The Devil's Daughter Complete Box Set, page 74
part #1 of The Devil's Daughter Series
Sere couldn’t accept that existence could be distilled to winners and losers. “Life isn’t a game of poker. Together, those who care for each other can contain people who are only out for themselves. I have to believe that. My very existence is proof that evil can be overcome by a dedicated group. You should know that. You were a part of that group.”
Joe put his feet up on the table. “Maybe someday in the future, when we all live together without competition, we’ll be ready for settling into permanent bodies, but for now, we’re still figuring things out. Locking everyone into their current situation would be like telling children they’d be stuck in second grade for the rest of their lives—complete with bullies, know-it-alls, and a power structure they can’t change. But my poker analogy is only one reason I’d turn down your offer of immortality. Tell me, has your relationship with Bart changed since I died?”
Sere didn’t really want to get into her love life with her mentor. “Why?”
“With a limited time to get to know others, there’s more incentive to do something with our emotions. If you believe you have forever to get to know someone or do something, then there’s always tomorrow. But have a calendar in front of you with a drop-dead date—even if you don’t know what that date is—and you’re faced with admitting your feelings or spending the time you have wondering, What if…?”
Bart had opened the door to talking about their shared longing multiple times. She’d always found a reason to duck his advances—until Joe’s death showed her the foolishness of such avoidance, but that wasn’t something she was ready to admit. “At some point, our mutual desire would have pushed us over the edge.”
“For sexual attraction, sure—I know you well enough to remember how your life was in hell—but getting your physical needs met is different than bonding your soul to another. Lasting connections are vital for people struggling to make it through life. As an immortal, however, being bonded to another person for all eternity could be pretty daunting.”
“You’re saying because I can’t die, my connections aren’t as deep as those mortals around me?” Sere asked with some irritation.
“I’m saying if everyone around you couldn’t die, you might not be as willing to open your soul to them.”
Sere began to wonder if seeing her old mentor one more time had been such a good idea. “So, you’re back to the idea of the deck eventually being reshuffled as a reason to go all-in on life and love.”
“I’m saying we as individuals learn from our life events. And when we die, that knowledge is added to the sum total of human experience. Each of us gets to play the hero and the villain, the lover and the warrior, the powerful and the destitute. That’s the gift death gives us mere mortals—change.” He got off his work stool, came around the table, and put his hands on her shoulders. “I loved this life—mostly because of you being such a large part of it—but I wouldn’t have wanted to play the mentor for eternity, nor would you have wanted to always have parental figures watching over you. Growth inevitably involves change, and death is the ultimate transformation—not just for the person passing on but also those who were around them.”
“And what about me?” If she couldn’t include those she loved in her timeless existence, she wondered how she was supposed to fit into their reality.
“Life was my poker table. You exist based on another set of rules—ones not of your choosing. I suspect that your connections to us time-limited humans will result in understandings that I can’t even imagine.” He put his forehead to hers. “But your life is your own. You’ve outgrown the need for a mentor. It’s time for you to surpass us all.”
67
Chapter 19
A loud splash from the river roused Sere from her sleep. She looked around the cabin, half expecting to still see Joe toiling away at his project, but the room was as empty as it had been when she’d nodded off. “If sleep truly is the intersection of dimensions, I just want to say thanks for leaving me one last conversation. Though I’m still not convinced by your arguments.”
She got up and headed for the back sliding glass door. Out in the swamp, Lefty had his head on the dock and was rocking it with his front feet like a kid playing with an air mattress in a swimming pool.
“I’m on my way, my friend.” She headed out then shimmied down the wooden ladder to the ground and ran toward the dock. The prospect of leaving hell made her heart beat as fast as her footfalls on the dirt path to the water.
Lefty snuggled up to the shore just as Sere reached the river. She hopped onto his scaly back and ran up to his head. “Get us through the hell mouth and stay out of sight of any birds.”
As one of the first inhabitants of Agnes’s dimension, Lefty was the preeminent swamp king, but that didn’t mean there weren’t other beasties in the water who might want to take a swipe at Sere. She scanned the sky for threats, but all she saw was the constant rain. If she could avoid being spied on by birds, she just might make it back to the land of the living and Bart’s welcoming arms.
Lefty dove just far enough under the water that Sere’s body was also submerged, but by lifting her head, she could breathe without being seen. With his massive body blocking her view of the river bottom, she couldn’t tell if other critters were following her out to the deep swamp. In spite of the threats ahead and behind, all she could think about was Bart. Joe had been right. If it hadn’t been for his death, she wouldn’t have realized how short her time was with the muscular hero. Bart could be killed just as easily as Joe had been. Every day apart was one she’d never get back. Even if he did live a good long life, their hours together were finite, and the longer she existed the lower percentage of her life she would have spent with him. She felt foolish for having wasted so many conversations in argument and snark. I’m going to be better with him. I have to be.
She lifted her head for air and found she wasn’t being pummeled with rain. The eye of the storm, which hovered above the hell mouth, allowed her a moment of atmospheric peace. When Lefty lowered his head toward the dark crystal-clear water, Sere took a deep breath and grabbed tightly to the rows of scutes that ran down his back.
