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

  She made a quick double check to be sure she was physically alone if not spiritually. At a crumbling crypt, she turned into the alleyway of the dead dedicated to the city’s indigent. According to the carved headstone, the tomb stacked with coffins filled with deceased children from the local orphanage dated to the yellow fever epidemic. She felt along the front of a chamber at the bottom of the crypt until she located the two loose bricks. After yanking them out, she reached in and grabbed the journal off the top of the small wooden coffin. The pen was still in the spiraled metal binding.

  She sat with her back against the tomb and pulled the hood of her rain slicker over the book before opening the diary to the last entry. True to her word, Dooly had recorded Doodlebug’s meeting at the airport with Nocturne.

  She clicked the pen and started writing. We know the Laroques are creating a dragon and demon militia, which doesn’t leave me much choice other than to accept Nocturne’s offer of an alliance with the Cormorant. I only hope I’m not too late. When I return to the Quarter, I’ll send word that I want to meet with the birdwoman. I just hope she didn’t spot me running interference with the harvesters while Sere and Jennifer escaped hell. Covering for those two while keeping my own identity a secret is proving to be a complex juggling act. If Sere makes another foray into hell, she’d better not come any closer than Sanguine stashed in the baron’s old vault. That gate to hell is close enough. Doodlebug tapped the end of the pen against her mouth. Though thinking out an idea on paper helped her see the issues from another perspective, she needed to keep Dooly focused on what she needed to do so the girl wouldn’t go flying off into mental tangents. She put the pen back to the page.

  Of more importance, there’s a masquerade ball at the Laroque mansion. The only way for Marjory to inhabit her doppelgänger and meet with the Cormorant would be if there’s a matching event on your side. I need you to pull out your fiddle. We don’t dare wear the headband. If Marjory has compromised the network, I would stand out like I was wearing a superhero costume. Then they’ll either round me up or make sure the information they share throws us off course.

  Much as I hate to, I’ll need to follow your projection like a good little doppelgänger. Get us in there, Dooly. And don’t let anyone know about the plan.

  Doodlebug slipped back into the Quarter as surreptitiously as a teenager sneaking back into her parents’ house after curfew. Hunting harvesters along the residential streets of the Quarter involved stealth and quickness. Once one learned of her presence, the others would be drawn in like vultures to a fresh kill.

  Across from a clothing store that specialized in skimpy attire fit for strippers, she pressed her body against the iron security gate of a narrow brick-walled passage. She drew the katana sword from the sheath at her back. While watching the street, she slipped the metal blade between the gate and the frame. With one firm twist, she had the door open.

  Lacking tourists, most retail clerks had learned the hard way to keep their shops locked up. Harvesters just loved confined spaces safe from the hurricane to do their dirty work, and service personnel who followed the lead of their reals made for easy pickings. As a shop catering to the nightlife workers, however, the clothing store stocked with slips of fabric over biologically correct mannequins had no choice but to keep its doors open.

  She didn’t have long to wait. A girl not much older than Doodlebug ran past her, shivering in torn fishnet stockings and six-inch clear-plastic heels. With a quick look down the street, the pole-dancer darted out from the curb toward the shop.

  The harvester that had been stalking the girl was so focused on his prey that he plowed into Doodlebug, presumably hoping to also use the small hiding space. She held her sword at his throat before he could respond and pulled him into the arched access. “I’ll just help myself to that sickle.” She reached for his curved blade under his cape while holding her weapon against his throat. The edge was pressed so firmly into his dried leather flesh that if there had been blood in his desiccated veins it would have been dripping off the flat metal surface. “I want you to take a message to your leader.”

  His sneer might have been meant as a laugh—she couldn’t be sure with all of the hissing. “We don’t have leaders.”

  “Don’t try to be cute with me. Tell Nocturne I want to talk to the Cormorant.”

  “You don’t impress me as a true believer.”

  She pulled the sword hard enough against his neck that she could feel the vertebrae vibrate against the metal like a bow against a violin string. “I didn’t say I wanted to worship her, only talk.”

  “The Cormorant doesn’t communicate with mindless drones.”

  With only slightly more pressure, she could sever the harvester’s head from his spine. She swung him around so she could peer into his ugly face but made sure the action wasn’t accompanied by his head rolling off his body. She repositioned the blade against his throat. “Do I impress you as a typical doppelgänger?”

  “The fact remains, she doesn’t show herself to mirrors.”

  “Then I guess I have no use for you.” She sawed the sword across his neck. From the feeling of bone being cut, she knew he would never again turn his head correctly.

  “Wait. I’ll deliver your message to Nocturne. If the Cormorant would listen to anyone, it would be the head of our order.”

  “Now was that so hard?” She jerked the blade out from his leathered flesh. As he squirmed around and ran, she had an overwhelming urge to toss the sword and finish him off, but she’d done what she’d meant to. Finding another harvester while resisting the impulse to dismember him wasn’t a temptation she wanted to repeat.

