by G A Chase
The girl used her torn army shirt to wipe the small amount of Sere’s blood off her sword. “Then we’ll be square?”
“Not even close,” Sere said. “But do this for me, and I’ll let you return to this dimension, where I can keep an eye on you. How did you learn to fight, anyway? Your real has a lot of spunk, but she doesn’t seem capable of defending herself from a bunny rabbit.”
Doodlebug straightened up and held her sword tip down like a conquering hero. “I remember being like that girl. Then I watched you decapitate that harvester in hell. Seeing you fight changed my life. I’d never heard of anyone, especially a woman, going up against one of those fiends and surviving. I have a really good memory, so I started copying every move you made. There aren’t many fight instructors in hell, but I found one willing to train me.” She lifted the blade and turned it in the late-morning light. “This was my first time using a sword, though. I liked it. So I’ll go back to hell for you. I just want your assurance that I can come back here.”
“I just said you could, didn’t I?”
“When I’m ready. There are a couple of harvesters I’d like to deal with while I’m there. If you’re not going to be hell’s avenging superhero, I’d like the job—even if it’s only temporary.”
“I’ll do you one better. Be my representative in hell, and I’ll teach your real how to fight. Her muscle skills will transfer to you, and you can observe the training over that headband. There’s only one condition. When you return to life, you and your real can never meet. You’ll have to build your life on the Northshore.”
“I can live with that,” Doodlebug said. “I don’t think I could face the real version of New Orleans anyway. I’d see harvesters around every corner.”
“Wonderful,” Sere said without enthusiasm. Negotiating with a demon who should have been happy just to be able to keep her head was nearly as distasteful as agreeing to her real’s terms. Sere turned away from Doodlebug and walked to the water’s edge. “Lefty. Here, boy.”
The thirty-foot gator swam out of the reeds, wearing a crown of wildflowers between his yellow-green eyes.
Sere put her hands on her hips. “What the fuck, dude?”
“We were bored waiting for you,” Doodlebug said from the clearing.
“Well, I hope you two enjoyed your vacation,” Sere said to the gator. “It’s time to get back to work. The only way to get Doodlebug back to hell without being detected by our enemies is for you to swim her through the hell mouth. Bart and I will follow along in the boat as far as the crystal-blue water. Don’t dally once you’re there. Drop her off, and get that tail back as soon as possible. I don’t have time for your shenanigans.”
“Do you think she can do it?” Dooly stuck so close to Sere’s side in the professor’s laboratory that Sere began to understand the concept of an annoying little sister.
Sere was down to her last nerve. It had taken all afternoon to ride out to the swamp with Bart and then boat out to the cabin. Her fight with Doodlebug had taken the better part of the night. Then there was the swamp tour to make sure Doodlebug and Lefty made the journey to hell and the subsequent wait for Lefty’s return. By the time Sere and Bart returned to New Orleans, it was once again daylight. At least Doodlebug had likewise found her way to hell’s version of the city.
“She’ll do it or die trying. If she can’t even track down and kill a doppelshit lab geek, she won’t stand a chance against the harvesters.”
“I heard that,” Doodlebug said through Sere’s earpiece.
“I think I’ve got it,” Polly yelled from the office hallway. “Try it now, Professor.”
The wall screen that had been displaying a map with Andy’s location as a red dot transformed into a view of the city tormented by the never-ending hurricane-driven rain.
“Okay,” Sere said. “We can see what you’re seeing.”
“How does that do me one fucking bit of good?” Doodlebug demanded over the transmission.
“It probably doesn’t,” Sere conceded. “But it is more entertaining.”
“Fuck you.” The girl hunkered down along the iron fence of Jackson Square and crept toward Saint Louis Cathedral. “Now, which way did he go?”
Sere checked the smaller screen that still tracked Andy’s location. “He’s still trying to get to the bank. The professor has been manipulating the streets into a maze, so that nerdy demon has been going around in circles. The little twerp is getting pretty frustrated. Just watch out for harvesters.”