She’d suffered more than her fair share of crossings between dimensions. Being born might well have been the first, but unlike most people, dying wasn’t the last for Sere. That final life event had only proven to be the beginning of her interdimensional crossings, though she barely remembered it. Being yanked out of Guinee, however, felt like drowning. All she’d wanted to do was scream against the undertow that dragged her from the life and death she knew to the hell her father ruled over. When she’d finally come to, it was in another body in another dimension at a different time. At least passing through the hell mouth allowed her to maintain her identity, but the experience of feeling every molecule in her body and every spark of her soul transmuted to another dimension was no less terrifying.
As if diving to the bottom of a pond to cross through to a mirror world at the bottom, Lefty did a somersault underwater and surfaced in life.
Sere knelt on Lefty’s back and gasped for air. Initially, little seemed to have changed. It was still midnight, and the storm that had broken at the hell mouth continued to leave her in peace. She crawled to Lefty’s side and peered over the edge. Much to her relief, as the giant gator swam away from the crystal-clear water, no alien creatures followed.
Her first indication that she really was back in life was the sound of the outboard motor puttering toward her. She scampered up to Lefty’s head for a glimpse of Bart. It felt like months since had passed since she’d been in his arms.
The battered aluminum hull that emerged from the water hyacinth looked like it had been through a war. Instead of the nice flat front designed to glide over the water, the bow was so badly dented and scraped that Sere wondered why the craft wasn’t taking on water. As Bart straightened it up toward her, the boat listed to starboard.
“I’m guessing you didn’t just encounter crawfish this time,” she said.
He swung the boat hard around to line it up with Lefty. “I ran into a school of twenty-foot-long catfish. Those are some mean suckers. They kept ramming into me like rutting bucks.” He reached down and pulled up a three-foot fish spike. “This one got caught in the aft transom. How was your trip to hell?”
“Not much better than your trip out here. I survived.” She jumped from Lefty’s back into the boat. She stepped lightly over the bumped-up metal. Her heart felt like a magnet that had latched onto its mate. She didn’t stop until she was in his arms.
He pressed his magnificent body firmly against hers. “Nothing followed you?”
She shook her head against his chest. “I think between Doodlebug and Lefty, we managed to avoid being seen by Jenna. Hopefully, so long as she thinks I didn’t leave, she won’t mess with the hell mouth.” Water sloshed against the soles of the frayed and saturated dress shoes. “How likely is this boat to get us back to civilization?”
He kept one arm around her as he reached for the controls and gave the motor some gas. “So long as it’s moving, I don’t think it will sink.”
Lefty kept pace with the slow-moving johnboat. Begrudgingly, Sere pulled out of Bart’s embrace to lean over the side. “I need you to keep an eye on the hell mouth but from the other side this time. You’re a good boy, Lefty. I couldn’t have escaped hell without you.”
She reached out and patted his muscular jaw. The monster from hell lowered his head so far into the water that only his eyes remained above the surface. Then he turned away from the boat and back toward the open water.
“Are you expecting more trouble to come bubbling up?” Bart asked from the controls.
She watched her gator’s tail swing side to side through the water as if he were waving goodbye. “I’m not sure what to expect, but hell is the safest place for him. Even with monster crawfish and mammoth catfish to contend with, I still fear one of those gator hunters would like to display my boy’s hide on their wall. More importantly, though, if Jenna saw me riding on him and still sees him swimming in hell, she’ll assume I’m in that dimension.”
Bart swung the boat back into the lane he’d cut through the water plants and reached for a rifle. “We’re going to come on those hell fish pretty soon. Unlike the crawfish monsters, they seem content to just hang out and eat whatever strays into their territory, including us.”
She grabbed the rifle and took position at the bow. As much as she would have preferred to spend the trip in his arms, fighting for their lives made a worthy second-best activity. “Why is returning home always so difficult?”
“I’ve yet to go anywhere with you that wasn’t an adventure.” He tossed her the boat’s painter. “You’ll want to hang on. Those monsters like attacking from below. If you’re leaning over the bow when they hit, you might end up in the water again.”
Without hell affecting her thoughts and emotions, Sere was far less interested in diving into another fight. She tied the rope to her ankle before leaning over the front of the boat. “Any suggestions on how to deal with a catfish from hell?”
“Your best bet is to shoot it toward the back of the head where it meets the spine. Just be ready for the damn thing to thrash. Even when they’re dead, their nervous systems keep them active for quite a while.”
Peachy. She scanned the bottom of the river for movement. “Hey, how did the hunters do with the crawfish-and-turtle invasion?”
“They’ve been eating like King Neptune at Riley’s, to the point where the health department is threatening to close her down if she doesn’t get the right permits. Word’s getting around that she’s serving something special.” He nodded toward a field of tall grass that extended into the water. “I ran into a bad nasty hanging out around that bend.”
“Got it.” She raised the rifle to her shoulder and peered through the scope.
