Hell Away from Home (The Devil's Daughter Book 5) Read online

  Hell Away from Home

  The Devil’s Daughter (book 5)

  G.A. Chase

  Bayou Moon Press, LLC

  Copyright © 2019 by G.A. Chase

  First Edition 2019

  Cover Art by Ravven

  Editing by Red Adept

  ISBN eBook: 978-1-940299-85-3

  ISBN print: 978-1-940299-84-6

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in, or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locals, business establishments, or persons, living or dead, are entirely coincidental.

  Bayou Moon Press, LLC

  Contents

  About This Book

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Book List

  About the Author

  About This Book

  All Doodlebug wanted was to get out of hell unscathed. Having paid the price for killing Sere’s mentor by beheading countless harvesters, demons, and all manner of monsters, she really thought she’d earned passage through the hellmouth. But that was before her savior went missing.

  With a contingent of demon-riding dragons, a new devil on the rise, and her primary adversary on the sidelines, Marjory Laroque is no longer content with simply conducting mischief in life. In hell, there are far fewer forces to overcome.

  With nowhere else to turn, Doodlebug must take on what she’d always thought to be impossible: saving the hell’s angel that raised her mentor and heroine. To achieve her mission, Doodlebug will need to face her deepest fears—and hell’s most powerful forces—while accepting help from those she fundamentally mistrusts.

  ***

  Want to know what happens next to Sere? Find the next book in the series here:

  Hell and Back

  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

  1

  Doodlebug hammered the throttle of the Honda Blackbird motorcycle. As the freeway traffic struggled to maintain traction and direction in the unrelenting hurricane, she shot the superbike through each gap like a sniper firing a bullet between obstacles at a far-off target. It wasn’t the cars and trucks, however, that made her heart beat as fast and hard as the metal pistons between her legs.

  “Flippin’, flappin’ demons.” A half mile ahead and riding on the wind, nine dragons with demonic doppelgängers on their backs sailed over the freeway traffic. Unless she was able to get ahead of the pack and somehow entice them down to street level, they would curve away from civilization and out toward the hellmouth. If they escaped her dimension and entered the land of the living, her agreement with Sere Mal-Laurette would be in jeopardy. “You’re not revoking my Get Out of Hell card.”

  She leaned low over the gas tank and snugged her legs into the motorcycle’s indentations before hitting the foot shifter. By not letting off the gas, she increased the force, thus bringing the front tire off the ground. The Honda felt as if it were attempting to fly up to do battle with the dragons, but even in hell, the motorcycle had limitations.

  Doodlebug settled the bike back onto the pavement as the two trucks ahead of her bashed their trailers against each other. Instead of swerving to a side, she aimed the headlight at the spray of sparks. The two rigs separated in front of her like the Red Sea parting before Moses.

  Once she cleared the two cabs, the last dragon in line was so close she could almost reach out and pull his tail. “Come down here and fight me, you scaly chicken.” She made a mental note to include a grappling hook in the arsenal of weapons she carried on the motorcycle.

  She was so intent on the monster’s wedge-shaped tail that she almost missed the huge flying structure that blocked off the driving rain. Long ago she’d learned not to let distractions divide her attention from a fight. From the dragon’s abrupt change in direction, having something overhead must have spooked him.

  Doodlebug took her hand off the handlebar and grabbed the sickle she kept sheathed behind the motorcycle cowling. She had to stand on the foot pegs to get her small sixteen-year-old body high enough to swing the blade into the snake-like tail. With one quick slice, the severed end hit her in the face as the monster screamed and fell back behind her. “Looks like that got your attention.” She dropped back onto the motorcycle seat to prevent the high-speed bike from getting away from her.

  As though she were descended on by a cloud of bats, wings flapped all around her. She hit the brakes and skidded through traffic toward the median strip to avoid being bashed by the flying lizards.

  Hopping off the motorcycle, she pulled a second harvester sickle from the side of the bike. A dragon so small its demon rider’s legs dangled below the wings screeched out a flame that barely reached her handlebars. Lunging in front of the bike, Doodlebug beheaded the creature with one side-armed swing to its neck as it passed overhead. The demon rider tumbled to the pavement far enough behind her that he didn’t warrant her immediate attention.

  Two more dragons attempted a coordinated attack, one from each side. Being accustomed to fighting in hell’s unrelenting rain, she swung the blades with ease in the relative calm under the curious structure overhead, catching the beasts in the chest and wings. A tangled mass of dragon parts surrounded her as the overhead protection finally blew away. The remaining little flamers tumbled in its wake, their unskilled riders plunging to the asphalt.

  Through the blood, wings, and scaly bodies scattered on the roadway, the demons advanced on Doodlebug’s position. “At least we’re down to a fight I understand.” Beheading doppelgängers intent on escaping hell wasn’t as risky as taking on harvesters in the city, but desperation and cunning could make even the normally harmless human doubles a threat to contend with. “All at once, or one at a time?”

