what Agnes built. So if this is about me having coffee with Jennifer this morning, I’m afraid I can’t help you, and I really have to be going.”
“You can’t escape your destiny, Sere Mal-Laurette.” The mysterious witch poured out the water and shook out the jar. “Come back to my cabin. I’ve got a pot of tea brewing. We can talk.”
“I’m not much for casual conversation.”
The woman’s gray eyes held the same judgmental stare that Kendell had used when Sere was a child. “No wonder you don’t have any friends. The world isn’t going to end if you take half an hour for a cup of tea.”
The snakes curled around the woman’s legs like puppies who knew a stranger had dog treats in her pockets. They clearly wanted to stay for tea and chitchat. After her morning coffee the day before, Sere was beginning to wonder if her personal curse was light conversations.
“Fine. Just don’t expect me to go into detail about who I am or what I’m up against. I don’t think I could ever be the sort of friend who shares all of her secrets.”
Chloe turned toward the shadows. “You need friends so you have someone you trust to talk things out with, share your pain, and give you hope. You can’t just bottle all that toxicity inside you. It’ll eat at your soul.”
Sere followed the woman’s voice into the dark. “In my experience, trust is a knife I hand someone so they can aim it at my heart.”
The witch opened a door so shrouded in branches that Sere wondered if they were entering the trunk of a tree. “You’re a very cynical person.” Chloe ducked under the limbs into a small candlelit room.
For most of her life, Sere had only known a handful of real people, and each of them had been more of a teacher and protector than a friend. “I suppose I don’t have much experience at friendship.”
“I think we’re going to be friends.” Chloe looked completely at home in her swamp cabin of wood, mud, and moss.
“Why, can you see the future?” Sere asked. Since Sanguine had that ability, Sere didn’t see any reason other witches might not also possess the skill.
“No.” Chloe poured two cups of tea from the pot sitting on the wood-burning stove. “I get feelings about events. Meeting you is a warm-glow kind of experience—like sitting in front of a fire on a cold night. As a witch, I don’t know a lot of people, and most of the ones I do meet come to me for spells. It’s hard to be really open with people who think I can trick them with my magic.” She handed one of the cups to Sere. “You’re one of the few people who might truly understand what it is to be different. Would knowing someone you could confide in be such a bad thing?”
Sere could practically see the conversational dance. By admitting a personal pain, Chloe was inviting Sere to do the same. “People have died knowing me.”
The witch snuggled into her worn high-back chair and pulled her feet up to the seat cushion. Each of her actions seemed intended to get Sere to stay. “So now people have to prove their strength before you let them into your life?”
Bart had proved himself and then some. So far, he was the only one Sere had fully accepted into her circle beyond those who had raised her. “It helps to know I don’t have to always be protecting someone.”
“You won’t have to protect me.” Chloe waved at the sagging couch. “Midnight, get down from there. Let our guest have some room.”
In the flickering light of the candles, a black panther that had previously escaped Sere’s notice stood on the frayed cushions. The great cat with pale-moon eyes took up the entire length of the sofa. Giving a lazy but belligerent snarl, he stepped off the couch. He never broke eye contact with Sere as he circled around then curled in front of his mistress’s chair.
“He’s a magnificent animal.” Even having spent her life in the swamp, Sere could only twice remember having heard one of the fabled cats growling in the dark.
Chloe kicked off her sandals and burrowed her bare feet into the cat’s thick, glossy-black coat. His purring vibrated the floor. “Midnight came to me as a cub. His mother was a great huntress. I never saw her, but I used to hear her prowling around the swamp. One morning, I found this little cub meowing pitifully outside my front door. I don’t know why she gifted him to me, but every week or so, I still find fresh game outside my cabin. I can’t tell whether it’s his mama or one of his siblings, but whoever it is seems happy to have him living with me.” The big cat arched his neck so he could rub his head against Chloe’s leg. “So you see, I really don’t need protecting.”
