by G A Chase
Sere nodded down the bar at Kendell. “Anything to report on what we’re dealing with in hell?”
Kendell helped herself to another glass of chardonnay. “Without being able to contact Sanguine, I’m afraid most of what we found is more theoretical than practical.” She pulled out a blank receipt from under the bar, along with a pen, and wrote hell and life on it. “You started off here in hell.” She drew a curving line to life. “Made it back here.” She drew an S next to hell with another line to Sere in life. “And Sanguine is being used to power you.”
“Stop telling me what I already know.” Sere didn’t have the patience for another of Kendell’s longwinded explanations.
“This is important, Sere. Whoever is running the show is trying to create another bridge, but until they do, they have to rely on the energy from hell that sustains you to power their construction project.” She turned back to her drawing. “When a demon kills a human, the soul is dragged to hell, but that’s not where it belongs, so an energy current is created back to life. Ultimately, the soul is being called by the loas, but those guardians of Guinee can’t enter hell.”
Sere tapped her foot in irritation against the bar. “Again, old news. I did live in the hell dimension, if you’ll remember.”
Kendell tapped the pen against the bar, looking equally frustrated. “So the trapped soul is like tossing a rock in a river so someone can walk across.” She drew little circles between life and hell. “It’s only stable enough, however, for a demon without a soul to pass over on it. Here’s where things might prove more interesting for you. The demon has to die in life and go back to hell to establish the connection. They become planks laid over the rocks.” She drew the return line over the circles with such force that she tore the paper.
Sere looked at the crude drawing with renewed interest. “They’ve been planning on me killing the escaped demons?”
“According to the paranormal science, that’s how they’re stitching together the various planks into a bridge strong enough to support a living human soul.”
“I guess I was wrong about the whole one-demon-to-one-dead-person scenario,” Sere said. She’d never been comfortable being the one looked to for answers.
“Right and wrong.” Kendell shrugged. “So long as they are just laying the planks, they’d only trust one demon to the one human-soul stone in the water. Once they have the bridge built, though, they should be able to use it as much as they like. And seeing as how this latest batch of demons hasn’t gone on a killing spree, it would be safe to assume they have enough planks for their bridge.”
Sere took the pen and drew three lines that didn’t return to hell. “Since it looks like Marjory has selected a doppelgänger to perform her first test in creating an immortal, we have to assume that the demons we just killed up north completed her bridge, leaving these three.”
“If Marjory has finished her bridge, why is she limiting the number of demons allowed through?” Fisher asked. “She could call forth an entire horde to deal with us while she performs her tests in peace.”
“Crossing over is just the first part,” Myles said. “Each of those demons has a will of its own and would need to be powered up for as long as they’re in this dimension. A mad rush to this side would overload the power cord. Building an immortal would require all of the energy that connection could handle.”
Bart picked up the pen and drew a broken line between the two realms. “What if a demon wasn’t sent back?”
Kendell shrugged. “The bridge wouldn’t be as strong as our enemies think it is. The missing doppelgänger would be like a loose thread: pull on it, and the whole structure comes apart. But you’d be left with a demon among the living and an obvious missing link that Marjory would be sure to notice. She could just clip the thread. And if Sere is right, they have two guardian demons here in New Orleans that they could kill to create replacement planks.”
“We might be able to fool them,” Sere said. “Did you have any luck finding that gutter-punk girl?”
Kendell pulled a piece of paper out from under the cash drawer under the bar. “She hangs out with a group that camps on Esplanade’s neutral ground. When she arrived in New Orleans two years ago, she went by Doodlebug. Now she calls herself Dooly Buell, but I’m not sure if that’s her real name. I couldn’t find out where she came from. She plays a pretty decent fiddle. Her current boyfriend fancies himself a poet. I’ve got my homeless friends keeping an eye on her. Now, would you mind telling me what your interest is in the girl? Because for the life of me, I can’t figure out what she has to do with anything.”
