by G A Chase
“I don’t need any fucking connection.”
“The hell you don’t,” Polly said. “Your side is peeling away like bark off a termite-eaten stump. Now shut up, and let us work.”
With Bart and Kendell standing on each side of the table—and Professor Yates and Polly dialing in the equipment—Sere knew she was facing a losing battle. She stared into Bart’s smoky brown eyes. Great. Now not only has he seen me naked, but he also expects to witness me at my weakest and most vulnerable.
“You should leave now,” she said.
Bart crossed his powerful arms in a stance Sere was getting to know far too well. “I’m not going anywhere. You remember that conversation we had about trust? This is what that looks like.”
“Really? I don’t think I like it very much.” The crackling sound and sparky sensation around her wounds soothed her into unconsciousness.
Jennifer nearly burned her hand as she reached into the stove for the glass casserole dish. “Ouch.”
“You okay, honey?”
She pulled the oven mitt off the counter and slipped it over her hand. “Yeah. I just got momentarily distracted. Dinner’s ready, and please turn off the news. I don’t want Bobby having nightmares again tonight.” Though she’d never admit it to Henry, their son wasn’t the only one suffering from sleepless nights.
Locked into the scene like a performer thrust on stage without seeing the script, Sere wanted to bolt for the door. When the hell did I become June Fucking Cleaver?
Jennifer’s husband, ever the attentive spouse, grabbed a bottle of wine from the fridge and filled her glass before taking his seat at the head of the table. Jennifer favored him with a smile of mutual understanding and took a sip.
The overly sweet taste made Sere wince. What the hell this shit? She caught sight of the label. Chardon-fuckin’-nay? You have to be kidding me. That’s barely even alcohol.
Jennifer set the glass back on the table. “I think this bottle might have gone bad.”
“I’ll fetch another from the pantry.”
She touched his hand before he was able to get up from the table. “No need. I think I’d like to try your Merlot.”
“Really? I thought you said it tasted like blood.”
She shrugged as if not fully remembering her distaste for the wine. “Tonight it appeals to me.”
Bobby came flying in from the hallway like a wild animal and crashed into more than sat in his chair.
“Did you wash your hands, young man?”
He looked at his palms—a sure giveaway that he thought he could pull a fast one on her. “More or less.”
“Go wash up. We’re having crawfish casserole with green beans.”
Yuck! Sere watched in disbelief as Jennifer’s well-manicured hands fumbled with the serving knife. Amazingly, she managed to dump the creamy glop onto the plate and not the white-linen tablecloth.
“Looks wonderful, darling,” the husband said.
Sere could feel Jennifer’s love for the oaf. With any little compliment from the man, her stomach went all fluttery like a foolish schoolgirl’s.
For a moment, Sere considered reaching under the woman’s dress for the knife that should have been strapped to her thigh. So this is how societally normal housewives go on killing rampages. The pain in Sere’s side became so intense that Jennifer dropped the serving knife, held her stomach, and leaned over the dining table.
“Get this fucking thing off me!” Sere grabbed the edge of the metal worktable, hoping to hold onto her version of reality.
“It’s not done yet.” As usual, Professor Yates was more intent on his dials and readouts than on Sere’s suffering.
She reached around her stomach and started pulling at the fastener. “I’m done.” Yanking the wire-impregnated ace bandage off her ribs, she saw the black dots where the pellets had entered her flesh.
“I was afraid of that,” the professor said. “Those marks are going to take a lot more work to heal. Without a much longer hookup to Jennifer, they might not ever fade away.”
She took a quick glance around the room to make sure Myles had already left with Mr. Fisher. “I’ve told you before. Call her my real. I don’t want to ever hear that name.”
Polly put her hand on the old scientist’s shoulder. “Let Sere decide for herself how much she needs.”
Sere ran her hand over the dozen pockmarks on her side. “Leave them. I’ll get a tattoo of a flowering vine to camouflage the damage. They’ll remind me to be more careful next time.”