  A demon stepped out from the pack. “I’ll take a shot.” As he stood in the middle of the freeway, the cars around him came to a stop as if wanting to watch the contest. “Best me, and the rest of my contingent will turn around and head home.”

  She didn’t need to ask what would happen if she lost. Being beheaded only to be reincarnated as the scared little bunny of a girl back on Esplanade Avenue’s neutral ground was a threat she didn’t need spelled out. Twice was enough to realize death wasn’t really an escape from hell’s tortures. “Where did you dig up the dragons?”

  “Explanations aren’t part of the agreement.” He held out his matching sickles like he’d expected the confrontation.

  Not that she had much of a choice, but she wanted to hear him say the words one more time. “If I win, your demons go home.”

  The demon swished the blades through the hurricane-driven rain. “You’ve been hanging around reals for too long, Doppel Avenger. Doppelgängers don’t lie.”

  She s
tepped out from behind the concrete divider. “That’s not to say we can’t, simply that we don’t.”

  “The Cormorant’s teachings are meant to free us from the sins of humanity.” His tone of religious reverence made her want to puke.

  The edict to always tell the truth seemed designed to give the powerful birdwoman the upper hand. Having developed in hell without having practiced deception, however, made Doodlebug and every doppelgänger she knew terrible at delivering even the mildest fib. “Then let’s dance.”

  The demon came at her with one curved blade slicing toward her neck while he spun the other like a baton in line with her shoulder. She’d seen the move enough times to recognize the harvester feint. Those brutes were never out to kill a doppelgänger. That would defeat the purpose of removing a limb. The instinctual reaction to counter the decapitation was meant to expose the shoulder to a clean slice. Instead of making the obvious move of countering the sword coming at her throat, Doodlebug swung one blade low toward his midsection and thrust the dull end of her defending counterstrike toward his face. Catching him around the waist with one sickle, she planted the kiss of steel hard to his nose.

  Surprisingly, he maintained his hold on both weapons, resulting in a large gash to her side under the arm and another to the wrist of her embracing hand. She yanked hard at the sword to his back while spinning down and away from his cutting edges.

  He managed to make the same escape while enduring only slightly worse wounds than she’d suffered. His next attack was far less subtle. Like a child throwing a temper tantrum, he swung both swords over his head and brought them crashing down like fists toward her on the ground.

  Rolling backward, she avoided the strikes, which planted the tips of his blades hard into the asphalt.

  Stop playing defense. She didn’t know if the thought was her own admonition or Dooly’s coming across from the headband that connected the mirrored pair.

  “I know how to fight.” She popped up to her feet with blades at the ready. Being connected to Dooly helped the wounds on her side and wrist heal before her adversary freed his weapons.

  Then why are you letting him take the lead?

  The demon rushed at her, brandishing his blades like a wild man. Even if the dude had skills, he had little self-control. Once a demon was overcome by bloodlust, his actions were as unpredictable as a lightning strike.

  “Who says I am?” Doodlebug crossed her arms then brought the sharp edges together like a pair of scissors snipping the arm off a paper doll. The demon spun away at the last moment, saving his limb from dismemberment, but he still lost his hand at the wrist.

  She held her bloody sickles over the severed appendage. “You’re down a hand. You can’t beat me. Quit now, and I’ll let you all leave in peace.”

  He held up the gory stump. Joint by joint, fingers emerged out of the mangled flesh until the whole hand had reformed. “You’re not the only one with superpowers.”

  That much of an energy draw would have left me balled on the floor, crying until I passed out. Doodlebug knew that thought had originated with Dooly. Back in life, the girl had sat on the dirty sidewalk in the French Quarter, terrified that she might be called on for such a dramatic healing.

  Doodlebug swished the blades through the air, casting raindrops of blood. “Marjory Laroque sent you.” Only Sere Mal-Laurette’s primary rival had the information needed to create a bond between real and doppelgänger that would be capable of that kind of rapid repair. “You must be another one of her nephews. She’s going to run out of heirs at the rate she’s going. Give me your name so I can let the others know about the next failed chosen one.”

  He bowed in mock reverence. “Aloysius Laroque, at your decapitating service, but I’d rather make my introduction as the new devil in my own time.” He had the blade back in his newly formed hand before she could make her attack.

  This guy’s starting to piss me off.

  “Tell me about it,” Doodlebug muttered under her breath. If the fiend was willing to draw that heavily on his real, only decapitation would stop him.

  He circled Doodlebug in front of the stopped traffic. If Marjory could summon dragons and create a healing bridge between this newest potential devil and his real, Doodlebug had to accept that the solid vehicular battering rams were also at the woman’s beck and call.

  She crouched low with her sickles at the ready. “This is just between us.”

