The Devil's Daughter Complete Box Set, page 78
part #1 of The Devil's Daughter Series
Doodlebug didn’t feel sorry for the woman losing her boobs. Certain body parts had a tendency to get in the way when it came to fighting. “What’s the event?”
“It’s an upscale party. The big part of the rumor is that the Cormorant is supposed to make an appearance.”
Doodlebug felt her blood run cold. “Any idea where this soiree is to take place?”
“The Laroque mansion.”
She exited the building and got back on her motorcycle. With the family reunited, she couldn’t leave the doppelgänger processing plant fast enough.
As she puttered through the streets of the Central Business District, Doodlebug considered what she knew of the bird deity. Not many in hell knew of the Cormorant’s history or actual identity, and the birdwoman had done everything in her power to keep it that way. “Jenna.” Even for Doodlebug, merely speaking the name aloud felt sacrilegious.
Sere’s gang of supposed experts who were in charge of hell probably hadn’t meant for Doodlebug to eavesdrop on the conversation about what made Sere tick. As the original spirit cast out of Sere’s doppelgänger body and infused into the first animal they could find, they probably expected Jenna to just be happy she hadn’t been reincarnated as a cockroach. “Probably would have been easier on everyone if she had. I would just love to see the harvesters worshipping a big bug,” she said to herself.
Of the human triptych, only Jennifer could get along on her own. No one would have thought that silly little housewife was the foundation of a whole religion and the superheroine capable of containing hell. “If Marjory and the Cormorant are joining forces, I’m screwed. I need to get into that party, but they aren’t going to let me in as the Doppel Avenger.”
Other than fighting, though, there wasn’t much she was fit to do. Dooly Buell, on the other hand, could play a mean fiddle. Doodlebug toyed with the satchel between her breasts. If the professor’s computers were compromised, telling Dooly about the meeting over the system would mean both of them would be walking into a trap. She needed to sneak in without being identified then somehow figure out what the two powerful women were up to.
Doodlebug patted the small leather bag back into place under her shirt. By not talking over the computer system, she just might throw Marjory off. “Looks like I need to sneak out to the cemetery.” Though like the headband, the blacked-out motorcycle might point her enemies right to her. She needed to stash it where no one would suspect she was back on foot, and that ruled out the hotel where she’d stayed. Trusted guards could too easily become informants.
She snuck the Honda along the streets of the Central Business District until she came to a building being gutted for condo development. Though foremen, architects, and inspectors might be New Orleans residents, most of the construction workers were only in town for the job. She ducked down an alley behind the project. With no one around to see her, she wheeled the bike in the gaping hole of the building. She snugged the motorcycle up against a graffiti-painted cinderblock wall and covered it with a blue tarp.
After the motorcycle was securely stashed, she hustled along the streets lined with towering office buildings. She kept her head down and her ratty rain slicker pulled tight as she avoided the well-dressed businesspeople.
Once she crossed Canal Street, she skirted from overhanging balcony to protective awning along North Rampart. The Quarter was bad—worse than bad. A teenage girl sneaking into the sketchy part of town was simply begging for trouble. “Sure would have been nice if Professor Yates had screened the people he used for creating doppelgängers.” Rapists, thieves, and murderers were villainous enough before removing the final shreds of humanity and turning their demonic doubles loose in hell, and those were just the doppelgängers.
Brick tenement buildings bordered three sides of the crumbling cemetery like old people looking through the windows of a medical office at the recently deceased. Built on top of the leveled Storyville red-light district, the area never had been one a young girl would’ve found comforting.
Not that Doodlebug gave a rat’s ass about where Dooly hid her musings regarding life on the streets but being safe from Agnes Delarosa’s original rendition of hell made the journal immune from the professor’s tampering. Anything Doodlebug wrote on the pages remained even if she dissipated. Unfortunately, the fact that the crypt was immune from being overwritten also meant that recording any new information required Doodlebug to sneak past all manner of terrors.