“Her doppelgänger is the one who killed Joe. I’m keeping the demon alive for information. Lefty has his eyes on her out in my old cabin. If she does anything suspicious, he’ll munch her for lunch.”
Myles tossed his empty beer bottle in the trash with such force the metal can tipped slightly. “What could she have possibly said that kept you from killing her the moment you saw her?”
Sere appreciated his expression of anger. She still wasn’t sure she’d done the right thing in not killing the doppelbitch. “She explained to me that the murdering doppelgängers eat the souls of those they kill. That’s how they steal the spirits from the loas and send them to hell. I know for a fact that she did not eat Joe. I didn’t let the girl live out of mercy. If anything she says doesn’t prove true, I’ll take great delight in running my knife through that delicate young neck.”
“And if what she says does prove true?” Kendell asked. “I’m not crazy about the idea of you keeping a demon like a pet. That thirty-foot gator of yours is enough of a problem.”
“Lefty is not a pet.” Sere couldn’t understand people’s desire to subjugate every creature they found.
“You know what I’m saying.” Kendell’s parental tone of irritation sounded exactly like Sere’s long-dead mother.
Sere stared at the bar in order to stay focused on her developing idea without being distracted. “We need a way to keep track of what our adversaries are up to in hell. We know I can’t go back. If I tried, I’d just end up in the interdimensional prison with Sanguine. Though you and Myles have moved between dimensions with your gates and his voodoo-loa cane, opening up that kettle of undead fish again will only call forth the loas of the dead. We’re running out of options. I’m not just leaving Sanguine to languish in that iron box. Eventually, we have to get ahead of this slow-rolling demon invasion, and I’m not seeing that happen by only using the professor’s toys. Having our own spy in hell could prove useful. To keep it secret from our adversaries, we need a link to hell that’s not part of the professor’s software.”
Bart put his hand on her back. “And you think having both the real Dooly and her doppelgänger Doodlebug will help create that bridge? Because so far, having a real meet their doppelgänger has been considered a really bad idea.”
“And you’re not sending that girl to hell in place of her doppelgänger.” Kendell spoke with such force that Sere moved closer to Bart for protection.
“I never said anything about sending Dooly to hell.” Sere did her best not to yell. “If Doodlebug is going to be any use to us, I need her to return to hell of her own free will. She’s not going to agree, however, unless I can promise to bring her back. My connection to Jennifer has gotten me out of some bad situations. Maybe Polly and the professor can work up a similar lifeline for Doodlebug. This time, though, the wrapping would go on the real Dooly to send additional power to hell’s Doodlebug.”
“Do you really think she’d do it?” Bart asked. “Seems like she worked awfully hard to escape.”
“I know convincing Doodlebug won’t be easy. The girl I met in the swamp has a lot of spirit. If that’s coming from her real, they both might be willing to listen. However, if it turns out that Doodlegänger’s spunk is simply from living in hell, there’s not much point in letting her live. We’ll need both the real person and hell’s copy for this to work. If we can send Doodlebug back through the ga
te, we’ll end up with both a spy and an undetected thread we can pull on to dismantle our enemy’s bridge.”
Kendell collected the glasses. “It might be better if you let me approach Dooly Buell. You can be a little direct at times, and I do have a relationship with the homeless population. They’ll vouch for me. Once I gauge her level of willingness, you can deal with her doppelgänger.”
Though Sere knew Kendell was right, she had wanted to meet the girl to determine how close the real Dooly was to her demon double. The frustration of inaction made her eager to get out of the bar. “So Fisher will work on reverse engineering the bank plans, and Kendell will see about getting Dooly to the professor for a paranormal fitting.” She turned to Bart. “That leaves you with me. I’m done pussyfooting around Marjory Laroque.” She got up and headed for the door before the rest could offer their objections.
