The Devil's Daughter Complete Box Set, page 93
part #1 of The Devil's Daughter Series
And when it came to trust, in spite of what she’d told Sanguine, Sere felt like all of the puzzle pieces of her life had been overturned. She’d agreed to Gerald’s request to watch over his grandson, but now that Aloysius was a devil, she couldn’t be sure of the former chief of police’s allegiances. I can’t just let the little shit fly around on his dragon causing havoc, but I’ll have to tread lightly around Gerald. Without him, I’m stuck when it comes to finding out what Marjory is up to.
Not that she was any surer of her personal contingent. The professor was going to be pissed that he’d lost his insight into his little dungeons-and-dragons program. Without access through the hellmouth, he would be back to being nothing more than the magician behind the curtain. On his own, that wouldn’t pose a problem, but Kendell and the others had created an elaborate system of gates. Though they’d assured Sere that the portals had been disabled, no one was able to fully explain how. People and their friggin’ back-door accesses.
If people weren’t reliable, she had to wonder about Sanguine as well. The swamp witch angel had been more of a mother figure than Sere had ever known, but trusting her word that Chloe was reliable pushed Sere to the edge of her not-quite-human emotions. The line of witches that stretched back to hell’s designer, Agnes Delarosa, weren’t necessarily concerned about what happened to the devil’s daughter. Though with the baron little more than folklore, why they would care what happened to hell was a mystery. No matter what Sanguine said, Jenna was as much her surrogate daughter as I was. Chloe’s allegiance has to be to Sanguine, not me. Other than making contact with hell, I’ll have to watch what I say and do around the swamp witch.
As Lefty rounded a corner, Sere made out the soft puttering of the swamp boat up ahead. Having Doodlebug watching over hell had given her and Bart the first true break to explore their relationship. Every moment, meal, and sexual mauling had increased her desire for the hulky bartender. No matter what harebrained idea she came up with, he was always the first to sign on. In all of my messed-up life, you’re the only person I honestly trust.
She pulled out her four-barreled sawed-off shotgun and checked the cartridges. Though designed to send doppeldemons back to hell, the weapon could deliver enough of a punch to land the fattest of gator hunters on his ass. She patted Lefty on the head. “And I’ve got you back with me, my old friend. I have missed you. Now it’s time for us to get to work.”
Hell and Back
Hell and Back
Time is quickly running out for Sere to save the world. Marjory Laroque has all that she needs to create her immortal army. Even worse, Aloysius is now in full devil form and ready for Marjory to possess.
Sere’s plan to thwart the powerful woman goes horribly off course when Marjory takes possession of Sere’s body instead of that of the hapless devil she created. With Sere’s soul forced back into the computer that spawned her, the devil’s daughter finds no other option but to follow the link back to hell. If she can cut Marjory’s army off at the source of its power, she might still have a chance of saving the world.
Marjory’s army of goblins and half-baked dragons do their best to intercept Sere in hell, but the badass doppelgänger girl has a few tricks up her sleeve for battling them. Getting back out of hell, however, proves far more complex than Sere imagined, requiring the help of not only those she loves but also those she mistrusts. The price for their help will test the limits of Sere’s humanity.
86
Chapter 1
Bubba’s bar reeked of stale beer, man sweat, and the blood of countless brawls. Sere breathed in the rich aromas of life as she pushed open the swinging doors meant to keep the precious cool air inside the establishment.
From behind the bar, Eddie nodded toward the back room. “They’re waiting for you.”
Sere had been around the bar enough times to know the regulars. “Anything strange happen out in the swamp?” She aimed the question down the counter at anyone who might choose to listen.
One of the bikers leaned in closer to his drink. “You mean other than the six-foot-long crawfish and turtles the size of compact cars?”
“Old news,” his companion said. “I haven’t seen a good barbeque from Riley’s bar in weeks.”
The gang traveled the rural highways, which gave them insight into the goings-on in the small towns. Because few of them made their living out on the water, however, their information regarding the hellmouth was usually incomplete and out of date.