She hopped across North Rampart Street as easily as she’d done Canal. With the streetcars racing along the neutral zone, the road was more a part of the Quarter than the Treme. Passing the old out-of-place adobe church was like seeing a caring old woman shake her head in disappointment at a girl entering a whorehouse.
At Basin Street, Doodlebug crouched behind the back of the church with her swords drawn. Harvesters she understood, but even those demons stayed on their side of the busy street. “Ghosts and goblins, harvesters and freaks.” The message was as simple as the line: In hell, there was always something scarier than what she knew. “We really need to develop some better poets.”
When it came to the cemetery and surrounding neighborhood, such an advance wasn’t possible. She consoled herself that the periodic sojourn helped keep her skills sharp. She needed to record what’s happening. The dragons couldn’t have randomly evolved, and that meant Marjory was messing with hell’s infrastructure. Other than the professor, she was the only one with the know-how. “Damn Baron Malveaux and his devil journals,” Doodlebug muttered to herself. Then there’s the party to consider. If the most powerful woman in New Orleans was joining forces with the Cormorant, Dooly was Doodlebug’s only hope of sneaking into the soiree.
Strengthened with determination, Doodlebug jetted out from behind the church wall and ran as fast as her feet would carry her to the wrought-iron gate that faced the street. She bolted up the rusting bars and over the ornate header. Landing in the supposedly empty graveyard, however, didn’t mean she was in the clear.
The tomb she sought was nestled deep within the city of the dead. The hammering rain howled between the brick and marble crypts, sounding like a choir of the damned. The dark, cold tombs surrounding her sapped her courage. Wafts of ice-cold air in the otherwise hot and muggy storm passed through her flesh and chilled her to the bone. “I friggin’ hate these ghosts. There’s no one to fight. All they do is steal life force.”
She made a quick double check to be sure she was physically alone if not spiritually. At a crumbling crypt, she turned into the alleyway of the dead dedicated to the city’s indigent. According to the carved headstone, the tomb stacked with coffins filled with deceased children from the local orphanage dated to the yellow fever epidemic. She felt along the front of a chamber at the bottom of the crypt until she located the two loose bricks. After yanking them out, she reached in and grabbed the journal off the top of the small wooden coffin. The pen was still in the spiraled metal binding.
She sat with her back against the tomb and pulled the hood of her rain slicker over the book before opening the diary to the last entry. True to her word, Dooly had recorded Doodlebug’s meeting at the airport with Nocturne.
She clicked the pen and started writing. We know the Laroques are creating a dragon and demon militia, which doesn’t leave me much choice other than to accept Nocturne’s offer of an alliance with the Cormorant. I only hope I’m not too late. When I return to the Quarter, I’ll send word that I want to meet with the birdwoman. I just hope she didn’t spot me running interference with the harvesters while Sere and Jennifer escaped hell. Covering for those two while keeping my own identity a secret is proving to be a complex juggling act. If Sere makes another foray into hell, she’d better not come any closer than Sanguine stashed in the baron’s old vault. That gate to hell is close enough. Doodlebug tapped the end of the pen against her mouth. Though thinking out an idea on paper helped her see the issues from another perspective, she needed to keep Dooly focused on what she needed to do so the girl wouldn’t go flying off into mental tangents. She put the pen back to the page.
Of more importance, there’s a masquerade ball at the Laroque mansion. The only way for Marjory to inhabit her doppelgänger and meet with the Cormorant would be if there’s a matching event on your side. I need you to pull out your fiddle. We don’t dare wear the headband. If Marjory has compromised the network, I would stand out like I was wearing a superhero costume. Then they’ll either round me up or make sure the information they share throws us off course.
Much as I hate to, I’ll need to follow your projection like a good little doppelgänger. Get us in there, Dooly. And don’t let anyone know about the plan.
