Hell or High Water (The Devil's Daughter Book 4)

by G A Chase

  Bart set his helmet on the seat of his motorcycle. “If he’s just babbling, I’d guess they’ll give him a sedative and hold him for observation. Like Ann, they’ll probably assume his temporary delusional state is some aftereffect of his concussion. Of course, if his eyes go demon-red and he tries to bite people like Doughnut Hole did, all bets are off.”

  Bart took out his knives and gun and stashed them in his saddlebags. She followed his lead. Ann didn’t need anything else to worry about, and seeing a female associate of her husband carrying weapons wasn’t going to ease the poor woman’s imagination.

  Sere took Bart’s arm as they entered through the automatic sliding-glass doors. “This place gives me the creeps.”

  “Everyone feels that way.”

  As with all rooms she entered, Sere mapped out the tactical pitfalls, escape routes, and potential weapons. “If they intend to do anything more than giving him a sedative, we may need to break him out.”

  “Usually, I’d say you were being paranoid,” he whispered, “but not this time. Once Kendell and the gang show up, I’ll work with Myles on the best way to get Fisher to the VW bus.”

  Sere found it hard to maintain her calm as she walked into the waiting room and approached Ann. The wife and mother held one of Sere’s paranormal shotgun shells in her lap.

  “Any news?” Sere struggled to look away from the open red cylinder.

  “Nothing yet.” Ann barely looked up.

  Sere gave Bart a pleading look. Things wouldn’t go well if she started demanding answers while the woman was so emotionally fragile. He took her hand from his arm and sat next to Ann.

  “What’s with the shotgun shell?” he asked so softly he could have been referring to a stuffed animal.

  Ann lifted it halfway off her lap. “He swallowed one of these damn pellets. When I first saw the cartridge in his hand, I thought he was trying to kill himself or something. I couldn’t tell the doctors. If they thought he was contemplating suicide, they’d never let him out, and if word got around, he’d lose all of his clients. A CPA who thinks of ending it all doesn’t inspire confidence in his customers.”

  Fuck! Sere did her best not to scream. “He only swallowed one?”

  “He was very deliberate about it—like he wanted me to see him do it. He squeezed one stone out of the shell and tossed it down his throat like an aspirin before I could object.” Ann looked around the room as if expecting a doctor to enter. “Maybe I should tell them. They could pump his stomach.”

  Sere sat next to Ann and put her hand on the woman’s shoulder. “It’s just a small pellet. I’m sure it can’t hurt him physically. I’d go with your initial instincts.”

  Ann nodded gratefully. “I just don’t understand. I wish they’d tell me something.”

  Sere had to get out of the waiting room before she said something she shouldn’t. “We’ve got some friends coming to lend their support. I’m going to go check on them, and I’ll stop by the nurses’ station on my way back to see if they know anything yet. Bart will stay with you. Can I get you anything?” She wanted to offer something more but had nothing definitive to share. Telling things that she couldn’t be sure of wasn’t Sere’s way.

  “You wouldn’t happen to have a shot of rum handy, would you?” Ann asked.

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  Myles’s old VW was rumbling down the line of parked cars as Sere left the hospital. She ran up to him as he paused at the corner. “First things first. Do you have any bottles of rum lodged somewhere in this jalopy?”

  He gave her a half snicker. “Do you want to check out my stash of doobies as well?”

  “I’m not kidding around,” she said. Though he might not have been joking either. She doubted anyone would be surprised to find a hidden box of pot somewhere in the old bus. “Ann is beside herself with worry.” She looked at Polly in the back seat. “You’d better come with me. Fisher swallowed one of those pellets.”

  Polly bent forward and pulled the handle of the sliding door. “We can’t let them remove it.”

  “The doctors don’t know about it,” Sere said. “But we’ll need to figure out what to do once we get him out of their grasp. I’m not putting him through what Thomas endured.” The process of extracting the pellet from Thomas had removed the demon from inside him—but it had also torn the man’s soul to shreds, making him lose the will to live.

