by G A Chase
“Fine, but even then, we’re talking of a lovely young woman teasing equally handsome suitors.” He pointed at the two of them. “This pairing ain’t natural.”
She picked up a slice from the high side of the box that had drained some of its oil into a small pond of yuck. “I’m not allowed to pick my friends because I’m young and attractive?” She began to see the advantage of keeping Jennifer alive and sane until old age. Switching her appearance on the spot might change the homeless man’s impression of her.
He shrugged. “I’m not complaining. Just saying people, especially women, don’t usually hang out with the likes of me for no reason.”
Me neither. “Have you considered that you might prefer to be alone? You have a habit of driving people away. I mean, you do have a place across the river where you can get a hot shower and clean clothes. Kendell made sure of that.” Sere waved at his overall appearance. “This grunge thing you’ve got going on isn’t exactly inviting to most people.”
He tossed his half-eaten crust into the empty box. “Point taken. What’s your excuse? Because I don’t see you hanging out with a bunch of friends.”
He was more right than she wanted to admit. “I’m working on it,” she said. “Trusting others isn’t something that comes naturally for me. I’m beginning to see that I’ve been pushing people away with my snarky rejoinders. Letting people in isn’t easy.”
Back in the loft, Sere slept harder than she’d ever remembered sleeping. She woke up to the sun streaming in the dormer window and the sound of a street sweeper cleaning up the ravages of the night’s revelry. Above her head, her snakes dozed on the rafter, shaking the ends of their rattles sounding like old men snoring. Her body ached as she pushed off of the sagging mattress. Blood, mud, and demon crud covered her body where her clothes had been. The bustier and tights emanated swamp smells from a corner of the loft.
“Guess I owe Kendell a new Halloween costume.”
It took an hour in the shower to scrub every inch of her body back to pink skin. Then she stood naked in the closet, wondering what she was supposed to wear. Her riding leathers made sense if she intended on running, but without an adversary, the fight-or-flight instinct felt misplaced. She ran her hands over the various band outfits. The steampunk gear projected a fun in-your-face attitude that she appreciated, but for once, she didn’t want to play the provocateur.
“It’s not that I want to fit in, but there has to be something I can wear that will let me talk to people without making some unintended impression.” She pulled a pair of low-rider jeans off a hanger. The waistband hugged her along the same line across her hips as her bullet belt. The bohemian tunic that hung next to the pants looked like a hippie throwback, but the loose fit didn’t restrict her movements. She synched a wide leather belt around her waist to replace the feeling of being armed with her shotgun.
Before leaving the apartment, she pulled on her alligator boots. “No way I’m leaving my knife behind.”
Without much else to do with her day, she headed into Fisher’s offices. Though she could spend her nights drinking and working off her pent-up energy on the dance floor, aimlessly wandering the Quarter only made her anxious for her next demon encounter. Fisher had said he could put her to work. Hunting down deadbeats and tax evaders might be a welcome change from combating serial killers and demons.
Linda looked up from her typing. “I wondered if we’d see you today. He Who Does Not Make Appointments is waiting in your office.”
Sere did her best to keep her heartbeat in check. I suppose a little excitement at seeing the one who saved my life isn’t a bad thing. When she walked into her office, however, the new mountain of files on her desk quashed her enthusiasm. “What’s all this?”
“What you asked for,” Bart said. “These are the people who’ve died by mysterious causes over the last week.”
She gulped. “That’s a lot of files. The sheriff’s department must have their hands full.”
He lifted one off the top. A little green sticky note was stuck to the front. “My cousin went through all of them. He used green for suspected safe—as in, an alligator probably did the deed—yellow for completely unknown, and red for suspected demon.”
How considerate of him. “Feel like saving me the work of separating them out?”
He tossed the police folder back with the others. “Twelve demon-on-human murders and four unknown.”
Damn, that’s a lot of incoming doppelgängers. “Our boys were busy.”
He nodded at the green Post-It. “Not just the demons. There’s twenty-seven alligator-on-human deaths as well. We’re talking a full-on demon and gator slaughter up there. Every person who can handle a rifle or drive a boat is joining lynch mobs. If something isn’t done soon, we’ll have a modern-day peasant uprising north of the lake. With the doppelgängers already dispatched, events are either going to turn toward a witch hunt of the innocent, an alligator massacre, or both.”
“Your biker friends and Riley’s posse made it pretty clear I wasn’t welcome up there.” She pulled out the bottle of Jameson’s she kept in the bottom drawer of her desk.
“A little early in the day, isn’t it?”
“I don’t usually sleep, so it’s all the same to me.” She poured a generous two fingers into the tumbler.
“What’s with doppelgängers and alcohol, anyway? Seems like a bar is always the first stop they make after leaving the swamp.”
“Can you blame them? Most of my brethren are based on city folk. Imagine someone from the Quarter finding himself in the middle of a swamp and having to make his way back to civilization. Anyone would be a little parched after that ordeal.”
Bart shook his head. “I’ve seen people drink out of relief. The look on those guys’ faces was anticipation, like they’d been on the wagon for too long.”