Doodlebug held the sword, edge first, toward her eyes as if she wanted to slice Sere on the other end of the transmission. “You’ve got the nerve to tell me about harvesters? Jesus, woman. You spend a few hours here and think you know all about life in this enhanced hell.”
“Do you really want to have a debate right now?” Sere asked.
“You started it,” the girl grumbled. She slunk back down and ran through the rain to the roofline that covered the sidewalk. “Tell that professor of yours that I’m making a left onto Chartres Street. I don’t want him putting me back on Decatur again. I’m trying to get ahead of Andy, not follow the bastard.”
“He can hear you.” To keep from overly distracting Doodlebug, only Sere could talk to her even though everyone in the lab was eavesdropping on the conversation. Sere, however, also had her matching paranormal headband, allowing her to hear the girl’s thoughts. The three of us look like a cheesy girl band from the 1980s.
You’re telling me, Doodlebug responded.
Dooly Buell looked around the room with wide eyes as if certain she was losing her mind.
“I can’t just change one intersection,” the professor said. “Moving things around in hell is like turning a Rubik’s Cube. I’m sorry if keeping Andy from getting to the bank is inconveniencing Doodlebug. I can’t do much about that.” The old man kept banging out computer code through his complaints.
“He’s doing his best,” Sere relayed to Doodlebug.
“Tell her to make a right at the next intersection,” the professor called out from behind his computer. “And tell her not to look at the damn street signs. Andy will be coming at her from a block away. That should give her time to set up her ambush.”
Sere gave her warrior the message. “He’ll be armed—probably with a gun.”
“What would a bullet do to me?”
“I don’t know,” Sere said. “But it’d be best if we didn’t find out. The twerp might not be much good at fighting, but coming up with dastardly doppelgänger ordnance seems to be his forte.”
“Cut off his head. Don’t get shot. Got it.” Doodlebug ducked into a doorway to wait for her prey.
Unfortunately, she wasn’t the only one on the hunt. The door she leaned against swung open, and a bony hand yanked her by the shoulder into the dark entry. “Skilled little minx, aren’t you? I’ll find plenty of buyers for those arms and legs.” The harvester sliced at her with a reaping hook. The blade cut her to the bone but didn’t cleave her arm from her body.
“Spin to your left while the blade is still stuck in you,” Sere instructed. “You’re going to wrench it out of his hand.”
Next to Sere, Dooly Buell sagged to the floor, though Sere couldn’t tell if it was from the energy exchange or the impossibility of what the waif was witnessing. Myles was on his knees next to Dooly before she completely passed out. “Hang in there, girl.”
Sere didn’t have time for the theatrics. “Don’t draw on your real until the knife is out of your arm. Remember, no foreign matter, or the wound won’t heal.”
Doodlebug grabbed the sickle and spun so hard she flipped the harvester over her back. “Now what?”
“Take the damn knife out of your arm, and lob off the bastard’s head.” Sere tried not to yell, but stating the obvious during a fight had a way of bringing out the same intensity Joe had shown during training.
With the curved blade finally dislodged, Doodlebug swung the back side of the weapon at the harvester’s throat. Though i
t crushed a vertebra, the head remained attached.
“Use the goddamned sword!”
The girl was already reaching for the handle. “Don’t yell at me.” With a swing of her good arm, she decapitated the harvester like it was a rag doll.
“Andy’s almost at the door,” the professor announced from behind his computer screen.
“Get moving, girl,” Sere said. “This may be your only chance at attack before Andy figures out your play.”
With the sickle in one hand and the sword in the other, Doodlebug ran to the open door. She swung the long straight blade backhanded through the opening. It lodged hard into flesh.
When she stepped out of the entryway, Andy lifted his gun at her chest. “Don’t make me kill you.” His voice trembled nearly as badly as the hand holding his weapon. Blood was squirting so hard from between his arms that it was hard to tell the pelting rain from the geyser of red.
Acting more on instinct than training, Doodlebug swung the sickle up and cut his hand from his arm. The gun went skidding into the street and disappeared into a storm drain. A rat the size of a milk crate rushed out from the shadows and ran off with the twerp’s hand. “Sere was right. You’re nothing more than bird shit on the devil’s waistcoat.”