“Keep your eyes open.” Sere passed the row of lazy drunks and pushed open the beer-stained wooden door to Bart’s office.
The former Navy SEAL sat behind his desk with a glass of Jack and Coke so heavily favoring the alcohol portion that the concoction had only a light tint of color. “We are genuinely fucked, aren’t we?”
Though technically not old enough to drink, Doodlebug held an Abita Amber. She stared at the half-empty beer bottle. “All I know is hell, so you tell me.”
Sere took a seat at the end of the desk, where a bottle of Jameson whiskey sat next to a half-filled glass. “It’s not all gloom and doom. Sanguine is free. She agreed to shut the hellmouth. With the baron’s vault closed, that damn iron cage is back in the in-between dimension where it belongs. Since neither Jennifer nor I is inside of it, the Cormorant doesn’t have our souls to latch onto in order to haul the vault back into hell’s dimension. Only Sanguine knows how to retrieve it.”
Bart aimed his glass at her. “But the baron’s journals are still out there somewhere.”
“That’s not even the problem.” Doodlebug gave a teenage sneer that made the hairs on the back of Sere’s neck stand on end. “What good is sealing the hellmouth after the devil has already escaped? We can’t just sit around crying in our glasses.”
Sere well remembered the doppelgänger-based frustration of longing to fight when all the people around her wanted to talk. “Before we go flying into battle, we need to know what we’re up against. You were the last to see Aloysius and his dragon-flying demons. How many were there?”
Doodlebug slammed the bottle down on the desk. “How would I know? As soon as I saw them, Marjory sucked my soul into her computer program.”
“Guess.”
Bart’s controlled tone impressed Sere. He sounded completely unfazed. She, on the other hand, wanted to wring the information out of the doppelgänger girl’s throat.
“They filled the sky,” Doodlebug said. “I’d say twenty at least. The dragons are still little flamers, not much bigger than ponies. The demons looked a little ridiculous on them, but that doesn’t mean they won’t be far more impressive on this side of reality.”
Sere took a shot of the whiskey. “What about Aloysius? You were part of him becoming the new devil. You must remember something.”
Doodlebug drank more of the beer than Sere thought possible for a sixteen-year-old girl. “Not much.” She burped out the answer.
Though the girl could annoy goodness out of a saint, Sere had to cut her a break for managing to remember anything at all after being reconstituted in the swamp. “We had to override your system pretty deep with Dooly Buell to bring you back around. Just take it slow and give us what scraps of memory you can scavenge out of the fire pit of your hell-based existence.”
Doodlebug chucked the empty bottle into the trash can. “The last thing I remember—other than Lefty carrying my body through the hellmouth—was Aloysius using my spirit to unite the two sides of his being. Unlike what your friend Mr. Fisher experienced, Aloysius’s situation isn’t a matter of possession.” She laced her fingers together. “His human soul and doppelgänger spirit are now one and the same. The really bad part is that Marjory used my connection to the professor’s equipment to download all of Aloysius’s data into his doppelgänger-computer brain.”
“Shit.” Sere took another long slug of the whiskey. “Now he truly is an immortal devil. I need to find out from Professor Yates what Aloysius would be using to power his body. With the two sides of himself fused together and all the information he’ll ever need stored inside his brain, he can regenerate at will. Is any part of you still associated with him?”
Bart reached behind him to the ancient fridge, pulled out a beer, then handed it to Doodlebug, who popped open the bottle by whacking it against the side of the desk. “Not that I can feel.”
“There has to be some connection.” Bart topped up his drink with more Jack Daniels and a splash of Coke from the can sitting on his desk. “Emotions seem to play a role. My guess is that when Aloysius gets amped up, you might still get a sense of what he’s up to.”
“We can’t rely on that,” Sere said. “Doodlebug’s role was to be part of the power cord Marjory used to access hell. Since that bridge is destroyed and the gate shut, whatever connection she had to Aloysius was probably severed as well. Did you get any indication of what happened to the demon horde after they escaped through the hellmouth?”