“Careful isn’t your style.” Joe’s voice made Sere squirm onto her wounds in order to look at him standing in the front entry.
“You’re late, old man,” she said playfully.
He dropped his black motorcycle helmet and dual saddlebags on Professor Yates’s big lounge chair before removing the heavy leather jacket. “I’ve told you repeatedly not to rely on me, or anyone, to come to your rescue.”
She didn’t mean to look at Bart, but once she locked her gaze onto his bulging chest muscles, she found it hard to turn away. “I was getting along just fine on my own. I just thought you might want to see me in action.” She used the excuse of trying to sit up as her reason for staring at the man’s physique.
“She was pretty impressive with those knives,” Bart said.
Joe rubbed a spot on his arm where Sere had jabbed him years ago during a training exercise. “I don’t doubt it.” Joe came up to the table as Bart stepped aside. “And yet, here you are, getting an energy infusion again. How did Monty get the better of you?”
After every major conflict, Joe always wanted to rehash what she’d done wrong, even when she’d won. She sat with her hands on the edge of the table, accepting the criticism and performing the self-analysis. “I lost my spatial awareness. I should have realized he had fallen on the shotgun. I also got cocky with my assassin pirouette. If I’d landed on him the instant he escaped my grasp, he wouldn’t have had time to respond. I keep thinking I’ve got more time than I actually do. If I’d pinned him to the ground, that would have given Bart enough time to approach with the shotgun and finish him off.” Then Mr. Fisher wouldn’t have been infected with Monty the demon. Some self-incriminations were better kept to herself.
“When you’re feeling up to it, we’ll set up a training cage in the shipping container. Then we can move on to more open-air-battle techniques. Fighting in real life is different from training in hell.”
No shit. Anytime Joe made concessions for her condition, Sere knew he was goading her. “Just let me get some clothes on, and I’ll be ready to ride. We can start training in the morning.”
“The hell you will, young lady,” Kendell said. “You need to rest.” She seldom played the protective maternal card, and she didn’t pull it off well.
Sere pulled the sides of Myles’s old dress shirt around her chest, more to hide her wounds than her bra, which—between the swim in the swamp, the fight, and the shotgun blast—hadn’t fared well. “Taking time to rest only puts me behind. Joe’s right. My reflexes, awareness, and instincts aren’t sharp enough now that I’m here among the living. I’m fine if I can set the fight parameters like in a bar, but out in the open, I get overwhelmed with possibilities. That’s only half of my problem, though. Monty snuck out of hell, and I’m afraid others will follow. He had me at a disadvantage from the start. If it hadn’t been for Joe’s training, he would have completed his mission of killing Montgomery Fisher.”
Bart stood behind Joe with his chin in the air as if he expected to be acknowledged as well. You want a fucking gold star for interfering? she thought. But then, he had saved her life. “You had your uses too.”
She turned to Professor Yates, who still had his arm in a sling from his own encounter with Monty. “Something’s bothering me. Why didn’t it work?”
“What are you talking about?”
The shotgun marks hurt, but she was once again in full control of her mind. “Why am I still here? I thought that special buckshot
was supposed to make me dissolve into nothingness.”
Professor Yates picked up the bowl of bloody pellets Bart had dropped off. “First, you only got hit by one shell, and you didn’t even take all of the buckshot. Still, these half dozen stones might have done the job if it weren’t for your second advantage, which is the fact that you are not simply a doppelgänger. You have a soul that connects you directly to life. Jen—sorry, your real’s projection into hell gives you substance, and that got jumbled. Your spirit was the stabilizing force that kept you grounded.”
She wanted to ask about Monty’s ability to jump into Mr. Fisher, or what had happened with Thomas after she chopped off his doppelgänger’s head years before, but she didn’t dare scare everyone else with the demon possessions that she’d inadvertently caused.
