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

  She snuck farther behind the guitarist in front of her as she noticed Nocturne leading the processional. I should have expected him. If he spots me, I’m screwed.

  Being seven feet tall, the Cormorant filled the doorway and looked over the heads of the guests as if expecting them to bow down to her. Her long, muscular human legs looked to have come off of a fashion model as she sashayed down the harvester-lined runway. Every one of the fiends obediently lowered his head as she passed. As she approached Marjory, the Cormorant—with all the grace of a ballet dancer—extended her thin arm, which ended in a perfectly manicured hand. Judging by the downward curled fingers, the gesture wasn’t an offered handshake. To Dooly’s amazement, the most powerful businesswoman in New Orleans bent over slightly to kiss the hand. “We meet at last.”

  The Cormorant turned away from the old woman. The glossy-black feathers that covered her body like a one-piece swimsuit displayed not a single feminine curve. She spread her wings, blocking out both Laroques as if to proclaim that they no longer mattered. “When I enter a room, I expect my subjects to show the correct reverence.” Though the birdwoman’s human vocal cords came with the replacement neck and chin, forming the words with the beak resulted in chirping at the end of the sentence.

  Lewis, who had been standing in front of Dooly, was one of the first to fall to his knees. To keep from being spotted, she quickly followed his lead. As the crowd knelt, the birdwoman lowered her wings.

  From Doodlebug’s position at the side of the grand meeting, she saw that both Marjory and her brother had remained standing.

  Madam Laroque’s ridged stance and clenched fists made it clear she was holding in her displeasure. “Now that the niceties are completed, I’ve cleared the adjoining library of furniture for your comfort. We have a lot to discuss.”

  The Cormorant aimed her beak over the crowd. “My loyal disciples will remain guard over this hall.”

  Marjory circled in front of the Cormorant. “Your troops are, of course, welcome to join the festivities. But any security of this mansion passes through my brother.”

  Regardless of who was in charge, one thing was clear: Doodlebug as Dooly wouldn’t be sneaking into the meeting or making a discrete escape. All she could do was keep playing and hope she remained hidden from Nocturne.

  As the night wore on, Doodlebug found that by focusing on what she saw while Dooly played allowed her a small section of self-awareness in their shared brain. She’d lost track of how many pieces had been performed on the violin. Her fingers hurt. Fighting involved the use of all of her body’s muscles. Playing focused way too much attention on precise movements while the rest of her was expected to remain at attention. When the grand double doors finally opened and Dooly lowered the instrument, she couldn’t straighten out her fingers. About damn time, Doodlebug thought.

  Waiting is always the hard part, Dooly responded. Provided it’s not in anticipation of a death sentence.

  Marjory and the Cormorant marched beside each other to the head of the room. With a slight bow from the birdwoman, Marjory raised her head to the crowd. “We have formed an alliance.”

  Harvesters and doppelgängers applauded with solemn reverence. Gerald edged close to his sister’s side. “Shouldn’t we remove the hired help?”

  Marjory turned to him and smiled. “No need. What I have to say concerns them as well—word needs to spread among the lower classes.”

  He bowed and resumed his position next to her.

  “I’ll start with the most basic concern we all share: any member of the Laroque family will be spared from the harvesters. Additionally, any doppelgänger can earn favor with the family by bowing down to the Cormorant.” She turned toward the buffet table, with the gull-feathered wait staff behind it, and the neighboring musicians. “But understand that such privilege comes at a price. Those of you with nothing else to offer can present yourselves to a harvester site, where a token body part will suffice as payment. In return, you will be given one of these.” She held up what looked like a golden Mardi Gras doubloon. Turning it in the light, she displayed a silhouette of herself on one side and the Cormorant on the other.

  “Fat lot of good that does,” Lewis said out of the corner of his mouth. “Any doppelgänger who loses a body part is already safe from the monsters.”

