by G A Chase
The blade burned so hot Sanguine could feel it scorching her leg. A part of her argued, however, that Colin was simply trying to save his daughter, who’d succumbed to the curse that was the result of his actions. I need to avoid this fight in order to save the child. “So you either have a scared, confused, and lost little girl wandering the streets of New Orleans, or you have a virtual projection that will return to its normal life and the ghost of your daughter who you’ll never find.”
“Hearing you say it makes me wonder why I came here tonight. A good father would still be out there searching.”
She enjoyed her whiskey while watching him squirm. “No one is ever going to consider you a good father, but I can appreciate your willingness to ask for my help. That couldn’t have been easy. Where have you searched so far?”
“Mostly the Garden District. That’s where Baron Malveaux lived and later where his son—as Anthony Laurette—built his mansion. I thought she might try to find one of the old houses.”
Sanguine took her time with the plate of shrimp. “You are such a fool. Children don’t run to places. They run to people they know. Having escaped you and knowing her brother was still in Guinee, she would have struck out in search of her mother. Though the nuns are done with the rest of us, they’d never turn their backs on a lost child.”
He dabbed at his mouth with his napkin. She thought he was going to put it on the table and request that they leave for the convent immediately, but he only said, “If we’re going to stay through the meal, I’m going to need more whiskey.”
“Make it a single for me. We can go once we finish our appetizers. There’s no point in rushing, as the nuns probably won’t let us in even if Serephine did end up over there.”
Colin settled back in his chair. “Thank you for doing this.”
“Don’t get any foolish ideas. I’m not doing this out of love for you. Kendell was the driving force behind the seven gates that hold you prisoner in hell. Since my grandmother turned this realm over to me, I suppose that makes me the warden. Serephine is an innocent victim of your evil doings. I won’t be responsible for her added suffering in my dimension.”
He grabbed the whiskey from the waiter and took a drink before the man had an opportunity to put it on the table. “What do I have to do to win you over?”
“Are you asking romantically or professionally? Even though you’ve unburdened your soul about Serephine, I’m still unclear if this is supposed to be a date or a business dinner.”
He set his half-finished drink on the table. “Would you entertain the possibility that my intentions are both?”
“In your case? No. Either you’re trying to win my heart so I’ll accept your plan and follow you no matter what you wish to do, or you’re trying to soften my opinion of you by showing me what a noble plan you’ve hatched. Either way, there is an ulterior desire, and your actions toward me are merely a means to an end.”
The appetizers were nearly gone. If he planned on anything more than a walk to the convent, time was running out.
“You never have thought very much of me,” he said.
Clever. Now you’ve got me considering your positive attributes. “I admire your cunning. Even with our team of people from varying backgrounds, we’ve had a hard time keeping up with your shenanigans. Each time we think you’ll go right, you turn left, but we all know there’s an ultimate destination out there somewhere. You’ve just been skilled in keeping it a secret.”
“I told you my plan. Is it really so hard to believe I want to end human death?”
She was down to her last spoonful of shrimp. “But that’s not your ending point. The question is, what do you do with all those people you save? In my experience, God and the devil are two sides of the same coin of dominance. Unless you intend on tossing away the dichotomy and letting people live as they wish, I have no reason to trust you.”
* * *
Colin wondered if Sanguine was intentionally dragging her feet, or if having wings had somehow affected her ability to walk at a decent pace. “I know I invited you on a date, and a nice leisurely stroll after dinner is kind of romantic, but do you think you could move a little faster? We’re kind of beyond the gazing-at-the-stars section of the evening.”
“I just didn’t want you tripping into the gutter. You downed that last whiskey pretty fast. Would you prefer that I took you in my arms and flew us to the convent?”
He winced at the idea of being so subservient to a woman. “I can walk just fine, thank you very much. I’d just rather not wake the nuns up. They tend to be grumpy enough during the day.”
“You’re assuming that they’re even going to open their gates to us.”
The nuns might not be the common enemy that would unit Colin and Sanguine, but they did provide a shared focus—and one over which he held some leverage. “They wouldn’t dare keep me out after all the money I’ve donated.”
“I guess we’ll find out soon enough. If Serephine is only a ghost, the nuns might not be much help. And even if she did make it into your prepared vessel, she might not figure out where her mother ended up. She was just a child when she committed suicide. Her mother didn’t enter the convent until long after Serephine had entered Guinee.”
He hammered his fist against the solid-wood door of the abbey. “Stop making excuses to cover if you’re wrong. I can’t handle someone not standing up for their ideas, just as much as you hate indirectness.”
The door to the convent opened all the way, revealing the Reverend Mother in her torn, dirty habit. “You’d better come with me.”
At least the woman walked faster than Sanguine, but the buildings still weren’t getting closer as quickly as Colin would have liked.
“Do you have my daughter?”
The old woman flapped her arms like Sanguine did when she was about to take flight. “We have someone who’s very mixed up. As you two are the only actual beings in this realm, I have to assume one of you is responsible for this mess.”