Doodlebug slipped back into the Quarter as surreptitiously as a teenager sneaking back into her parents’ house after curfew. Hunting harvesters along the residential streets of the Quarter involved stealth and quickness. Once one learned of her presence, the others would be drawn in like vultures to a fresh kill.
Across from a clothing store that specialized in skimpy attire fit for strippers, she pressed her body against the iron security gate of a narrow brick-walled passage. She drew the katana sword from the sheath at her back. While watching the street, she slipped the metal blade between the gate and the frame. With one firm twist, she had the door open.
Lacking tourists, most retail clerks had learned the hard way to keep their shops locked up. Harvesters just loved confined spaces safe from the hurricane to do their dirty work, and service personnel who followed the lead of their reals made for easy pickings. As a shop catering to the nightlife workers, however, the clothing store stocked with slips of fabric over biologically correct mannequins had no choice but to keep its doors open.
She didn’t have long to wait. A girl not much older than Doodlebug ran past her, shivering in torn fishnet stockings and six-inch clear-plastic heels. With a quick look down the street, the pole-dancer darted out from the curb toward the shop.
The harvester that had been stalking the girl was so focused on his prey that he plowed into Doodlebug, presumably hoping to also use the small hiding space. She held her sword at his throat before he could respond and pulled him into the arched access. “I’ll just help myself to that sickle.” She reached for his curved blade under his cape while holding her weapon against his throat. The edge was pressed so firmly into his dried leather flesh that if there had been blood in his desiccated veins it would have been dripping off the flat metal surface. “I want you to take a message to your leader.”
His sneer might have been meant as a laugh—she couldn’t be sure with all of the hissing. “We don’t have leaders.”
“Don’t try to be cute with me. Tell Nocturne I want to talk to the Cormorant.”
“You don’t impress me as a true believer.”
She pulled the sword hard enough against his neck that she could feel the vertebrae vibrate against the metal like a bow against a violin string. “I didn’t say I wanted to worship her, only talk.”
“The Cormorant doesn’t communicate with mindless drones.”
With only slightly more pressure, she could sever the harvester’s head from his spine. She swung him around so she could peer into his ugly face but made sure the action wasn’t accompanied by his head rolling off his body. She repositioned the blade against his throat. “Do I impress you as a typical doppelgänger?”
“The fact remains, she doesn’t show herself to mirrors.”
“Then I guess I have no use for you.” She sawed the sword across his neck. From the feeling of bone being cut, she knew he would never again turn his head correctly.
“Wait. I’ll deliver your message to Nocturne. If the Cormorant would listen to anyone, it would be the head of our order.”
“Now was that so hard?” She jerked the blade out from his leathered flesh. As he squirmed around and ran, she had an overwhelming urge to toss the sword and finish him off, but she’d done what she’d meant to. Finding another harvester while resisting the impulse to dismember him wasn’t a temptation she wanted to repeat.
72
Chapter 3
Once the harvester had run clear from her bloodlust, Doodlebug headed back toward Canal Street. Though sleeping and eating weren’t part of her normal routine, too many death-defying activities strung together without a break made her irritable. Across the busy thoroughfare, the Crown Astoria stood among the other hotels like an elegant old woman from another time waiting in line with her friends for the passing streetcar.
As Doodlebug crossed the tracks in the middle of the neutral zone, the familiar flapping overhead made her dive for the flood water that covered the street up to her shins. The long talons of the dragon’s webbed foot caught her around the chest before she could hit the ground. He lifted her high over the power lines like a bird who’d just snatched a fish from the river.
She beat on the monster’s scaly leg. “Let me go!”
“Relax.” He drew out the hissing sound for so long, she wondered if he’d really spoken or if she’d just imagined it.
“Why? Where are you taking me?”
“To someone who can vouch for my honorable intentions.” He flew high above the elegant old hotels and curved toward the Mississippi River.