Sere hopped down from the table and tested her legs. Her muscles quivered as if she’d just completed an intense training session. Everyone was looking at her. “If you’ll all excuse me, I think I’d like to get cleaned up and change.”
Joe picked up one of his saddlebags from the floor and handed it to her. “Make one joke about me doing your laundry, and these will be the last leathers I’ll repair for you.”
Sere couldn’t believe it was really her image reflected in the dingy full-length mirror in Professor Yates’s laboratory bathroom. Her hair lay plastered against her forehead and neck as if someone had dumped a gallon of glue over her. Rivulets of dried blood covered her from head to toe, the most dramatic being those that trailed down from the half dozen buckshot holes in her side. She turned sideways to inspect the damage. Small black spider veins snaked out from the black pockmarks.
Peeling off the remains of her clothing came as a relief. She stepped into the small shower that was designed for emergency decontamination. I suppose that’s still fitting. Cold water streamed over her body and mixed with the blood, swamp water, and sweat before running into the metal drain at her feet. It wasn’t Kendell’s luxury tub of fragrant swirling water, but then, Sere wasn’t that type of girl. She lifted her face to be stung by the high-velocity icy gush of water. The pain felt good and invigorating.
When she stepped out of the yellow plastic-draped enclosure, dried off, and looked in the mirror again, the image was that of a woman reborn. Like a kid on Christmas morning, she opened Joe’s sack and yanked out every piece of clothing. Among the man’s many hidden talents was his ability to work leather into anything from a thick, rough harness to thin, smooth riding pants. She slipped into the tight-fitting pants and halter top that reacted to her every movement like a second layer of skin. Sheathing her knife next to her leg in the alligator boots completed her transformation into the badass demon hunter.
When she rejoined the others, she noticed her shotguns lying on the worktable. Joe was finishing up his cleaning and reassembly of the weapons. “How did these work out for you?”
She ran her hand over the tender scars. “The single-barrel might be useful in slowing down human or demon, but it won’t finish the job. I need to keep the four-barrel more easily accessible.”
As if reading her mind, he reached into his remaining saddlebag and tossed her a leg holster and bullet belt loaded with shells. “These will make you considerably more obvious in your intentions, but you won’t have to fish around the back of your riding jacket for the butt of the gun, and you’ll have your ammunition on you.”
Sere fastened the leather straps around her waist and leg then holstered the shotgun at her thigh. “I’m not hiding who I am any longer. I am the devil’s daughter, and it’s my job to return hell’s demons to their rightful realm.”
Bart handed her the leather riding jacket. “In that case, I guess we’ll all have our work cut out for us.”
Hell Bent for Demons
Hell Bent for Demons Blurb
After ridding the swamp of a serial-killing demon, badass Sere Mal-Laurette has moved to New Orleans to put some distance between the interdimensional beacon of her soul and the hellmouth. Hell, however, has other plans for her when a new horde of beasts is unleashed.
Sere will have to knock the rust off her fighting skills if she hopes to save herself and humanity from a fate worse than death. But she soon learns she can’t do it alone, and she’s going to need more than the help of a bartending former Navy SEAL who makes her weak in the knees. The bikers and gator hunters she’s been using for sport during her bar brawls are going to take some serious convincing to join her cause—even if they are the ones most at risk.
By relying on those closest to her to repair her doppelgänger body, hunt down the demons that are out to get her, and protect her soul from the loas of the dead, Sere just might learn something about what it means to be human.
***
Want to know what happens next to Sere? Find the next book in the series here:
Hell or High Water
Curious about how Sere got to be the bad-ass demon hunter? Find her back story woven into the Malveaux Curse Mysteries starting with book 1 here:
Dog Days of Voodoo
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13
Chapter 1
Sere Mal-Laurette’s heart beat in time to the music from the club below. The nightly jazz-rock fusion wafted through the bargeboard floor of her loft above the Scratchy Dog nightclub like a voodoo spell calling her forth. She pushed open the perpetually stuck French doors of the dormer roof and stepped out onto the one-person balcony for her evening vigil. Energy from the crowd below infused the warm late-summer humidity and had her swaying to the rhythm of the street. She closed her eyes and breathed in the rich aromas of alcohol and gumbo from the street vendors. Every aspect of life on Frenchmen Street had proved intoxicating, and the experience had dulled her abilities. And she didn’t even care. At least being in the city made her less of a beacon for the demons trying to find their way out of hell.