  Polly turned back to the bus and pulled a bottle of rum from the hidden cabinet under the bench seat. “One problem at a time. Once we get Ann settled down, I’ll call the professor so he can start working on a solution. Fisher has only endured his possession for a few months, so we’ve got a much better shot at curing him than we did Thomas, who had to deal with his demon for most of his life.” She stashed the bottle in her purse.

  Sere looked around at the crowded parking lot. “If you can, find a place close to the front—even if you have to circle the lot for a while. If those doctors get difficult about holding our friend, we may need to make a quick escape.”

  He nodded and eased the old bus forward as she and Polly headed through the automatic sliding-glass doors. At the nurses’ station, Sere motioned Polly to head on to the waiting room. No matter the update, Ann was going to need that shot of alcohol soon.

  “Any news on Montgomery Fisher?” Sere asked the woman behind the desk.

  After an interminable amount of computer typing, the nurse finally looked up from her monitor. “They gave him eye drops for the severe dry-eye problem and a sedative for his hallucinations. Right now, he’s resting.”

  “Will Ann be able to take him home today?”

  The nurse double-checked her screen. “The doctor will have to make that determination.”

  “When can she see him?” Sere asked.

  “The doctor should be out soon, hon. He’ll give the family a full update on Mr. Fisher’s condition. I know it’s difficult, but the best thing you can do right now is keep his wife calm.”

  “I’m afraid that’s not my strong suit,” Sere muttered as she headed toward the waiting room.

  Bart handed her a cup of coffee the moment she joined the group. Polly had her arm around Ann’s shoulder and was speaking to her. The woman nodded.

  “How does she do that?” Sere asked. “One minute, Polly can be tough as nails, no-nonsense, and tenacious—the next, compassionate, caring, and consoling.”

  “Don’t ask me.” Bart sipped his coffee. The smell of rum was unmistakable.

  Ann finally looked up from her lap. “Any news?”

  “The nurse said he was resting. She wasn’t much for giving out information. The doctor should be in soon.” Sere tried the coffee. As she suspected, it was more alcoholic than caffeinated.

  A man in scrubs, preoccupied by the chart he was holding, nearly plowed into Sere’s back. He called out, “Ann Fisher?”

  The woman stood as if hearing the news upright was better than hearing it seated. “How’s my husband?”

  “He’s going to be just fine. His delusions are the aftereffects of his concussion. I’d guess neither of you got much sleep last night, which accounts for the redness in his eyes. Just to be safe, I’d like to hold him for twenty-four hours and have a psych evaluation.”

  “Does he have to stay?” Polly asked.

  “It’s standard in situations like this, but we can only provide the care that Mrs. Fisher agrees to.”

  “I think he’d be more comfortable at home,” Ann said. “He hates hospitals.”

  The doctor flipped the pages back in place over the clipboard. “I’ll prescribe him some eye drops and sedatives. If he shows any signs of getting worse, bring him in immediately.”

  As they pushed Fisher out from the back room in a wheelchair, Sere looked for any indication that the demon inside had somehow taken charge. Other than the dull-red glow in his eyes, the man appeared calmer than she’d expected. “How do you feel?”

  “Like I got hit by a bus from hell, but at least the bus d
rove off. I feel a lot less like a lost soul of the damned than I did eight or nine hours ago.”

  “That was the fever,” Ann said. “They always make you feel like you’re not yourself.” She put her hand on his shoulder. “We’ll get you home, where you can rest. You scared the crap out of me, Gummy. Don’t ever do that again.”

  Myles and Kendell rushed in just as the orderly wheeled Fisher toward the entrance. “Parking is crazy out there, but we did finally get a spot close to the front. The bus can fit all of us.”

  “Thank you all for coming and helping,” Ann said. “I don’t think I could have faced this alone.” Her eyes glistened with unshed tears.