“Don’t bother trying to hit it from here. Wait until we get closer.”
She used the magnifying lenses to inspect the shoreline. “Is that a cut about my aim?”
“Not this time. Those catfish take a direct hit to kill.”
As she and Bart approached the slight curve, the tall grass flattened into the water. “I see him—or more aptly, he saw us.”
“Wait until he gets close to the hull,” he said. “Just don’t let him skewer the side with his spikes.”
The beast came at them like a torpedo, straight and fast. “Not very stealthy, is he?” She cocked the rifle and took aim at the bulbous head just inches under the water’s surface. When the huge catfish was five feet from the side of the boat, she pulled the trigger. The bullet skipped off his head like a skipping rock. Quickly, she recocked the gun, stood up for a better angle, and shot just as the rock-solid head pounded into the thin metal. Blood boiled up through the water like steam out of the stacks of a paddle wheeler, following the fish as it dove under them.
The boat tilted over so far that Bart fell from the controls to the gunnel, riding along the edge of the water. “A little warning next time?” Without someone at the wheel, the boat heeled and turned toward the shore.
“How did you manage to fight these monsters off on your own?” Sere chambered another round. The fish that had hit their boat was flailing behind them, making it hard to see under the water’s surface.
“Not well.” Bart got back to the controls and spun the boat out toward the center of the river. “But I had a little help.” He nodded toward the deep water ahead. The gently churning ripples indicated there was something happening on the river bottom.
Sere aimed at the whirlpools. “I don’t understand.”
“Turtles and catfish aren’t the greatest of allies—apparently, that holds true in hell as well as life. The big challenge is to stay out of their way.” He spun the wheel, turning the boat toward a relatively calm section of water, and opened up the throttle.
“I’m beginning to miss Lefty,” Sere said. “He would have loved to dive into the fray. Though if I had to choose, I’d take your brains over his brawn every time.”
68
Chapter 20
Between fighting their way past hell’s escaped aquatic zoo, returning the no-longer-seaworthy johnboat to Cody, and riding down to the city, it was after dawn by the time Bart shut down his Ducati in front of the professor’s offices. Sere put her feet on the ground but remained on the back seat. “Really? I’m abducted by the cops, dragged to a warehouse to confront one of the most powerful men in New Orleans, forced to a formal unveiling of the new devil, then I kill that devil, get transported to hell, and fight my way out of hell, and the best you can do is bring me back to the lab? I expected at least a celebratory dinner and a few hours of passion.”
Bart stood with the bike between his legs. “This wasn’t my idea, but I promised we’d stop by first thing. Once we’re done with your support staff, I’m all yours—in all the ways you can imagine.”
She patted him on the ass as she eased off the seat. “I’m going to hold you to that.” She waited until he was next to her with his arm around her waist before heading around the building to the front door. “Any idea what they want?”
He shrugged. “After every military expedition, there’s always a debriefing. I’d guess they’re still pissed that we didn’t tell them about your coffee with Jennifer. They probably want to make sure such an oversight doesn’t happen again.”
She tried to contain her irritation. “It’s not like they didn’t keep things from me too.”
He leaned in and kissed her head. “I’m on your side. Tell me you want to leave, and we can turn right around and head to your loft.”
She slipped her hand down to his well-toned butt. “Tempting, but no. I guess it’s best to get this over with. If there’s another problem on the horizon, I need to know about it as soon as possible.”
He opened the door and ushered her in. Chloe, in her layered diaphanous green dress, looked like an absinth fairy as she rushed to the door and wrapped Sere in her arms. “I’m so happy you survived.”
“What does your magic jar tell you?” Sere asked. Of everyone in the room, only the swamp witch would really know if Sere had been successful in partially closing the door to hell.
Chloe gave her a knowing smile. “The waters are receding.”
Sere took a cleansing sigh. “That’s something at least.”
“You really outdid yourself.” Kendell leaned against Myles next to the bank of computers. Based on their rumpled clothing—the same that they’d been wearing when Sere had fled from the bank—and their bloodshot eyes, they hadn’t slept since Sere had been transported to hell.
“I didn’t have much of a choice.” Sere looked around for the badass housewife but didn’t see her. “I’m assuming someone took Jennifer home.”
“I did,” Bart said. “I dropped her off on my way to find you.”
Polly sat in the chair opposite the professor. “She called a little while ago to say Henry bought the story. We’re in the clear as far as her family is concerned.”
“How is she?” Sere asked. Traveling through hell was hard enough on her, and she’d spent most of her life there. She couldn’t imagine how someone living a typical suburban life would take it.
Polly pursed her lips. “She’s doing as well as can be expected. I think she compartmentalized the adventure. When we talked about it before she left, she sounded like she was recounting a movie she’d just watched.”
The professor cleaned out his pipe like he was going to need a smoke very shortly. “You can’t talk to her again, Sere. Even your psychic bonds might tip off Jenna that you’re not in hell.”
She had assumed as much. “You were right, and I was wrong. Is that what you all want to hear?”
