Hell Away from Home (The Devil's Daughter Book 5) Page 16

  The vault bounced hard off the tiled promenade before Smoke was able to flap his wings and get them back over the water. “Any thoughts on where we’re going?” he roared.

  She didn’t want to broadcast their destination for every bird to hear. “Head for home.”

  “Got it.” He arched his head back toward the top of the building and the circling birds then let out a burst of fire sufficient to clear their path.

  The hard thrusts of his wings, which sent his tail arcing up then down, made her dizzy, but the hard banking turns that indicated they were in the heart of the battle had ended. Between his flapping, flailing, and flaming, Doodlebug wondered how she was managing to hang on. When she finally pried her eyes open again, it was to look into the fury of the hurricane. She peered over her shoulder.

  Far behind, but still keeping up her pursuit of the vault, the Cormorant beat her wings so hard and fast it was clear she was pissed. Her flocks of smaller birds were no more than dots along the city skyline.

  Doodlebug patted Smoke’s tail. “Once you get clear of the Cormorant, we need to head to Sanguine’s island. Just fly north along the river that runs near Chloe’s cabin. And if you can manage it, you might try to avoid bashing the vault into the trees.”

  “I just need a navigator, not a back-of-the-tail driver.”

  15

  When Smoke finally landed, the hurricane no longer beat on Doodlebug’s face. The light of a full moon illuminated the tall grass around her.

  “You can let go now,” Smoke said.

  Her arms, legs, and body were so firmly planted against his tail, she wondered if he was losing feeling in the tip from lack of circulation. “I don’t think I can.”

  He swished the end so fast, she ended up tumbling into the field. “You need to stay focused. We’re not finished. The Cormorant might not know the way out here, but with her aerial spies, she’s sure to home in eventually. She’s also not our only problem. Any thoughts on how to open that treasure chest?”

  At the opposite side of the meadow, the iron box lay on its side. She stiffly got to her feet, walked over to it, and ran her hands over the cold metal. “At least it’s fully here. That’s a start.” She tugged at the locking wheel, but it refused to give. “It was worth a try.”

  Smoke lay flat on the grass, facing the box. “What do we know about the vault?”

  She walked around it, searching for some clue about how it worked. “Originally, it was part of the World Trade Center, meant to hold the devil’s personal possessions. When Baron Malveaux removed it from the building, he started the chain reaction that resulted in the runaway energy field.”

  Smoke’s sky-blue eyes were as big as the locking wheel. “That old baron must have figured out how to open it.”

  “Yep, and Marjory has his journals. I’ll bet anything that’s how Andy learned how to spring the trap locking Sanguine inside for the Cormorant.”

  Flame drifted out of his snout. “Andy sounds like quite the turncoat. First he worked for the professor. Then he joined forces with Madam Laroque. And if we’re to believe that the Cormorant is responsible for tricking Sanguine inside that box, he must have been in cahoots with her too.” Smoke’s pronunciation of cahoots sent flames clear to the tree line.

  Moral judgments weren’t something Doodlebug worried much about. “Andy was trying to survive the best way he knew how. But his part of the story is only the most recent chapter in the vault’s history. After the baron stole the box and figured out how to open it, he captured a doppelgänger girl, Jenna, and stashed her inside.”

  “And then he pulled Sere’s soul from Guinee and put her in there as well. I’m familiar with the story.”

  She frowned at the arrogant dragon. “I’m just trying to talk out the history in the hope of finding some clue. Once the baron had finished his little soul-exchange science experiment, the vault sat idle until Kendell and her gang came along. She got stuck in it once. I’ll bet you didn’t know that. It would seem a spirit is able to enter or leave—bypassing the door—via their connected energy to another spirit.”

  “Why don’t you just say love?”

  She kicked at the box, knowing love was an emotion that, as a marionette, she would likely never experience. “Love is only one form of connection.” As much as she didn’t want to, Doodlebug pulled out the headband. “Maybe someone on that side has come up with an idea. It’s not like they’ve had anything else to do.” She slipped it over her wind-and-rain-matted hair.