But her nightly foray to the balcony wasn’t about being filled with human energy. As she opened her eyes and stared out over the French Quarter rooftops, a chill struck so deeply into her chest that she thought her heart had frozen. “Fucking assgängers!” The green sparks on the horizon looked like a Saint Patrick’s Day fireworks display. Unfortunately, that drunken free-for-all had happened months before. After witnessing twelve weeks and three days of sunsets, she had begun to hope she was free of hell’s denizens.
She gripped the wrought-iron railing to focus her frustration and stared intently out toward the swamp far beyond the city. Seven explosions. The same number as the people Monty murdered. That can’t be a coincidence.
“Come on down and dance for us! Show us your moves.” As with every night, the longer she stood on the third-floor balcony, the more rambunctious the suitors of both sexes became. The fact that she usually gave in to their nightly temptations had only emboldened the youthful partiers.
“Not tonight. I’ve got work to do.” She returned to the loft and changed out of the party clothes and into her leather motorcycle-riding pants, halter top, and gatorskin boots complete with a combat knife sheathed inside. The rest of her gear lay in the middle of the saggy seldom-used mattress. Her belongings didn’t amount to much: a set of motorcycle saddlebags with two changes of clothing inside, a four-barrel sawed-off shotgun and leather holster that she secured around her thigh, a matching bullet belt that hung low across her hips, and finally, a bedroll with a pump-action blaster protruding out the end. She left the backpack filled with excess shotgun shells on the bed. Her fighting instructor, Joe Cazenave, had taught her long ago never to put all of her ammunition in one hidden stash. She had caches of supplies along the swamp route in case she ran low.
“Time to go.” Sere had to stretch all the way to her tiptoes to put her hand over the loft’s rough-hewn wooden beam. A two-foot-long canebrake rattlesnake slithered across her wrist and down her forearm. He didn’t stop until he’d undulated across her neck and into the saddlebag slung around h
er shoulder. “Come on. I don’t have time for your laziness. I know it’s nearly nightfall, but you can’t use your cold-blooded lethargy as an excuse in this heat.” The second snake flicked her hand with his tongue. “I swear, I’m going to leave without you if you don’t get that rattle shaking.”
The snake made an overly dramatic fall from the rafter and along her arm but caught himself before crashing into her head. He coiled his body onto her shoulder and flicked her ear with his tongue as his sign of affection.
“You’ll be happier once we’re back out in the swamp. Now, hop to, mister. We’ve got demons to chase.”
Sere took one last look around the room. She’d only agreed to occupy the human-sized Victorian birdcage as a way of getting Aunt Kendell off her back. She shook her head as the memory of their conversation played out.
“I’ll be more at ease knowing you’ve got a safe place to crash.” Kendell had struggled to get the old skeleton key to line up with the lock’s tumblers.
Climbing the two flights of dimly lit, creaky stairs would have proven enough of a security feature, but Sere watched dutifully as Kendell finally managed to get the misaligned loft door open. The overly caring woman honestly believed safety was possible for Sere, and Sere had bought into the delusion.
“I can take care of myself.” Sere fondled the butt of the knife stashed in her boot. The reflex probably wasn’t the best way for her to calm Kendell’s fears, but she found it hard to control.
“I’m not talking about idiots like Thomas. His abduction of you was moronic.”
Sere was still itching for a rematch with Professor Yates’s doppelgänger assistant, even if he was nothing more than a phantom possessing the real person. “Then why did you come barreling in to rescue me?” she asked.