  Marjory palmed the coin like a two-bit hustler. “In return, the Cormorant will have the Laroque family’s allegiance in this domain. She is the sovereign spirit of the damned, and we will revere her as such as she aids us in our quest for immortality among the living. My mission remains clear: each of you here, my family, will find unity—doppelgänger and real—into immortality in life. To accomplish this, our first task is to locate Sere Mal-Laurette. She has the information I need to complete my tests. She must not be killed by human, demon, or harvester.”

  That’s quite the bluff considering her bridge of the damned has been destroyed, Doodlebug thought to Dooly. Though with one human soul at the ready in the professor’s hell laboratory, she could still follow through on her testing. If it works, there will be no stopping her in creating another connection.

  A man in a full-feathered tuxedo stepped under the chandelier. “What about Creed and Devlin? We demand retribution for the harm the devil’s daughter has wrought on our kin.”

  Marjory held her ebony cane in front of her. “To achieve our goals, some sacrifices must be made. Creed’s doppelgänger and Devlin—both human and copy—will not be forgotten. But once I have Sere’s knowledge, she will be given over to the Cormorant. No action will be taken by us that harms the devil’s daughter. If our agreement conflicts with your lust for vengeance, you’re free to leave.”

  The tips of the long feathers on the man’s mask quivered. “I meant no disrespect. Does the deity have any clue where to look for our adversary?”

  Squawking and chirping preceded the birdwoman’s words. “The last we saw of her, she was entering the professor’s offices here in hell with the spirit of her real. With his security system preventing me from stepping through the door, and my harvesters unable to cross the streetcar tracks, we’ve been unable to verify if she is still inside. This is why I need your submission. I could prevail on the doppelgänger residents of the Quarter, but they don’t have the resources to discover a means of entry.”

  “And we’re not likely to join forces, with her harvesters hunting us like rabbits,” the guitarist mumbled to Doodlebug.

  “We’ll do what we can to break into the laboratory, but it’s not like Sere to hide,” Marjory said. “She’ll make herself known soon enough, either in hell or life. In either dimension, we need to be ready.”

  Nocturne’s bones rattled as he stepped forward from the line of harvesters. “Getting into the laboratory isn’t just about finding the immortal.”

  Though the Cormorant was unable to make the beak form a smile, Doodlebug could swear she saw the muscles of the birdwoman’s cheeks pull at the appendage. “My lieutenant is correct.” She turned to Marjory. “Madam Laroque has a spy working on the inside.”

  Marjory stood as stiff as her walking stick. “Like finding Sere Mal-Laurette, we share a need to access the computers that run hell. However, I haven’t been able to contact Andy since my attempt at raising Devlin to immortal status. Every doppelgänger that we command is tasked with searching hell to find him. If we can’t locate the little prick, we’ll need to figure out another way around the professor’s security system.”

  Doodlebug marveled at how artfully the woman had concealed her secret weapon. Without anything else to do, Aloysius’s soul stuck in the professor’s hell-based equipment would be busily figuring out how to circumvent the security system. If either of the women knew anything about Sere’s true fate, neither of them let on. The Cormorant strutted out of the room without a clue that she was likely being played if not outright lied to.

  8

  With a nod from Gerald Laroque, the musicians lowered their instruments for the last time. As Dooly let
out a long sigh, Doodlebug held her body at attention. The different actions separated the two like a ziplock bag being opened. Thank you, Dooly. Doodlebug’s final thought to the girl was less out of gratitude than relief.

  Like having just gained possession of a new sword, Doodlebug, while still on stage, discretely ran her hands over her updated body to ascertain any new weaknesses or strengths. The hair was shorter than she was used to, but when it came to fighting, that could prove helpful. The dress was even worse than the peasant blouse and maid skirt she’d arrived in, but her motorcycle was close enough that—with the benefit of the rain slicker she’d left in the foyer—she could change into something more hell appropriate before the dress was whisked off her body by the storm. The wide-heeled dominatrix boots, however, weren’t going to be of much use in the mud. “Good thing I threw a set of Keds in my backpack. I just need to get back to the motorcycle without landing in the gutter.”