  Myles and Bart helped Fisher onto the rear bench seat of the van. Ann quickly followed with Polly’s assistance.

  “I know this will sound unusual,” Polly said, “but we’d like to take Fisher to a scientist we know. It won’t take long, and it might go a long way toward getting him back on his feet.”

  Ann sat close to her husband. “I think he needs rest right now. Maybe later.”

  Fisher took her hand. “I know who they’re talking about. It’ll be okay. This isn’t just about my head injury. Do you trust me?”

  Ann’s expression changed from resolute to caring. “Of course.”

  “Bart and I will meet you at the professor’s lab,” Sere said before closing the bus’s sliding door.

  Bart put his hand on the small of Sere’s back as they headed to their motorcycles. “What do you think the odds are that the professor has a cure?”

  Relying on others for answers never came easy to Sere, but after her last attempt at exorcising a demon, she was relieved to let someone else formulate a cure. “I’m positive he’ll have some terror-inducing procedure. I’m more concerned about what we’re going to tell Ann. We need a good cover story, and that’s not something I’m great at.”

  “Leave it to me.”

  5

  Sere pulled alongside the VW behind the professor’s offices. Through the rear side window, Fisher glared at her with eyes that were going demonic red. “He’s having trouble hanging on,” she said to Bart.

  The sliding door hadn’t even fully opened when Ann jumped out. “Okay. We’re here. Somebody better start explaining what’s going on right now, or I’m going to scream.”

  While everyone else looked everywhere but at Ann, Bart stepped into the woman’s laser-sharp glare. “I’ve helped Fisher and Sere with a few of their more difficult clients. A while back, they had one who injected Fisher with what I can only describe as distilled evil.”

  She looked back at her husband as Myles and Kendell helped him out of the van. “You mean, like, he’s on a bad acid trip?”

  “Very similar,” Bart continued. “We thought he had the effects under control. If things went wrong, he had the pellet. By swallowing the stone, he can hopefully use it to soak up the injection. If it’s done its job, once we get the pellet out of him, he should be free of the evil. That’s the hope, anyway.”

  “Why not just tell that to the doctors? Are you covering for this client?” She turned toward Fisher. “Please tell me you’re not into anything illegal. You’ve worked too hard building your reputation to cover for criminals.”

  Bart raised his hand before Fisher could formulate a continuation of the story. “We’re the good guys, or at least, your husband is. He’s not covering for anyone, but to stop the spread of this inherent evil, we need to work in secret. If we’d told the doctors, word would have gotten around that there’s a new addictive substance on the market.”

  She turned her glare back on Bart. “So, you’re what—the DEA?”

  Demon Eradication Agency. Sere kept that joke to herself. Now wasn’t the time for levity.

  “I can’t answer that, and it’s best if you don’t know. What I can say is that your husband is much more of a hero than you might think. Now, we really need to get that pellet out of him before he gets worse.”

  Ann nodded as she followed Myles and Kendell, who held Fisher between them.

  Sere slipped her hand into the back pocket of Bart’s jeans as they followed the procession. “I’m not sure whether I should be grateful that you came up with such an artful explanation,” she whispered, “or concerned that you delivered the half-truth with such ease.”

  “Nowhere in that story did I outright lie.”

  She gave him a side-eyed look. “You skirted pretty close to the line. Just don’t do that with me, buster, or you’ll have to fight your way out of your rationalization.”

  Professor Yates had the paranormal bandage laid out and ready to go when they walked into the lab. He stood up from his work and held up a fishing line. “Who are you?”

  “This is Ann,” Polly said. “She’s Fisher’s wife. Tell me you’ve come up with a way to free him from the bad drug trip.”

  “Right,” the professor said. He must have picked up on her cue not to divulge too much, because he didn’t question the bad-trip story. He held up the thin, clear line. At the end was a round stone that looked way too much like one of the paranormal shotgun pellets. “This is… um… from the other side of the quarry. It should stick to the absorbing pellet like a magnet.”