The computer display transitioned from the blues and grays of the storm to shades of demonic red. “Maintain control, Doodlebug. All you have to do now is cut off his head,” Sere said.
But the girl had gone full demon. Like the whirling blades of a Cuisinart, she sliced and diced the lab geek until he was completely unrecognizable as anything more than a pulpy red mess. Sere wasn’t sure if the colors she was seeing on the monitor were from the girl’s continued demonic state or the blood that covered every square inch of the building’s entrance.
Sere waited until the girl finally lowered her blades. “Feel better?”
“Invigorated,” Doodlebug said between breaths. “I now understand rule number three. I could fight like this for days. What’s next?”
So far, the experiment of sending Doodlebug into hell had exceeded Sere’s expectations, but killing Andy wouldn’t stop Marjory Laroque. They needed a better look behind the paranormal scene to figure out what their adversary was up to. “Find the hell version of the professor’s laboratory. We need to see how close they’ve come to raising a devil.”
Through the darkness, Doodlebug dodged demons, downpours, and distorted intersections to get from the Quarter to the professor’s hell-based laboratory. She swung both sword and sickle with zeal at each potential threat. Every burst of Doodlebug’s adrenaline over the paranormal headband made Sere wish she were fighting alongside the girl.
“She’s enjoying this new power far too much,” Polly said. “We may have just created another monster.”
“She’s doing what she needs to do to survive.” Sere would never forgive the doppelbitch for killing Joe, but seeing hell through the girl’s eyes made violence seem as necessary and normal as strong coffee to someone working the night shift.
Doodlebug pressed her back to the wall next to the broken-glass door. “Okay. I’m here. Please tell me there isn’t some doppelgänger professor on the other side of this door.”
The diorama that displayed hell and its inhabitants had an annoying way of being inaccurate. Lightning strikes that were as much bursts of paranormal energy as the release of cloud friction made entire city blocks of doppelgängers momentarily invisible to the computer’s sensors.
“Assuming the professor’s safeguards are working correctly, there shouldn’t be anyone inside,” Sere said.
Professor Yates hooked an alligator clip to Dooly Buell’s headband. The attached wire connected to his computer. “She can enter now.”
Sere noticed a blue aura form around Doodlebug. “Go for it.”
Doodlebug held both her weapons to her chest as she rolled her body through the door. “You’re sure there’s no one here?”
Sere wasn’t sure of anything. “Stay on guard. That little twerp was in charge of the lab for far too long. It wouldn’t surprise me if he figured out a way to bypass the professor’s security.”
The girl ducked below the worktable. “Well, something’s not right. I can hear screaming, but it’s muffled, like it’s in the next room.”
“Be careful, Doodlebug,” Sere said.
“Careful, schmareful,” the girl muttered as she used her sword to prod everything she saw.
Before Sere could chastise the girl, Polly snickered. “I swear, she sounds exactly like you at that age. Joe was the only one who could get you to listen to reason.”
“This isn’t really the time for reminiscing.” Sere inspected the diorama again. “I’m not seeing anyone in there other than you.”
“Fuck.” Doodlebug sprang out from under the table as if she were about to slice off someone’s head. “The voices aren’t from this dimension. Look.” She pointed her sword at the screens along the wall of the professor’s offices.
What the girl saw had to be transmitted between dimensions to Dooly Buell then downloaded into the professor’s bank of computers to be translated into what humans could see. As such, it took everyone in the room a moment to understand the scribbles that waved in front of the girl’s eyes.
“Good lord,” Sere said as her doppelgänger eyes picked out the tortured souls before the rest of the people in the room had a chance to see what was happening. “It’s every person the demons killed in this dimension. They’re being held captive in the computer’s software.”
“We expected that,” Professor Yates said. “Their suffering is what our enemies are using to hold open the rift between dimensions.”
“Pull the fucking plug,” Sere said.