  As the last of the guests wandered off after the Cormorant into the storm, Doodlebug followed the rest of the hired help as they lined up at the kitchen door for their payment. She stuck close to the guitarist. Though the majority of her worries had passed, she wasn’t yet out of danger. A gold doubloon was pressed into her palm as she exited the ballroom. She turned the coin in her fingers, wondering if it really would protect a doppelgänger if presented to a harvester.

  “Not bad for a night’s work.” Lewis stashed his coin under the frayed top edge of his guitar case.

  She grabbed her slicker and secured it around her body before heading out the back door. Reaching into her pocket, she toyed with the terry-cloth headband. She slipped it on, more to keep the bangs from the new haircut out of her eyes than to contact Dooly. “I wouldn’t put a lot of trust in anything you heard tonight. Doppelgängers might not outright lie, but the version of Marjory Laroque we heard tonight was heavily under the influence of her real. From my experience, people from the other side lie as part of their daily existence.”

  Lewis walked beside her into the storm. “And the Cormorant? It was her teachings that led us to truth. You must believe what she had to say.”

  The religious undertones made Doodlebug shiver even more than the driving rain. “She may be the greatest manipulator of them all.”

  He shrugged and stared into the wind. “Doesn’t matter to me. So long as those in the Quarter think these pieces of gold will finally keep them safe, they’ll offer everything they have to get one. All I have to do is hang on to mine until the rumors grow out of proportion, then I’ll live like a king.”

  “So long as others don’t sacrifice their limbs at harvester bars first.” The image of the parents voluntarily sacrificing body parts still haunted Doodlebug.

  “Do you honestly think those monsters will live up to the agreement the Cormorant made with Marjory? Even if the harvesters do bow down to the bird deity, not many worshipers truly followed the tenets of their spiritual leaders. I doubt anything will really change between harvesters and doppelgängers. There’s too much history and demand for body parts for there to be peace.” He shook his guitar case, rattling the medallion nestled in the top as if making sure it wouldn’t fall out. “Each time someone tries for a coin like a carousel’s brass ring and has it snatched out of their grasp, the more this doubloon will be worth.”

  “Back at the party, you were the one who said agreeing to the Cormorant’s terms didn’t matter. The harvesters need to keep their victims alive.”

  He held the case to his chest. “True, but between your crew guarding the unfortunates and the harvester sites collecting body parts in exchange for freedom, there won’t be as many of us to hunt. Of course, some of the harvesters will volunteer for the Cormorant’s cause, but most of those fiends aren’t exactly joiners. The average street harvester will become desperate, and that’s never good.”

  “If you’re so paranoid about what the harvesters will do, why not keep the coin for yourself?”

  His smile made her feel like a woman who’d just accepted a drink from the wrong guy at a bar. “You’re forgetting that I got you into the party tonight. You’re my ace in the hole, Doppel Avenger. You owe me. Besides, now I know the players. I could tell the Laroques about you, or if a harvester started carving into me, I might tell them where to find you.”

  “You’re just a ray of sunshine, aren’t you?”

  “Like either one of us knows what that is.” He turned toward the river. “Stay safe, my guardian angel.”

  She held the violin by the neck and tightened the bow string before heading deeper into the Garden District. Without a sword, the thin wooden ax-shaped fiddle and garrote-like bow would be all she had for defense until she reached her motorcycle’s arsenal.

  Freed from her connection to Dooly and feeling ganged up on as a result of the union of the two powerful women and dejected about the loss of her savior, all Doodlebug wanted was to get back to her simple life of hunting harvesters in the Quarter.

  The feeling of being alone was nothing new to her. Even among the crowd Dooly hung out with, the real girl maintained a healthy mistrust of those around her. As the girl’s mirror in hell, Doodlebug had even less of a reason to put her faith in the human shadows that surrounded her. Experience had taught her that everyone was out for themselves and imagining anything different was a sure way of getting hurt or killed.