  Sere nodded. A pellet made from life’s version of the bank’s rubble might find its match in the pellet made from hell’s version of the same structure. “So he needs to swallow it?”

  “Exactly.” The professor ran the string through his fingers until it met the paranormal bandage. “The stone in his stomach will be… well… dangerous. So you’ll need to wear this bandage so it doesn’t touch you as you pull it out of him.”

  “Got it.” Sere held her arm out. Polly started wrapping her up the way she’d done when Sere had pulled the pellet through Thomas’s body. “So with the matching pellet inside Fisher, we won’t have the problem we had the last time?”

  The professor nodded. “The pellet was in Thomas long enough that it passed through his stomach before you got to it. You didn’t have much choice in what you tried. Having you connected to my equipment, however, will allow me to adjust how much power we send into this pellet. We should have a much easier time than we did with Thomas.”

  “What are you talking about?” Ann asked. “Is this procedure dangerous? What happened to this Thomas person?”

  Bart stepped in again. “Thomas was the asshole that dumped your husband on the concrete floor, giving him the concussion. The dude was out of his mind. We did what we could for him, but you have to understand, he endured the same condition as your husband for most of his life. The poor guy never stood much of a chance, even with the pellet. Things were so bad we had to cut it out of him. He survived the field surgery but not the aftereffects of the evil within.”

  Fisher took his wife’s hand. “I was there. This won’t be as bad. They may not look like it, but these people really do know what they’re doing.”

  Ann held his hand to her chest. “I still don’t see why we couldn’t just pump your stomach. That’s a procedure I understand. All this equipment, these computers, and woman who doesn’t look like she even took biology—let alone knows her way around medicine—is making me very nervous. According to you, she’s just an assistant CPA. Are you really sure we should be putting your life in her hands?”

  “Just trust me,” Fisher said. “This will all be over in a few minutes.”

  Myles put his hand on the woman’s shoulder. “Why don’t we wait out by the water? I promise you, the updates will be timelier than at the hospital.”

  Sere reclined in the professor’s lounge chair while holding the end of the string in her bandage-wrapped hand. With the professor at the computer, Polly gave Fisher a shot of rum then had him swallow the pellet. Here we go, Sere thought.

  “Hi, Jennifer.” She didn’t see any reason to hide her presence at this point in their relationship. Besides, she’d promised to be more accommodating to the person she was stealing energy from.

  The woman set her pruning shears on th
e rock retaining wall and wiped the sweat from her forehead. “What are you doing now?”

  “Fishing. This shouldn’t be nearly the adventure that the last demon catch-and-incarcerate excursion was, but you might want to be ready in case something goes wrong.”

  Jennifer picked up her trowel as if arming herself for battle. “Let me at him.”

  “Take it easy there, killer.” Sere couldn’t be sure whether Jennifer had been joking or if the previous encounters with demons had emboldened her. Either way, Jennifer needed to be kept out of the action as much as possible to keep her safe.

  The woman got off her knees and sat on the stone wall. “Fine. How can I help?” She kept the trowel in her lap.

  Sere sat next to Jennifer and held out her bandaged hand. “We both need to hold this line.”

  Jennifer put her hand over Sere’s. “This is so strange with you not really being here. Your hand feels like static electricity.”

  Sere could feel the two stones bond at the end of the connection, but the string that led from her and Jennifer’s hands seemed like the loop of a Gordian knot with hell being the cage—pulling would only make it harder to remove the pellets. “This is impossible!”

  Jennifer tilted her head as if seeing the problem from an angled perspective was going to make a difference. “Give me a minute. Henry loves disentanglement puzzles. He once gave Bobby one. I spent an hour watching videos on how to solve them so my son would stop crying in frustration.”

  “Your son is not the only one to consider these things infuriating.” Sere really wanted to pull with all of her soul or, better yet, grab the knife from her boot. But cutting the line wasn’t going to save Fisher.