  Sitting in the professor’s lounge chair, Dooly beat on the arm with two pencils while the others talked. “What’s up, buttercup?”

  Doodlebug wondered how the girl couldn’t see what an annoyance she was to others. “I can’t figure out how to open the vault.”

  “Did you try saying open sesame?”

  Things got a bit hazy in Doodlebug’s sight. “Have you been drinking?”

  “There’s not much else for me to do. It’s not like anyone listens to my suggestions anyway. Bart left a bottle of Jack Daniels in his leather jacket—sure beats beer.” She laughed at what only she thought was a joke.

  Doodlebug wished Sere could be linked in to the conversation so she wouldn’t have to deal with the gutter punk’s snarky attitude on her own. She rubbed at the headband, trying to get some sense of the warrior. “Is Sere wearing our connection?”

  “How would I know?”

  Doodlebug put her hand on the door of the iron vault. “Tell Kendell to call Bart again. I’m assuming that once Sere and Jennifer joined their life forces and got trapped in the vault, the Cormorant pulled them into hell, similar to what she did when those two met over coffee. He needs to put the headband on her. Since this form or communication is more a melding of energies than talking over a cellular connection, if the vault detects that she’s both inside and outside the box, maybe it will short-circuit and open.”

  “Since when did you get all thinkie?” Dooly asked.

  “Since my existence depends on it. Now please do what I asked.”

  Dooly conveyed the message to the others. “The professor says that’s kind of brilliant, but we both know he’s not the smartest of scientists.” As much as Doodlebug hated to do it, she had to agree with Dooly’s assessment, even if she didn’t say so.

  With the girl being half sloshed and Sere only a distant phantom, Doodlebug had to lean against the door of the vault to keep from slumping to the ground as the connection split into thirds. Like shadows cast by different light sources on the same body, Doodlebug couldn’t be sure which phantom image represented Sere. Though she couldn’t communicate with the woman, she sensed that Sere mentally had her hand on the other side of the iron wall.

  A solid click resounded from deep within the metal structure. As if they were being unlocked from the box, Sere and Jennifer’s spirits returned to their bodies among the living, leaving only one shadow behind.

  “Good job, Doodlebug,” Sere said over their connection. “That was some quick thinking, hooking me up to Bart. His love was strong enough to see both me and Jennifer back to our bodies.”

  Doodlebug wasn’t so sure that everything was hunky-dory. Now that Sere was fully in her body and she could identify the secondary presence as being that of Jennifer, the third member of the interconnected beings came into focus. The Cormorant was using Sere’s headband connection to home in on the vault’s location like a fisherman cautiously reeling in the line. “You’d better prepare yourself. Things are about to get ugly.” The soft grass of the meadow cushioned Doodlebug’s fall.

  Doodlebug regained consciousness, opened her eyes, and marveled at the moonlight as it glowed through the diaphanous white feathers of the angel that stood over her. The woman held out the headband in her elegant hand. “I took this off of you.”

  Doodlebug struggled to sit up against the vault. “You must be Sanguine.”

  The wash of air from Smoke’s wings as he took flight ruffled Doodlebug’s hair. The angel looked to the horizon in the
direction Smoke was headed. Images in the facets of the strange woman’s cut-crystal eyes displayed moments in the past and future. “Hopefully, we’ll have time for introductions later. The Cormorant is coming for you and the vault, and I’m not sure that dragon of yours is up for another round.” She took to the air and followed Smoke over the trees.

  “Just like an angel not to stick around. Not even a thanks or anything.” Doodlebug grabbed the vault’s wheel to help steady her as she stood. The sound of wings flapping diminished as the angel and dragon headed out to do battle with the birdwoman.

  When the two magical winged creatures were lost back in the storm, the peaceful sounds of insects playing in the dark were cut by a man’s voice. “I’ll have you step away from the vault and hand over that sickle if you don’t mind.”