  She hadn’t trusted Nocturne when he’d approached her about forming an alliance with the Cormorant, so it wasn’t a huge letdown when the birdwoman had joined forces with Marjory Laroque. At least neither of them had mentioned going after the Doppel Avenger. That might change if Doodlebug kept decapitating harvesters, or worse, if someone discovered that she had access to the professor’s laboratory. “What am I supposed to do now?”

  “You need an ally,” Dooly said.

  Doodlebug yanked off the headband she’d absentmindedly put on with the trench coat. She didn’t need advice from the peanut gallery in life. Her thoughts weren’t meant to be shared, even if she was speaking them out loud. “I’m still a small fry compared to the big fish those two women are after. So long as they’re still focused on finding Sere, I just need to stay out of their sights. The longer I spend trying to figure out what to do, however, the more time Marjory will have to create her immortal. Damn it, Dooly is right.” Other than the street people, however, Doodlebug couldn’t see any options regarding who she could turn to in hell.

  If one of her contingents had been discovered walking the streets alone and unarmed like Doodlebug was doing, they would have earned a firm reprimand, but she found the combination of danger and solitude oddly comforting. She could be killed at any moment, releasing her from the mission of saving the world for the reals. Without Sere, Doodlebug wondered how long she should continue the useless quest. “Like I even care what happens to them. Other than Dooly, there’s no one on that side of the curtain I truly need. Even Sere used me more as her fighting cock in this hell arena than giving me the respect of a fellow warrior.”

  Tossing off the melancholy was as ineffective as shaking the unending rain from her soaking-wet hair. Like the perpetual night, the feeling of despair devoured any attempt at brightening her spirit. But also like the forever darkness, it hid her in its shared cloak of the damned. “These feelings must be some spiritual hangover from mirroring Dooly.”

  She tossed the bird mask into the overflowing storm drain. Sere hadn’t been working alone. So long as Doodlebug remained loyal to the warrior’s cause, she maintained her Get Out of Hell card—if she could just find someone in life to honor it. Selfishness, like despair, was one thing every doppelgänger shared. No one would fault her for wanting something better, even if that salvation was denied every other member of her society.

  “Give me your coin.” From the angle of the knife tip that penetrated too low against the back of her ribs, Doodlebug assessed that her assailant wasn’t a skilled assassin.

  She leaned back slightly to test her theory. A professional would have all
owed the knife to cut into her. The guy behind her eased off of his pressure. It would be easy to just give it to him. You don’t need it. In response as much to the unwanted thought as the physical danger, Doodlebug lunged forward, away from the blade, swung to her right, trapped the back of the doppelgänger boy’s neck with the curve of the violin, and set the bow against his throat. She drew the course horsehair across his neck like a sword to emphasis her willingness to cut his head from his neck.

  His knife splashed into the water at their feet. “Please don’t.” His whimpering was music to her ears.

  “Why shouldn’t I? You were about to gut me. You entitled rich brats think you can take whatever you want.” She leaned in and ran the rosin-coated horsehair over his Adam’s apple.

  “I’m begging you for mercy. I never would have stabbed you. I just needed the coin.”

  She kept the bow at his throat. “How did you know about the coin? The party just let out.”

  “Mr. Gerald put out word that the buskers leaving the event had stolen special medallions and he’d pay to get them back.”

  She probably shouldn’t have been surprised. “Lying son of a…” She let up on the tension just enough for the boy to wiggle free. He ran off into the storm so fast she doubted she could have caught him even with her motorcycle.

  9

  Back in her own clothes and with her weapons at hand, she pushed the motorcycle back to the street. It wasn’t until she got on and fired up the beast that she realized she didn’t know where to go. “Even if I am done living in the Crown Astoria, I’ll still need someplace close to the river.”

  Her swords dangled against her legs like dogs begging to be taken out to play, and after the upscale party, she was itching for a fight. With just the slightest twist of the throttle, the Honda crept down the tree-covered residential street like a great cat stalking its prey. “Where there’s one arrogant prick out to pick pockets, there’s sure to be more.”