44
Chapter 16
“What the hell are you doing, Sere?” Bart yelled from behind her as she stormed down Chartres Street toward the bank.
“I’m done fighting from the shadows. It’s time I had a chat with my distant niece.”
“You can’t honestly expect to fight your way into the bank president’s office.” He grabbed her by the arm and swung her toward him. “Think, Sere. She knows who you are.”
“She’s not going to kill me. She can’t. She needs me. I certainly hope this new level of concern for my safety isn’t the result of us having sex.”
Bart straightened up. “I’ll march beside you into hell, and you know it. I’m only asking that you consider the outcome of confronting Marjory Laroque on her own turf. You’ll end up in one of those damn iron cages she has under the bank, just like your guardian angel in hell. You’d be walking right into her hands.”
“Shit.” Sere pulled her arm out of his grasp and kicked the lamppost. “I can’t just sit around, waiting for her to make the next move.”
“Do you want to go back to Joe’s romantic hideaway?” he asked. The smirk on his face let her know he was only half kidding.
“Don’t try humor on me when I’m in the mood for battle. There must be something I can do. Every minute, it feels like they’re getting one step closer to raising a new devil.”
Bart sat on a wooden stoop. “Talk this out with me. What are they missing? Supposedly, they have the doppelgänger body and a human to go in it. They also have a paranormal bridge to hell strong enough to send that human soul to hell and back. If your information from Gerald Laroque is correct, they have the interdimensional iron cabinet in which to conduct the transfer. Having the supplies and laboratory equipment, however, doesn’t mean they know how to make the experiment work.”
She sat so close to him that their hips pressed together. “Gerald said his sister does have some of my father’s writings. It’d probably be too optimistic to hope she doesn’t have the one titled “How to Create an Immortal,” but reading what my father did and being able to reproduce the project successfully could be very different. Marjory is working in life, and Baron Malveaux did his creating in hell.”
Bart casually put his arm around her waist. “I was never much good at science in school, but I’d guess if Marjory wasn’t sure of what she was doing, she’d take things slow and methodical.”
Sere nodded. “She hasn’t had the doppelgänger body for very long. I think we can assume that she hasn’t yet raised a devil. Once she does, if he’s anything like me, he’ll still need to be powered from hell. The bridge Kendell talked about could also be used as the power cord. Even though it’s Marjory’s creation, it would still need to be plugged into the professor’s equipment to draw on the energy from hell. That means there must be someone helping her who understands what the professor created.”
That was about as much as she intended to share with him. Even considering how close Sere felt to Bart, some information—such as how Sanguine had opened the portal between dimensions and provided Sere’s connection to hell’s power supply—was too dangerous to entrust to him.
“Why not just feed off of your connection the way the demons do?” Bart asked.
“Marjory is one controlling bitch, and I can’t imagine that a devil she creates would be any less calculating. The demons might survive as annoying parasites sucking off my power cord, but a true devil would never accept such a limitation.”
“Sounds like Polly and Professor Yates’s domain.”
Sere got up then started pacing in front of Bart while she talked. “Marjory would know better than to try to sneak something through the professor’s equipment on this side. Between him and Polly, there’s someone there all day every day, so creeping in and uploading a computer virus would be pretty difficult.”
Bart leaned forward on the stair. “She’d need someone intimately associated with the doppelgängers’ survival mechanism. There can’t be more than a handful of people that the professor has worked with over the years. Shit, I’ve seen the equipment—even used it to heal you—and I don’t have the first clue as to how it works.”
Sere reached over her shoulders to the twin katana swords strapped to her back under her leather jacket, wishing she could do battle that instant. “How could I be so stupid? The asset Marjory needs isn’t in this life. He’s in hell. I knew I should have decapitated that little pipsqueak the moment he showed up in the swamp—fucking artificial Andy. He’s been conscious in hell since the day I decapitated Thomas. The little creep even knows how to move between dimensions, although he was hooked to a paranormal tether at the time.”