Bart nodded toward the door. “No one out there has heard anything. I’ve sent a message down to Riley, but if dragons had flown over her bar, she’d have smoked the tires on her Jeep getting up here. Maybe we got lucky.”
Of all the explanations for why demon-horde sightings might have been sparse, luck seemed the most improbable. “Demons and dragons didn’t have direct connections to life, so Marjory couldn’t have used the gate even when it was open,” Sere said. “She must have used the vaults in the two dimensions—and the last thin wire of her power cord connecting them.”
“If I could have stopped her, I would have.” Doodlebug finished off her beer and reached for another, making Sere wonder if her goal was to finish off the whole six-pack.
“No one is blaming you. Marjory outfoxed all of us. The point I was trying to make was she could have used the two vaults as a transporter between dimensions.”
Bart kicked his boots up onto his desk. “So down in that bank’s basement, there’s a devil and his demons and dragons? Sounds like something she’d come up with.”
Doodlebug shook her head. “That doesn’t feel right. Aloysius didn’t trust his great-aunt. He wouldn’t have voluntarily stepped back into the vault.”
“And with good reason,” Bart said. “That woman had no qualms about sacrificing one heir to her dream of immortality, and she certainly wouldn’t let another of her clan keep what she thought rightfully belonged to her. Since he is fused together, could he have snuck through the gate before Sanguine closed it?”
“That’s possible.” Sere looked hard into his eyes. “Speaking of trust, we need to figure out who we can rely on. I had Sanguine slam the door to hell without giving anyone notice. That’s not going to sit well with the professor and the others in New Orleans.”
Doodlebug turned the bottle in her hand. “Before you go so far as to question your friends’ loyalty, maybe you should start a little closer to home. I know you don’t trust me.”
“Never have, never will,” Sere admitted.
“Look, I’m sorry I killed Joe. I know he was your friend.”
Sere set her drink down on the desk so hard that whiskey splashed onto the polished wood. “Sorry and friend are two concepts you don’t have any chance of understanding. I’m surprised those words even made it out of your mouth.”
Doodlebug’s hand moved to the neck of the bottle like she was going to use it as a weapon. “Yet I do understand the terms. Maybe you gave me a little too much of Dooly, or maybe it was because the partial regeneration happened in life instead of in hell, but believe me or not, I meant what I said. That’s not to imply that I’m asking for forgiveness. You’d never grant it, and I honestly don’t care. I did what I did to get your attention. We need each other.”
Sere looked at Bart, surprised that he hadn’t attempted to quash the argument. “I suppose you’re on her side?”
He left his glass on the desk and took a hit straight from the bottle of Jack. “I will always be on your side in all matters, but she does have a point. You don’t have to like her to trust her. Hell, you don’t even really have to trust her to do anything other than what’s in her best interest. Isn’t that the way hell works?”
“Maybe so.” Sere stared Doodlebug in the eye. “Are you still uncomfortable telling lies?”
The girl didn’t break eye contact. “I can tell an untruth if the situation requires it, but I’ll never be as smooth as humans. The Cormorant’s conditioning runs deep, even for those of us who were never true believers.”
In spite of her frustration with the girl, Sere snickered while refilling her glass. “The Cormorant is every bit as conditioned as you think you are—more so actually. You want to know the source of that religious doctrine that rules all doppelgängers? I once saw Jennifer reprimand her son, Bobby. He’d told a fib about some meaningless event that happened at school. She yelled at him, ‘We don’t tell lies in this house, mister.’ Though I don’t share her soul the way the Cormorant does, I could feel the waves of firm intention ripple along our connection.”
Doodlebug set her bottle down and leaned her elbows on the desk. “You mean to tell me that our doppelgänger dogma about always telling the truth stems from a mother telling her son not to lie?”
Sere shared the doppelgirl’s sense of disbelief. “Pretty much. I’ve often thought that if I hadn’t listened to Professor Yates about steering clear of Jennifer, I might have had more influence in her life. If something so simple as a repeated reprimand could influence a self-proclaimed deity, imagine what a little intentional direction could have accomplished.”