Sere carefully took a seat on the moss-and-feline-smelling sofa. “You haven’t had to deal directly with hell. In some ways, that realm was easier when there was a devil in charge. Without my father around—and with Sanguine in some interdimensional jail cell—the vacuum is attracting a special brand of hungry power seekers. I suspect they see me as the most efficient means of gaining control, and that puts those around me at risk.”
Chloe reached into her bag and pulled out a dead rabbit. She laid it in front of her cat before patting him on the head. “I’m not like normal people. I understand hell better than you might think.” Midnight bit into the carcass as if he’d been given a catnip-flavored chew toy.
Beyond Sanguine the witch, Kendell the voodoo practitioner, and Professor Yates the scientist—the three people most directly responsible for hell’s current situation—Sere doubted anyone truly understood much about the realm. “You may be watching over the Wiccan foundation from this side, but that’s about it. The threat was never in what Agnes Delarosa built.”
“No, but anyone from that realm who tried to get to you through me would have a tough time if the magical ground under their feet kept shifting.”
Sere sipped at the hot tea. The taste of wild mint and bayberry over the heavier base of oak bark brought back memories of Sanguine’s concoctions that she’d brewed when young Sere was hurt or upset. “But why would you want to put yourself at risk to protect me?”
“That’s what friends do.”
Exploring her budding relationship with Bart was already enough of a distraction. Sere certainly didn’t need any new friends. “I appreciate the offer, truly,” she said, “but right now, I just don’t have the time to socialize.”
Tea steam swirled around Chloe’s face. “I didn’t invite you out here just to sample my tea and offer my friendship. As you said, I’m somewhat separated from the action. That gives me a wider perspective on what’s happening. Hell is like a Wiccan cake with a paranormal-technology frosting decorated with voodoo dolls. You may understand the outer layers, but you’ll need help when it comes to the foundation.”
Sere envisioned a dark-chocolate cake with a figurine of her father standing in the center like a groom who’d lost his bride. “Only one voodoo doll, and he’s been dealt with.”
“Maybe so, but his voodoo footprints remain in the icing.”
Sere wondered how long the woman was going to make her play her game. “Are you talking about the creation of Devlin Doppeldevil Laroque? I dismembered him—at least for the time being. As for the lost souls imprisoned in Marjory’s paranormal bridge, I’m working on it.”
“My study is Wicca, not voodoo or science.”
“So what are you trying to tell me?” Sere asked.
“Someone has cut into the cake.”
At least the witch hadn’t directly accused Sere of sneaking a piece. “I don’t know what that means.”
Chloe put her cup on top of a weathered leather journal that sat on the end table. She was getting down to business. “The hell mouth that Agnes used to transport what she created in life down into the other dimension is splitting open. If you and I don’t do something, it’s not just your doppelgängers who will be wandering the streets of New Orleans. Agnes was responsible for everything from hell’s weather to its plants and animals. She was that dimension’s version of mother nature.”
Sere pictured hell’s creatures breaking through their dimension. Lefty had been Sere’s companion from the time she was a little girl. With Sanguine’s help, Sere had ridden the thirty-foot monster from hell to life, and now she relied on him as the gate guardian. But having all of his hell-gator friends—along with everything else from the magical swamp—turned loose in reality would be a condition Sere couldn’t control.
“Are you saying you can repair the damage between dimensions?” she asked.
“Not until the knife is removed, but I do have Agnes’s cookbook.”
For the love of God, woman, enough with the fucking cooking metaphor. Sere squeezed her eyes shut in an attempt to tap down her irritation. “So am I the knife? Because I don’t see me returning to hell as any kind of an answer.” Instinctively, her hand fell to the knife handle at the top of her boot. The whole let’s be friends gambit might have simply been a way of luring Sere to her demise. “Or are you proposing turning my soul over to the loas of the dead?”
With the great cat at Chloe’s feet and the smallness of the space, Sere didn’t have the best advantage should it come to a fight to the death. Still, she readied herself for the challenge. Midnight stopped his purring and rolled back to his paws as if sensing the danger to his mistress.