“You lost me.”
Sere pointed to the gun behind Bart’s back. “He’s the professor’s assistant in the alternate dimension. He’s the one who made the paranormal shotgun shells and brought them to me through hell’s gate. The little runt isn’t supposed to be anything more than a doppelpuppet the professor can manipulate for work in hell’s laboratory. But it’s becoming clearer to me with each new demon that the professor has lost control of his creation.”
Bart flexed his magnificent arms. His bulging tendons reminded Sere of how her breasts had tingled when he worked his powerful fingers against her flesh. “What do you have against the professor’s assistants?” he asked. “First Thomas and now Andy. Each time you talk about them, you level up on your intense hatred.”
The artificial boys made Sere’s skin crawl, but she resisted her revulsion to keep the conversation from careening from helpful to hate-filled venting. “They aren’t human, and they aren’t doppelgänger. I have no problem dismembering demons, but I do sympathize with them. Any consciousness subjected to the tortures of hell is sure to become distorted. The demons who’ve escaped have found the only way out of their eternal damnation. What I do is mercy killing. Even if they regenerate in hell, it’s without the memories of what they’ve endured. But beings like Andy have no connections to others. Though they are basically doppelgängers, the professor gave them enough self-will to break free from their reals’ lives. They’re morally and spiritually blank.”
Bart had put his hand up to stop her after she said, “mercy killing,” but she’d kept going, needing to get the idea out while she was on a roll.
“But a regenerated doppelgänger must endure the suffering all over again,” he said. “How is that a kindness?”
“They lose the memories of the original torment. Hell is hell. Though it may be my inheritance, I’ve yet to figure out how to make it into a paradise.” Sere stopped pacing. “You may not have been much good at science, but it wasn’t even offered during my hell schooling. I think it’s time we put a little more pressure on the professor.”
Sere nearly put her hand through the cardboard-covered glass door as she pushed her way into the professor’s office. “How do we shut down Andy?” She wasn’t in the mood for pleasantries.
The old man behind the desk looked even more haggard than the last time Sere had stopped by. “I’ve told you before, I can’t just turn off specific doppelgängers.” He waved at his wall of compute
rs. “There’s no on-off switch for each person. It would be like asking God to remove an individual from reality. There are rules in hell just as there are in life.” Sere had always suspect that Professor Yates saw himself as some sort of all-knowing unseen god. The older he got, the less he tried to hide it.
“We’re not talking about a run-of-the-mill doppelgänger. If we were, at this point, I’d consider walking up to his real and thrusting my knife between his ribs. The death of one person to stop the creation of a devil would be worth it. But that wouldn’t work in Andy’s case, would it?” she asked in as judgmental a tone as she could muster.
“No.” The professor opened his battered laptop. “After what happened with Thomas, I built a safeguard into Andy. He isn’t reliant on his real. Basically, he’s on a projection loop. That’s why he never ages. If you had killed him like you did Thomas, his consciousness wouldn’t transfer to his real. He resets every forty days, which also wipes his memories clean.”
“Well, I’m betting he’s figured out a way of retaining what he knows. Marjory Laroque has someone in hell maintaining her power bridge to life. All those lost souls that were supposed to head to Guinee are trapped in hell. They’re the basis of the paranormal link. She’s brought over a specific doppelgänger—one from her family—and she intends on infusing it with the soul of the real. First, however, she needs someone in hell to make sure her little toy’s cord stays plugged in. If it’s not Andy, who else could it be?”
The professor leaned back in his creaky office chair. “Your logic is sound. On my own, I couldn’t have freed you from hell. It took you and Sanguine working from that side to open the door. Every energy connection between each person and their doppelgänger passes through this equipment.” The screen on his laptop displayed an image of his lab in hell. “Andrew, are you there, my boy?”
“Yes, Professor.” The snarky shit’s face filled the screen. “What test do you want run today?”