“Fascinating,” Bart said unconvincingly. “But off topic. We still have a devil on the loose, and I doubt the Cormorant is going to be of much help at this stage of the game. She’s Sanguine’s problem now.”
“Right.” Sere put her feet up on the desk next to Bart’s. “So, Doodlebug has earned conditional trust. What about the professor?”
“He’s an old fool.” Bart rested his glass on his belt buckle. “But I doubt that man would act against us. It’s just not in his nature. I do worry he could be manipulated. Scientists have a bad way of being so enamored with their creations that they don’t see the dangers. Were Marjory to send someone in whom he didn’t know, he’d probably spill every secret in his enthusiasm for the project.”
Doodlebug kept her eyes on her bottle as if the beer’s warning label told of some upcoming apocalypse. “So trust his answers, but watch what new information we give him. Is that what you’re saying?” Her tone hinted at a suppressed anger.
Sere could tell she was hiding some mistrust, but asking directly would only spin the conversation in another meaningless direction. “It sounds reasonable. You can’t possibly expect us to trust you more than we do him.”
Doodlebug stared silently at the bottle in the passive-aggressive way only a teenager could achieve—not that Sere cared about the girl’s input anyway.
“Polly always impressed me as being a worthy intermediary,” Bart said.
Sere sloshed the remaining whiskey in her glass. “She’ll make a great inheritor of his creation when the time comes. I guess the bigger question is how far we trust the equipment. Andy messed things up but good when he had control in hell, and Marjory did have her claws in the software.” She turned to Doodlebug, hoping to rouse her from her unspoken irritation. “Anything you’d like to share? You were a part of that malware.”
“Other than that she’ll try again? You already know that.” Doodlebug finally leaned back from the desk. “With the gate closed, how much information does the professor have on what’s going on with his little puppets?”
“An excellent question,” Bart said. “We’re still not clear about how Monty first escaped hell. My money is on Andy planting the idea as a way of testing his malware. In any case, that computer system is about as secure as my aunt Sally’s garage, and the professor’s understandable desire to get a peek at what’s happening in hell isn’t going to help.”
Sere took a drink to calm her nerves. “The computer is a problem, and therefore, working with the people connected to it would only open them up to further attacks from Marjory. What about our voodoo connections?”
Bart stared at her for an unnervingly long time. “Are you opening the door to Baron Samedi?”
She nearly spit out her drink. “Hardly. He has his uses, but I’m actually referring to Kendell, Myles, and their gang. Though they’ve done heroic work, the more I know, the less I like the seven gates they developed.”
“Exactly,” Doodlebug said. “I still can’t believe one of the portals was inside the bank. How could the people around you be so foolish?”
Sere shrugged. “I wouldn’t be so tough on them. It’s a long story, and I’m at the center of it. For what it’s worth, Sanguine agrees with you. She worries any attempt at opening one of the gates, no matter how well intentioned, will only weaken her ability to keep the hellmouth closed.”
Bart leaned so far back in his chair that Sere thought he was searching for an answer on the wood-paneled ceiling. “So if paranormal science and voodoo aren’t to be trusted, I guess that brings us to the Wiccan swamp witches. Where did you leave things with Sanguine?”
Seeing her mother figure finally free gave Sere a sense of hope. No one knew more about hell and the tear between dimensions than Sanguine, the creator’s granddaughter. “She said she could close the hellmouth, though I don’t know how. That access was Wiccan in origin. The gate was how her grandmother, Agnes, transported what she created in life to the other dimension. It was never meant to be used by residents of hell to leave that dimension. My guess is when Sanguine held it open so I could leave, it got stuck, turning what was designed as a one-way gate into the wide-open hellmouth. That’s why Lefty has such an easy time swimming through the portal.” Sere looked at Doodlebug and Bart, wondering how much to divulge. “Sanguine said if I ever needed to make contact with her now that the hellmouth is closed, I should go through Chloe Aberrant.”