She turned the glass with the magical amber liquid in her hand. “From personal experience, I can tell you that alcohol gives me a break from the interdimensional tug-of-war that never lets up.”
“Sounds like doppelgänger bullshit to me.” He picked up the bottle and stared at the liquid like someone studying a deadly strain of bacteria in an uncorked glass beaker. “After my time in combat, I found it hard to relate to normal people. I saw everyone I met as either an ally or an enemy, and women were easy conquests. I started drinking because I thought it’d lubricate my interpersonal relationships—make things easier, you know? I was looking to dull my instinct to dominate. Actually, the opposite happened.”
Yet you drank with me. I wonder why. “Now that you know better,” she said, “you drink to increase the distance?”
“Now I drink out of fear.” The intense look in his eyes told her how difficult the sentence had been to speak out loud. “I’m a Navy SEAL. Physical danger doesn’t faze me, but when I sense a closeness developing that I can’t control, my flight instinct kicks in. Alcohol helps me combat it, but too much can turn me into an asshole. Unfortunately, I can’t usually stop myself from overindulging.”
She could see a similarity in how she used alcohol. Life had a way of enticing her into its grasp, and drinking gave her a dispassionate distance from humanity. “You managed to control your drinking around me.”
“You’re not like most women. There’s a sense of equality in our relationship.”
“So I’m the ally, whereas most women are the enemy?” she asked.
“Something like that. You do keep me on my toes, but not in a combative way. When you started leaning on me, I began to let my guard down—someone that I respect putting their trust in me has a way of doing that. A shot or two with you knocks down my inherently snarky coping mechanism, but the honor you inspire in me prevents me from taking my drinking any further.”
Though his openness intrigued her, Sere feared another question down the path of their relationship would make him tip the bottle to his lips, and once they let down their guards, they could end up anywhere. There were still life-and-death questions t
o be answered, demons on the horizon, and a woman who might be struggling with her sanity. Whatever emotions were building between them would have to wait.
“Tell me what happened to Jennifer after I got pulled out of her.”
He set the bottle down and kicked his shoes up on her desk as if grateful for the change of subject. “She kept talking about an alternate self. That boss of yours in the next office is quite the talker. Each time Jennifer proposed something that hit a little too close to the truth, he found a way to make it sound like the attribute was inside her all along. By the time we got her back to the stream that cut through the park, she was more or less her old self.”
“Hopefully, she doesn’t freak out on her husband. Keeping that woman out of the loony bin is going to be a constant aggravation.”
“Speaking of constant aggravations, any thoughts on when I should pencil you in for another rescue?”
That was a good question. Apparently, the doppelgängers couldn’t just go through the door when someone died. Or maybe Sere’s nemesis was just taking his time planning his next move.
“We had about three months between Monty and the gang of seven.”
Bart dropped his boots from her desk. “Just don’t spent the whole time at the bottom of a bottle.”
Take me with you. The fleeting thought had overtones of Jennifer, but Sere couldn’t deny that the idea of leaving the city and spending some quality time with Bart had its appeal. But she had to stay in the New Orleans. The demons would still see her as a beacon for leaving the swamp, and she couldn’t expect him to stay just for her.
Sere turned the glass while watching the alcohol creep up the side like a spirit trying to escape. She returned the tumbler to her desk and pushed it toward the bottle. “If I intend on further understanding what it means to be human, maybe it’s time I also faced this life sober.”
Hell’s Highway
Hell’s Highway Blurb
Having put down the latest batch of escaped doppelgängers, Sere Mal-Laurette felt she’d earned a little time off from demon hunting. She was wrong.
Her inattention has allowed a new batch of hellions to rise from the swamp and abduct Rampart Thibodaux. With the hot ex-Navy SEAL’s blood and soul infecting her, Sere has no choice but to jump back on her motorcycle to rescue him. Her quest will cost her dearly but also bring her closer to being human than she could have imagined.
Sere’s emotional roller-coaster ride of human experiences, however, is overshadowed by the rise of a new devil—one who isn’t satisfied with simply claiming hell as his only domain.
***
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
G.A.’s Newsletter
Connect with G.A. on Facebook
Website
29
Chapter 1
The narrow unlit entrance beside the Scratchy Dog nightclub was not an alcove most women would find inviting but more like a place to be molested by some creep. At three o’clock in the morning on a Thursday morning, there weren’t even drunk partiers to witness any nefarious activities. For Sere, however, the potentially dangerous doorway meant returning home—or as close to home as she hoped to find in New Orleans.
She pulled out her key, but as she touched the old brass handle, the door opened an inch on its own. Shit, she thought. The options of who might be lying in wait were almost too numerous to consider. At least the loas of the dead were not a possibility. They would have simply materialized in her room. And it probably wasn’t another demon from hell. Joe and Bart had blasted the most recent batch into oblivion only four days before, and those doppelgänger escapees had needed three months to work their way out of hell and mount an attack.