  She fell back to her knee as she turned toward the voice from the dark cypress forest. “You!”

  The doppelgänger of Aloysius Laroque stepped out of the trees holding a hideous wooden totem under his arm. A horde of doppelgänger demons loomed in the shadows behind him. Doodlebug looked up at the flock of Marjory’s dragons as they took to the air from the branches, flapping and hissing. With only one sickle, drained from the psychic connection, and battered from the fight and flight, she was in no condition to deal with a potential devil backed up by demons and dragons. “What do you want with me?”

  “I told you that you hadn’t seen the last of me. Now toss me your blade. I don’t want you getting injured this time.”

  His concern for her welfare couldn’t be a good thing, but she pulled out the sickle anyway. Other than disseminating and reincarnating back on Esplanade, there wasn’t much point in doing battle against overwhelming odds. So long as I’m here, hopefully, I can be of some use in stopping this fool. She tossed the weapon halfway to him and moved away from the vault. “That box won’t do you any good. You need your real’s soul first, and we both know he’s stuck in the professor’s laboratory. Even with all of those scaly little bats you’ve got up there, you aren’t going to be able to budge this box let alone drag it back to New Orleans.”

  He sauntered up to her with a smile that made her sick inside. “You really are behind, little girl. I’ve got everything I need right here in this field.”

  She glanced down at the totem, which looked frighteningly familiar. “Nice purse, but did you really have your spies follow me up to the World Trade Center just so you could steal a souvenir?”

  He held the wooden face with its sewn-shut leather eyes, nose, and mouth toward her. In its chest was a blue-glass spirit jar filled with black fluid. “With all of the Cormorant’s birds flapping their brains out at the tower—not to mention your dragon—you weren’t exactly hard to find. My real worry was how I was going to get into the building, but then you took care of that when you busted out of the restaurant. You’re right about one thing: my dragons are too small to fly with the vault, and I never would have been able to use it inside the World Trade Center—and of course there was the angel locked inside to deal with. Fortunately, because of you, I only needed my dragons to fly me up to the roof so I could retrieve one of the baron’s old spirit totems. As you must have guessed, my real—being inside the professor’s computer—was able to deactivate the security system.” He turned the sculpture toward his face. “I just had to grab this wooden head and fly back to the professor’s lab. Marjory’s transference of his essence into this container was one of the simpler instructions the baron left in his journal.”

  The pieces of the impending devil’s puzzle were coming together all too fast. Doodlebug was down to grasping at straws. “Moving a soul from one inanimate object to another is one thing, but the incantation that binds you two together is more than just having a magic box and reading some words out of an old book. Marjory would still need a power cord from life to hell in order to perform the ritual, and all those souls she stole have been returned to Baron Samedi. You may have the pieces, but you don’t have the power source to make them work.”

  He ran a finger along her cheek like a rapist about to take advantage of her. “There’s still one thread left of the connection. You.” With the totem in hand, he turned and walked into the vault. When the door closed, the field around Doodlebug transitioned to a hologram of the bank president’s office.

  “We meet at last.” Marjory Laroque closed her laptop and laced her fingers together on top of it like a school teacher about to hand out a failing grade.

  The different realities were coming on too fast for Doodlebug to process. One thing is for sure—I’m never coming to this haunted island again. For a supposedly secret and secure hideaway, it seems like every one of Sere’s enemies knows how to get here. She ran through the recent events, desperate to find any weakness in the woman’s position. “I get how Aloysius found me at the World Trade Center. The Cormorant isn’t exactly known for keeping a low profile. But those fiery bats of his aren’t any better fliers than birdwoman’s flock of followers. So how did you know to find me out here on Sanguine’s island?”

  Marjory performed her reappearing golden medallion trick and held the coin between her fingers. “I’ll bet you thought this was just a token to protect your doppelfools from the harvesters. If we consider the professor as relying on old-fashioned phone-line technology for his computer communications, you could think of these as my modern-day cell towers. I’d planned on a fully covered network, but thanks to your warning, only a handful of doppelgängers have acquired my enhanced technology—not that it matters. So long as you held on to that coin in your pocket, I always knew where you were.”