“No.” The professor got up from his Barcalounger. “Those souls are like water in a hose. We’re holding one end of it with our equipment in hell, and Marjory is holding the other somewhere in the bank. If you disconnect the souls, either we’ll be handing them over to her, or those spirits will evaporate into hell’s dimension. They’ll be stuck there forever as tortured ghosts. To save them, we either need to connect to them in this reality or find a way to collect them in hell. Ultimately, we need to bring them to this side so the loas of the dead can escort them to Guinee and, finally, the deep waters, where they belong. I can see the problem, but it’ll take some work to figure out how to tie in the differing dimensions.”
“And we’ll need the loas ready and waiting,” Kendell said.
“Fuck!” Sere really wished she could decapitate a demon to ease her frustration.
Doodlebug held out her blades as if she expected someone to walk in on her. “That’s all very nice, but can we get back to what I’m supposed to be doing here?”
Sere tried directing the girl’s eyes to the computer icons, but Doodlebug was more fascinated with the trapped souls.
“Find me the information on those that escaped with you,” Sere said.
Doodlebug looked down at the aged desktop computer and opened the most recent file. The computer screen filled with doppelgänger mug shots. “I never knew any of their identities,” Doodlebug said. “We got our instructions through telepathic communication. Now that I’ve heard Andy’s voice, I recognized it as the one directing the action.”
“I don’t care,” Sere said. “Find me the damn asshole that I met out in the swamp.”
Bart pointed at one of the pictures. “That’s the guy. I never forget the face of someone I’ve killed, even if that person isn’t real.”
Sere leaned in close. Another face next to the first was so similar they could have been brothers separated by only a handful of years. “Yep, this is the one.” She read off the name of the demon they’d killed. “Creed Laroque. Based on him being in charge of the demons out in the swamp, I’ll bet he was as close as they could come to someone who understood the bayou. Doodlebug, I’ve got a mission for you. Find this asshole, and cut off his head. Without Andy at the controls, Creedy Boy won’t be able to retain the m
emories he apparently cherishes so much. Make him suffer.”
“Gladly.” The girl pointed at the neighboring picture. “What about his cousin?”
“Devlin Laroque,” Sere read out loud. “He’s still in our dimension.”
“Don’t let her leave yet.” Kendell bit her lip and stared at the tabletop display of hell. “Doodlebug might be more useful right where she is. If our diorama is this glitchy, Marjory might not know Andy’s been decapitated. Whatever she’s using to see hell couldn’t be better than what we have right here.” She turned to the professor. “Your hell-based lab is off-limits to any doppelgänger you don’t let in, so Marjory isn’t going to be able to find out who’s working for her from the other side. Could we make it look like Doodlebug is actually Andy?”
The professor waved his pipe at the screen. “Ask the girl how well she understands computers.”
“Apparently about as well as you people understand hell,” Doodlebug replied.
Polly pressed the transmit button on the nickel-plated microphone from the office’s old public-address system. “If you’re going to copy Andy’s actions, we’ll need to know what he’s been up to. You need to find the professor’s laptop. It will probably be gathering dust in some dark corner of the lab. We can work over that computer without anyone listening in.” The words, transmitted to hell then back to the professor’s equipment in life, sounded like the voice of God.
“I’m not some fucking lab geek,” Doodlebug yelled. “I only agreed to come back to hell to kill whoever Sere instructs me to and the harvesters I hate. Working these damn computers wasn’t part of the arrangement.”
“Have her pull up all twelve files on the screen,” the professor said. “They’ll just look like gibberish, but I can copy them to my computer. I can at least figure out who stayed among the living and if any of them have been infected with a human soul.”
Polly grasped the side of the desk with one hand and the microphone with the other. “One person at a time. Doodlebug, you’re going to have to stay in the office until Sere can confront Marjory. If our enemy realizes you haven’t regenerated in hell, they’ll know we’re messing with their bridge. You going on a killing spree will only show our hand. So long as you’re stuck there, you might as well be of some use. If I teach both you and Dooly at the same time about hell’s software, maybe one of you will learn something. But even if you don’t, we need to fool Marjory for as long as possible.”