“You can both relax,” Chloe said. “I don’t like those voodoo dudes any more than you do. You’ve been more like the napkin that’s been used for cleaning up the crumbs.”
Sere eased off of her attack stance. “I’d have to agree with you about the napkin bit. If you know so much about how Agnes built hell, does that mean you can travel to that dimension the way she did?”
At Chloe’s feet, Midnight remained on guard even as the conversation returned to casual tones. “I can check in when needed, but I appear as nothing more than a ghost to your doppelbrethren. It takes a lot out of me, so I prefer my mirror jars for regular monitoring.”
Sere wasn’t sure what good an apparition would do, but at least Chloe might provide an additional peek into what was happening in hell. “Other than the professor’s computers, which don’t tell me much beyond the state of the doppelgänger population, and a teenaged doppelchick who’s more intent on settling personal vendettas than finding answers, I’m blind as to what’s going on in hell. I can’t even tell when an attack is coming my way until it breaks through the hell mouth, so anything you can find out would be a great help.” She set her cup on the table next to Chloe’s. The snakes slithered up her legs as if sensing it was time to go. “My next chore is to head north along the swamp. I want to see the hell mouth for myself. If I’m not the knife, do you have any idea of what I should be looking for?”
“Something that connects to all three dimensions, and it’s a deliberate attack.” Chloe unwound her body from the chair and nudged her panther out of the way so she could stand. “Tell me we’ll meet again soon, Sere Mal-Laurette.”
Sere wrapped her snakes around her shoulders. “I promise to stop by once I have some information about the hell mouth.” She held her hands out toward the swamp witch. “Friends?”
Chloe’s grasp was firm, a nonverbal, I’ve got you. “Absolutely.”
Sere got back on the road more confused than ever. She could deal with any one single problem, and there were plenty to choose from. Meeting Jennifer presumably messed up the professor’s precious program, and Marjory stealing souls of the dead—or attempting to raise a new devil—might account for the voodoo component Chloe had described. And finally, Sanguine’s sequestration in an iron vault had to have an effect on hell’s Wiccan stability. But Sere couldn’t imagine an underlying cause of all of the events—other than herself.
She looked down at her snakes with their heads again sticking out of the saddlebags. “Next time you guys feel a call, maybe you could just take a message.”
With their tongues again flicking at the wind, they appeared to be enjoying the ride too much to listen.
Riding at night along the edge of the swamp came as a welcome break from the barrage of people who had inhabited her life over the last few days. Exploring her new relationship with Bart would have been all-consuming if not for the world-ending dangers that appeared around every corner. The sex had been mind-blowing, but coming down off the endorphin high, Sere realized the physical longing had been nothing compared to the support he provided, both in terms of his fighting skills and his emotional stability. The man was her rock in so many ways. The earlier fears of feeling submissive or overly reliant on him seemed like the foolish insecurities of a teenage girl contemplating losing her virginity.
Meeting Jennifer had been unexpected, though it probably shouldn’t have been. In hell, Sere had hung onto the image of the woman as a foolish cock-loving airhead for so long that getting to know the real person was like meeting an actress after having watched her in a horrible B-grade movie. The woman had strength, depth, and a personal code that made Sere wonder how much of Jennifer’s nature had transferred to her. And she’d received all of those new impressions via their psychic link before she’d even met the woman in real life.
“She’s also not a half-bad cook,” Sere said over her shoulder to her snake.
Fisher was a fundamentally good man and somehow managed to remain so in spite of his interactions with Sere. She had carried the responsibility for his demonic possession around like a snapping turtle tied to her back—just when she thought she could ignore it, something came along to remind her of the danger the man faced. Yet in spite of the evil that lurked within him, Fisher was always at the ready with answers Sere thought were impossible to find. Never once had he blamed her for his condition. Now that he was free of his curse, she wondered if he’d still find their partnership attractive.
“I need to come up with a promotion for him—superhero sidekick doesn’t begin to cover what he does for me. But if he says he wants to return to his quiet family life and contemplations of retirement, it wouldn’t be right for me to stand in his way.”