The Reverend Mother stopped at the door to the meeting room. “I won’t be joining you.” She opened the door and thrust Colin and Sanguine in before closing and latching it tight.
Colin thought he’d met every form of angry interdimensional being possible, but seeing Miss Fleur fly at him with eyes blazing, hair erupting like lightning, and teeth bared made her the equal of Agnes Delarosa in her hurricane.
“What have you done to our daughter?” Miss Fleur’s voice rattled the stained glass windows.
Colin was in no mood to fight with another emotional female. “Is she here?”
“Every word in that question presents a new problem. Here would imply a single dimension. She is questionable in that the being we’re holding is more crazed animal than human. Even is leaves me wondering. Haven’t you done enough to Serephine? Why couldn’t you let that poor, sweet, innocent soul rest in peace?”
Sanguine spread her wings. The gesture at least calmed down Fleurentine’s outrage. “Can I see her?”
Colin stood next to his winged angel. “The sooner the better.”
Fleurentine waved her bony finger at him. “Not you, just her. You’re not going any closer to our daughter than this room where I can keep an eye on you. I must have been a fool thinking there was any vestige of the Archibald I remembered. He never would have done this to our daughter—though when she found you were so evil that she thought it necessary to kill herself over your actions, that should have been my first clue as to your true nature. I’m beginning to understand what Serephine detected in you. And I’d thought her death was about your brothels.”
“If you think I’m standing here while Sanguine goes and checks on our daughter, then this place has turned your brain into mush.” His anger was getting the better of him. “I can still help.”
“The hell you can.” Miss Fleur grabbed him by the lapel and dragged him through the long meeting hall. Sanguine flapped her wings to keep up.
At the end of the stone hallway, a balcony
overlooked a sunken room lined with thin dormitory mattresses. A thick pane of glass separated the observers from the incarcerated. On the floor of the cell, a childlike animal ran on all fours as fast as she could and slammed headfirst into the padded wall. Her screams must have echoed clear up to the bell tower above, but the sound was filled less with pain than rage.
Brother Aramis emerged from the side office. “The Reverend Mother called me the minute they found this unfortunate wandering the streets. The Church used to call her affliction being possessed. In most of those cases, lost souls were trapped between dimensions. Exorcisms were really nothing more than an attempt at reconnecting a person to their reality. But what you’ve done is beyond our ability to help. There’s no reality for her to connect to. Her time is wrong. Her body is not her own. And she has no business being in hell. You’ve truly created a monster. All the Church and I can do is give her what peace we can.”
Colin gripped the balcony railing to prevent taking a swing at the cleric. “By locking her in a dungeon?” He had never in his life wanted to resort to bodily harm more than he did at that moment.
“By reducing her stimulations to a minimum. In her condition, every movement or sound is amplified and distorted to the point that a normal human brain can’t process the inputs. Of course, as she is just a child—in both body and spirit—she has even less ability to understand what’s happening. Down there, she’s not as subjected to the demonic hallucinations that are all too real for her.”
Colin turned to Sanguine in despair. “Help her.”
Sanguine leaned on the railing and spread her wings. She looked every bit the guardian angel. “I only have control of what my grandmother built. I do know of two people who have experience with this sort of thing. If you thought winning me over was a challenge, you’re going to have to up your game to convince Kendell and Myles to come help.”
52
“I suppose our first stop should be Delphine’s.” Myles had never trusted the voodoo practitioner, but he had to confess that no one knew more about interdimensional travel than she did. The cane was like a spaceship, and so far, he’d been little more than the monkey strapped to the seat, pretending he understood the controls. Why can’t someone give me a simple instruction manual for that damn thing?
Kendell sat on the floor of their apartment, brushing out Cheesecake’s winter fur. “Even though Papa Ghede said we couldn’t use Guinee as our portal, you don’t think the loas might simply look the other way? After all, their leader set us on this mission. We have used the cane to walk into Guinee before. Surely, they could put off their construction project long enough for us to save a soul.”
“Even if we did pass through Guinee, that route to hell only works if I remain in the doorway between dimensions, holding the portal open. I’m not standing by while you go risking your neck again. Besides, Papa Ghede said not to. If the loas do manage to seal the hole between dimensions, we really will be screwed in hell. Then there’s Colin to consider. Since he has accessed the fourth gate and I’m in charge of number five, he’ll be looking for me. I’m not going into hiding just so he can steal someone I love in order to force me into the open. This time, I’m facing him head-on.”
Doughnut Hole gave a defiant bark of agreement, but Cheesecake looked at Kendell and whimpered.
Kendell cleaned the thick white-and-black fur from the brush. “I’m with my dog. You taking on Colin seems like a bad idea, especially while in his hell dimension.”
“We’re talking about a couple of steps down the road. Until we figure out how to bodily travel to hell, we’re just speculating. My conflict with Colin will come to a head sooner or later. All I’m saying is if I am in hell, he’ll have no reason to hold you hostage.” Myles headed for the closet to grab his cane.
“I’m not up for another voodoo-totem spaceship ride between dimensions.” Her voice came through clearly even though she was in a different room. The apartment was small enough that no one ever had to yell.