Like a lightning rod working in reverse, the abandoned World Trade Center, which towered thirty-three stories over the water, discharged bolts of electricity into the storm. In life, the skyscraper had been the repository of paranormal artifacts. In hell, the critical mass of magical mementoes had created a paranormal energy meltdown. Though Doodlebug had never cared much for the science of her reality, some facts were hard to ignore, like the shafts of sizzling light that lit up the Quarter. “Would you mind not flying us into the paranormal reactor?”
The dragon folded his wings to his body and dove toward the water. The intense blasts of electricity overhead made the thin skin covering his dark flight bones glow red. “You’re safe with me.”
“I highly doubt that.” She pulled at his long yellow toenail that curved around her ribs. Even a couple of stories up, if she could break free, she had a shot at hitting the water and floating away.
He curled his talons together, locking her in place.
“Damn you! Let me go, you flapping dinosaur,” she yelled in frustration. “You’re probably some friggin’ bat in life that flew into the professor’s equipment.”
“You can call me Smoke.” With two flaps of his enormous wings, they were away from the river.
She looked behind her to estimate their direction. No matter where she ended up, it was bound to be a long walk back to the city.
Time had never made much sense to Doodlebug. Dooly had tried to explain the concept once, but she might as well have been talking advanced calculus for all Doodlebug understood or cared. With hell stuck at midnight and the unending hurricane, the passing of the sun and moon overhead were as alien to Doodlebug as harvesters and demons were to Dooly. And since Doodlebug didn’t suffer from hunger or exhaustion, even the bodily needs that apparently developed with time were baffling. As far as she was concerned, things happened, then other things happened. But how time fit into that equation was a mystery. As the scaly claw that encircled Doodlebug’s torso started rubbing red marks on her skin, however, she wondered if the irritation was anything like Dooly’s explanation of hunger. “Are we there yet?”
“Relax.”
“I’m getting really tired of hearing you say that.” She pounded again on the dragon’s claw. Though with the cypress treetops passing under her feet, if she were to escape his grasp, she would be in serious danger of being skewered or bashed unconscious during her fall to the swampy ground.
“Then stop asking,” he hissed.
She folded her arms over his talon. “Why are you doing this to me?”
“You need my help.”
She looked up along his armored neck. Long ivory-yellow fangs extended below his chin. “And there’s someone out in this godforsaken forest who’s going to convince me you’re not out to kill me? Seems more likely that I’m being hauled to your nest as food for your family of flamers.”
“We’re here.” He glided down toward a large field of tall grass surrounded by oak and cypress trees. Above a high knoll, he curved his wings and spread his talons, dropping her before he landed farther out in the swamp.
She glared up at his face, which reached the tree tops. “Now what?”
He let out a short burst of fire. “Head that way. You’ll see the path. She’s waiting for you.”
Doodlebug stomped off toward the trees without turning back. Smoke was a snarky, egotistical bully, and she wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of looking over his gigantic frame.
When she was out of the meadow and out of his sight, she pulled the headband out of the bag nestled inside her shirt. “If this does go south, Dooly should see it firsthand so she can tell the others.” She pulled her wet, matted hair back from her face and slipped on the terry-cloth band.
“Jeez, I’m in the middle of a busking gig on Decatur. Can’t this wait?” Dooly asked.
“There’s a forty-foot-tall dragon behind me who claims to be my friend. Apparently, someone out here wants to have a chat. There’s a very good possibility I’m walking into a trap.”
“Can’t you do anything without getting into trouble? I thought we were supposed to be getting ready for the party. It’s tomorrow tonight, just so you know.”
Doodlebug looked up through the storm-tossed forest canopy. “It’s always tonight here. I don’t understand your reference to tomorrow. You deal with getting us gussied up, and I’ll deal with this latest nightmare. I just needed to hook you up in case this turns out to be as bad an idea as I think it will.” As she took a step farther into the forest, her foot sank six inches into the mud. “I friggin’ hate the swamp.” She yanked her foot out of the muck but had to lean down to retrieve her tennis shoe and slip it back on.