Convinced that her intruder was human, Sere pulled the combat knife out of her boot. I really need to figure out a way to carry my shotgun without being questioned by the cops every other block, she thought. Not that she needed the four-barreled paranormal blaster against a human, but the weapon did make an impression. She edged the door open just far enough to silently squeeze in then eased it back in place. Only a small four-pane window at the second-floor landing illuminated the steep wooden staircase. She pressed her back to the dark wall and crept up the heavily painted steps. After six months of living in the loft, she’d mentally mapped out each creak and loose tread on the way to her sanctuary.
By the time she’d made it as far as the window, her eyes had fully adjusted to the dark. The door off the landing that led to the second floor of the Scratchy Dog had been sealed shut for decades. Just the same, she pressed her fingers against it to be sure no one was conducting a sneak attack on Kendell or Myles. She’d had more than enough of adversaries putting those she cared about at risk. The door didn’t budge. At least whoever it was had the good sense to face her directly. That left out anyone from hell.
She kept below the window and continued up to her loft on the third floor. In front of a door covered in crackled ivory paint, she knelt in a runner’s starting stance, careful to stay below the peephole. If anyone had made it into her apartment, her two canebrake rattlesnakes would hopefully either have them cornered or be waiting for her command. She put her hand on the threshold, hoping to feel the gentle rattle that indicated they had the intruder under guard. Nothing. Her fingertips pressed the brass footplate. The door moved slightly against the latch but remained closed. I still can’t decide whether someone’s attempting a sneak attack or trying to let me know they’re here.
Either way, confrontation was only the twist of a door handle away. She switched her handhold of the knife from slashing to throwing. She’d only get one shot.
She lunged off the ground like a frog, grabbed the top of the doorframe with her free hand, and kicked the door in. A shotgun blast from the middle of the room sent pellets into her hip, but most of the shot flew under her butt and into the angled roof above the stairs. Sere swung into the apartment, landed in a crouch, and flung the knife at Riley before the woman could recock her weapon. The knife penetrated deep into the woman’s forearm.
Being a bartender, however, Riley was no stranger to fighting hurt. With her injured arm supporting the barrel, she pulled down on the trigger guard and brought the weapon up to her hip. “I’m not here to fight.”
Sere lunged low over the floor, grasped the woman’s legs, and dropped her like a sack of angry crawfish. The shotgun spun to the far wall. Sere’s two snakes, who were supposed to be standing guard—or rather, slithering guard—fell from the rafters and wrapped their bodies around the weapon. While Riley was down and disoriented, Sere grabbed the knife out of the bartender’s arm and stood over her. Blood dripped from the blade onto the woman’s heart.
“You’ve got a strange way of asking for a meeting.”
Riley pulled out from under Sere and cradled her bleeding arm. “Like you did Cody any better?”
At least the bar owner wasn’t whining like a stuck pig. Despite being an ex-football player, Cody couldn’t handle pain for shit. “That gator-hunting fool and I have a history,” Sere said. “It was either stab him or be met with the demon he had hiding in his cabin.”
Riley had the good sense to remain on the floor where she wasn’t a threat. “We’ve got a history too.”
Sere kept her aim on Riley. “Still, how difficult would it have been to make an appointment at Mr. Fisher’s offices?”
Riley bent one of her long bare legs up, sending her cutoffs tighter up her ass. “You really are naïve, aren’t you? Someone is always watching you, and not just the people you trust. The only way I could meet with you in secret was to break into your apartment. If those helping the swamp demons get wind that I met with you, they might get the wrong idea.”
Sere wondered how much the woman knew
about the demons’ activities. If they did have accomplices among the living, though, she strongly doubted Riley would know about it. The woman was bluffing, but Sere decided to let her have her dignity. “I guess to stay in business, you side either with the denizens of hell or against them. But what the fuck are you doing here if it’s not to settle the score?”
“Ram’s been abducted.”
Sere nearly dropped her knife in shock. “I just saw him yesterday—couldn’t have been more than twelve hours ago. He brought by some police files.”
“Well, he got a surprise when he got back to the bar. A gang of your hell-based kin were waiting for him. They knocked him out and made their escape on the motorcycles they stole from the bikers. I hopped in my truck and hightailed it down here as soon as I heard.”
Sere nearly swore out loud. The latest outbreak of demons had made it clear that they intended to kill her, but she honestly believed she had more time. “Why tell me? I’d think you’d be happy to lose the competition.”
Riley pointed at the two of them. “You and I may have our disagreements, but I knew Rampart long before you showed up, and our history is a little more favorable, if you catch my drift.”
Sere grimaced, trying hard not to envision Riley and Rampart naked together. Bart, as she liked to call him, had a way with women. From Riley’s perpetually skimpy attire, Sere doubted it would have taken much manly skill to get the woman into the sack.
“What about his cousin Evert? Doesn’t the parish sheriff’s office do anything up there?”
Riley bent her muscular legs under herself and hopped back to her feet without changing her grasp on her wounded arm. “Do I look like someone the cops are going to listen to? I’m certain Ram’s bar buddies filed a report, but I’m not optimistic about anyone doing anything. That police station runs on a skeleton crew at night. Anyway, it’s going to take more than a deputy dude to find the demon bikers. As far as I’m concerned, until Ram’s safe, I’m calling a truce between us. You’re the best chance he has.”