“That trip was purely spiritual anyway,” Myles said. “The cane is the key to interdimensional travel, both metaphysical and bodily. Last time, using that totem was the only means Delphine could suggest for leading Colin on our little cat-and-mouse chase. I just need to understand how to use this staff. Then crossing dimensions should be as easy as moving from one room into the next.”
“Don’t you think some things are better off not known?” she asked.
He stood in the living room doorway—cane in hand and dog sitting at attention next to his leg. “You don’t have to join me if you don’t want to.”
Her frown with head tilted was a look he knew all too well. “Of course I’m coming with you,” she said. “I just thought we should look at this from all sides first.”
At least you didn’t say you were playing the devil’s advocate. “I think the time for speculation on the best course to heal Serephine is over.” Myles leaned down and petted Doughnut Hole’s head. “Stay here and keep an eye on things.”
As they walked the handful of blocks to the perfumery with its hidden voodoo library, Myles tried to remember everything he’d learned about crossing dimensions. “If we don’t get this right, I’m worried we’ll become as messed up as you were coming out of Colin’s vault. It seems like we’re trying to step from a waiting platform onto a train traveling at a high speed with its doors closed.”
She nodded. “There are only a couple of ways to get us both into hell, but none of them seem easy. The more I think about it, the more I agree with you that sneaking through Guinee won’t work. We’re both going to be needed in hell, and if you’re holding the gate open, we’ll be shorthanded. We do have the gates from hell to life, but using those is way too dangerous. Colin stole my soul through the seventh gate, which I’m watching, and it sounds like he’s pulled a similar trick in nabbing Serephine. The interdimensional embassies are only good for talking to the other side, not crossing over. And we don’t have a voodoo artifact that’s half in this dimension and half in the other like we did when the band drove into hell. The cane is our last resort.”
Myles wondered how the simple stick in his hand could be so powerful. “Hopefully, Delphine knows more than she’s let on. But then, that wouldn’t be anything new.”
“Be nice.” Kendell pushed open the door to Scratch and Sniff.
Delphine sat behind the counter in her usual African-motif wrap. “What new voodoo nightmare have you gotten into today?”
Myles lifted the cane. “I need to understand how to use this thing. Kendell and I have to get to hell to save Serephine Malveaux.”
“Of course you do.” The woman’s sarcastic tone made Myles consider hitting her over the head with the stick.
As always, Kendell did her best to smooth the interactions. “Papa Ghede himself has given us this mission. You know how the loas feel about losing a soul.”
“It’s never happened before.” Delphine hung the closed sign out front before leading them to the hidden library in the back room. “I remember Marie Laveau writing something about Baron Malveaux’s use of the cane to move through dimensions.”
Myles remained standing, letting Kendell take the single guest chair in the small room while Delphine thumbed through her journals. “We’re going to need to transport more than just one person.”
“Next you’re going tell me you want to take your dogs on the journey again.” Delphine set the large leather-bound ledger on the table. “Here it is. Apparently, Baron Archibald Malveaux didn’t die before entering Guinee.”
“What?” Kendell bolted from her chair to look at the book.
“Marie claims they never found a body. The authorities attributed his disappearance to foul play, but the case remained unsolved.” Delphine looked up at Myles. “Maybe Chief of Police Laroque has more on the official answer of what happened to his ancestor, but according to Marie, he used the cane to cross over. Since he never returned, she couldn’t verify her assumption.”
“Great,
” Myles said. “Kendell and I have already walked into Guinee by using the cane, so the fact that Baron Malveaux might have done the same thing isn’t exactly news—though, since he left Guinee to possess my body, I’m a little suspicious of Marie’s conclusion. If I’d been alive in the late 1800s and wanted to kill that asshole, I’m pretty sure I could have made the body disappear in the swamps. And in case you’ve forgotten, you did imprison his soul in your little voodoo totem. Had you not done that, Lincoln Laroque wouldn’t have mysteriously gotten his hands on it and drunk the baron’s essence to become Colin Malveaux. Those things wouldn’t be doable if Baron Malveaux were still in his own body. Sounds to me like Marie got it wrong.”
“Don’t get snippy with me. I’m just relaying what Marie wrote. It’s not like I’ve had that cane to play with. Why haven’t you performed one of your psychometric tricks to read its past? You must have figured something out by now—or have you just been hiding the walking stick under your bed, hoping it won’t bite you in the ass?”
“Both of you, stop,” Kendell said. “We have to assume the cane needs to be taught how to do things similar to how a dog is trained. Even if Baron Malveaux did eventually die, his first crossing into Guinee might have been in bodily form. Once he crossed back, he wasn’t likely to need Marie’s services any longer. And as Myles said, we have used the cane to cross into the realm of the loas, so we know the staff can do that trick already. Someone had to be the first. If we assume it was Baron Malveaux, Colin would retain the memory of how he did it.”
Myles didn’t see how their enemy understanding what they had to do was any help at all. “Even better. All I need to do is hand him the cane so he can show me how it works. That should end well.”