  But it was your brother who sent the rich punks out to steal the coins, which is what made me spread the warning. Interesting. Doodlebug pulled the coin out of her pants, where she’d absentmindedly stashed it after the party. Her knees wobbled from the weight of failure on her shoulders. “So you’ve been spying on me this whole time? And I’d guess that’s how you figured out where to find my diary.”

  “Oh, I didn’t rely just on your coin. Every doppelgänger who agreed to be saved from the harvesters and accepted a coin has been spying for me, whether they knew it or not. Fortunately, I never really trusted the Cormorant, so your precious little book only confirmed what I already suspected.”

  The realization of complete failure forced Doodlebug to face the inevitable. “So what happens now?”

  Marjory’s sickly, sinister smile was even more ghastly than Aloysius’s had been. “I’m going to drain every last spark of fake spirit from that collection of dust particles you inhabit to jump-start my devil. Once you’re nothing more than a dark stain on the ground, he’ll march his squadron right over your remains, through the gate, and out of hell. And there’s not a damn thing you can do about it.”

  Doodlebug curled into the fetal position as she suffered the familiar sapping of energy that bound her spirit to her body. Though having every one of her molecules used as a conduit for transferring a foreign spirit between dimensions had never been pleasant, at least in the past, she hadn’t endured the torture alone. Through the shared agony, the demons and human souls had been able to maintain their senses of identity. This time, however, there was no one to lean on.

  As Marjory rubbed the gold coin and read from the leather-bound book, Doodlebug lost control of her thoughts. Each word the woman in life spoke seemed to be an original thought inside Doodlebug’s mind that came out through her mouth. Like a wire forced to endure too much electricity, she vibrated red hot as the incantation bound her to both the professor’s computer and the vault via the golden coin.

  Inside the box, the two versions of Aloysius whipped and blended together like the ingredients of a smoothie that had been tossed into a food processor, and Doodlebug was the lump of frozen berries that was banging around the sides. I have to keep it together. If I break up, it won’t just be back to Esplanade’s neutral ground for me. I’ll end up a part of the devil.

  You’re already a part of me. Aloysius’s thought
confirmed that she still had a remnant of self-identity.

  She latched on to what remained of her existence: learning from Sere, her existence in hell protecting the less fortunate, seeing life through the eyes of Dooly, and having a mission worthy of the suffering. Each time she focused on one of the memories, however, it got knocked off of her and blended into the evil concoction.

  The human and doppelgänger versions of Aloysius Laroque locked onto each other like spinning magnets that finally lined up correctly. He took the controls of his doppelgänger body, hauling Doodlebug along as his guide. “How do I regenerate?”

  “Go fuck yourself.” Though she’d viewed swearing as a release of emotional energy that was better directed toward battle, she hoped he would view the expletive as being more literal than figurative.

  He squeezed his fists as a manifestation of pulling energy from his surroundings. Doodlebug lost the last remnant of her identity as exabytes of data that had been gathered from the human version of Aloysius to generate his doppelgänger body flowed from the professor’s computers into the iron box. All he would ever need for eternal life was downloaded into his human-occupied computer brain.

  Aloysius spread his arms, feeling like a new god. “Nothing can harm this body that I can’t fix. Healing a broken bone is as simple as reloading a faulty program. And with this enhanced brain, I’ll be able to create new programs that will make me more than just immortal. That angel’s wings or that dragon’s body are nothing more than enhanced software that they have no control over. I, however, will be the one directing my own abilities. Nothing can stop me.”

  Marjory appeared on the side of the vault as if a view screen had been activated. “I’m glad you’re enjoying your new body, but don’t forget who gave it to you. After we’ve run enough tests to prove your viability, I’ll be joining you as a fellow immortal. Eventually, all of our family will share the gift, so don’t get cocky.”