  His blades turned as he shrugged. “So long as I’m alive, this fight is between us. If you do manage to lob off my head, however, I don’t really have a say in what happens to you.”

  Let’s get this over with.

  Between Dooly’s nagging and the demon’s gibes, Doodlebug was losing her patience, which was never a good thing in battles to the death. She gripped the handles of her sickles and felt the demon side of her take hold. Everything in her sight turned blood red. “One of us is going down.” She kept the demon between her and the traffic. Once she decapitated him, she would only have a few moments to get back to her motorcycle and hightail it out of there before the cars and trucks came at her like a demonic demolition derby.

  The demon wiped his brow with the tip of his sword, leaving a smear of her blood dripping along his forehead like war paint.

  When he came at her, their blades clashed like thunderclaps. With her demon side in control, Doodlebug barely noticed her moves and countermoves. She and her weapons performed as one. Cuts formed and healed on both her and her adversary.

  I must bring him in closer. Doodlebug’s thought was as much to calm Dooly’s fears as a personal reminder. A hard, downward slash from the demon cut the sickle’s handle in her grasp. She allowed the momentum of the strike to swing her hand behind her as she dropped the leather-wrapped wooden stub. After firmly grasping the pistol under the back of her shirt, she brought it up to his chin. As his curved blade opened a line of deeply cut flesh along her ribs, she pulled the trigger. His head exploded in a firework of blood, bone, and brain matter that splattered on the roadway.

  Though her enemy was dismembered, she wasn’t out of the woods. Holding her side together with her hand, Doodlebug ran for the small protection of the concrete divider before the cars started rolling over the demon’s remains.

  “I can’t ride with this open wound.” She crouched down between the overlapping partition and the motorcycle angled toward the far lanes. Cars and trucks began plowing into each other in their attempt to get to her, but physics overrode even hell’s desires. The colliding vehicles careened off the divider and flew past her, creating a barrier even the remaining demons dared not cross.

  From downwind, the obstruction that had shielded her from the storm drew her attention from her sliced flesh. “That’s not structural. If it was, it would only fold along the middle and keep flying away. That thing is fighting the wind.” As the wings that covered the freeway beat hard toward her, she made out the axe-shaped head, webbed feet, and long tail of the monstrous dragon. The beast tossed the five remaining smaller flamers to the ground in front of her like a cat bringing an offering of mice to his mistress. The creature continued to fly low over the freeway. Bursts of fire flew from his snout, incinerating the oncoming traffic, thus providing Doodlebug a clear shot back to hell’s version of New Orleans.

  “What was that?” Dooly asked over their psychic connection. “You never told me anything about dragons.”

  “That’s the first time I’ve encountered them, but hell is filled with all kinds of beasts.” Doodlebug remained sitting against the end of the concrete partition while her wounds finished healing. Ghost and goblins, harvesters and freaks. The doppelgänger nursery rhyme had a way reasserting earworm status at the worst of times.

  “How much of this encounter do you want me to relay to the others?” Dooly hadn’t gotten off the beer-splattered stoop since the demon had sliced into Doodlebug’s ribcage. At least the gutter-punk girl hadn’t passed out.

  “Talk to Sere alone. I’d talk to her mysel
f, but I don’t trust Professor Yates’s equipment. His turncoat assistant, Andy, had control of it for too long. Tell her about the new attempt to immortalize a Laroque heir. Hopefully, she can find something about the real Aloysius that might prove useful in finding and defeating whatever Marjory has in mind to throw at us next. I imagine Sere has already figured something was brewing.”

  “Do you think Marjory will stick with regenerating the dude you just faced? Seems like she might choose someone else since he lost.”

  Doodlebug felt the flesh closing under her grasp. “Either way, that woman has got her eyes on another member of her clan.”

  “What about the dragons?” From their connection, it was clear the girl back in life had a fascination with the mythical flying beasts.

  “I don’t need Sere freaking out about another of hell’s goblins. She’ll just tell me to investigate where they came from. Tell her to watch her ass. She might want to double whatever backup plan she has in place in case I fail to stop the buggers from getting to the hellmouth.” Even Lefty, Sere’s thirty-foot-long alligator, was going to have his jaws full trying to stop demons and dragons from getting past him.

  Dooly struggled to her feet. “What are you going to do?” Through their mental connection, Doodlebug could tell the question was less out of curiosity than worry about when Dooly might be called on again.

  “If Madam Laroque has figured out how to use dragons to fly her demons to the hellmouth, I need to discover more about the big fella who defeated them.”

  “You don’t think the battle was just a dragon turf war?”

  Doodlebug had never paid much attention to the behaviors of other hell species other than the harvesters. “Hopefully, you’re right. If that big boy is hanging out along the border of the city and the swamp, Marjory’s attempts at calling forth her demon horde are doomed before she even gets started.”