  3

  Once the harvester had run clear from her bloodlust, Doodlebug headed back toward Canal Street. Though sleeping and eating weren’t part of her normal routine, too many death-defying activities strung together without a break made her irritable. Across the busy thoroughfare, the Crown Astoria stood among the other hotels like an elegant old woman from another time waiting in line with her friends for the passing streetcar.

  As Doodlebug crossed the tracks in the middle of the neutral zone, the familiar flapping overhead made her dive for the flood water that covered the street up to her shins. The long talons of the dragon’s webbed foot caught her around the chest before she could hit the ground. He lifted her high over the power lines like a bird who’d just snatched a fish from the river.

  She beat on the monster’s scaly leg. “Let me go!”

  “Relax.” He drew out the hissing sound for so long, she wondered if he’d really spoken or if she’d just imagined it.

  “Why? Where are you taking me?”

  “To someone who can vouch for my honorable intentions.” He flew high above the elegant old hotels and curved toward the Mississippi River.

  Like a lightning rod working in reverse, the abandoned World Trade Center, which towered thirty-three stories over the water, discharged bolts of electricity into the storm. In life, the skyscraper had been the repository of paranormal artifacts. In hell, the critical mass of magical mementoes had created a paranormal energy meltdown. Though Doodlebug had never cared much for the science of her reality, some facts were hard to ignore, like the shafts of sizzling light that lit up the Quarter. “Would you mind not flying us into the paranormal reactor?”

  The dragon folded his wings to his body and dove toward the water. The intense blasts of electricity overhead made the thin skin covering his dark flight bones glow red. “You’re safe with me.”

  “I highly doubt that.” She pulled at his long yellow toenail that curved around her ribs. Even a couple of stories up, if she could break free, she had a shot at hitting the water and floating away.

  He curled his talons together, locking her in place.

  “Damn you! Let me go, you flapping dinosaur,” she yelled in frustration. “You’re probably some friggin’ bat in life that flew into the professor’s equipment.”

  “You can call me Smoke.” With two fl
aps of his enormous wings, they were away from the river.

  She looked behind her to estimate their direction. No matter where she ended up, it was bound to be a long walk back to the city.

  Time had never made much sense to Doodlebug. Dooly had tried to explain the concept once, but she might as well have been talking advanced calculus for all Doodlebug understood or cared. With hell stuck at midnight and the unending hurricane, the passing of the sun and moon overhead were as alien to Doodlebug as harvesters and demons were to Dooly. And since Doodlebug didn’t suffer from hunger or exhaustion, even the bodily needs that apparently developed with time were baffling. As far as she was concerned, things happened, then other things happened. But how time fit into that equation was a mystery. As the scaly claw that encircled Doodlebug’s torso started rubbing red marks on her skin, however, she wondered if the irritation was anything like Dooly’s explanation of hunger. “Are we there yet?”

  “Relax.”

  “I’m getting really tired of hearing you say that.” She pounded again on the dragon’s claw. Though with the cypress treetops passing under her feet, if she were to escape his grasp, she would be in serious danger of being skewered or bashed unconscious during her fall to the swampy ground.

  “Then stop asking,” he hissed.

  She folded her arms over his talon. “Why are you doing this to me?”

  “You need my help.”

  She looked up along his armored neck. Long ivory-yellow fangs extended below his chin. “And there’s someone out in this godforsaken forest who’s going to convince me you’re not out to kill me? Seems more likely that I’m being hauled to your nest as food for your family of flamers.”

  “We’re here.” He glided down toward a large field of tall grass surrounded by oak and cypress trees. Above a high knoll, he curved his wings and spread his talons, dropping her before he landed farther out in the swamp.

  She glared up at his face, which reached the tree tops. “Now what?”

  He let out a short burst of fire. “Head that way. You’ll see the path. She’s waiting for you.”

  Doodlebug stomped off toward the trees without turning back. Smoke was a snarky, egotistical bully, and she wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of looking over his gigantic frame.

  When she was out of the meadow and out of his sight, she pulled the headband out of the bag nestled inside her shirt. “If this does go south, Dooly should see it firsthand so she can tell the others.” She pulled her wet, matted hair back from her face and slipped on the terry-cloth band.

  “Jeez, I’m in the middle of a busking gig on Decatur. Can’t this wait?” Dooly asked.

  “There’s a forty-foot-tall dragon behind me who claims to be my friend. Apparently, someone out here wants to have a chat. There’s a very good possibility I’m walking into a trap.”

  “Can’t you do anything without getting into trouble? I thought we were supposed to be getting ready for the party. It’s tomorrow tonight, just so you know.”

  Doodlebug looked up through the storm-tossed forest canopy. “It’s always tonight here. I don’t understand your reference to tomorrow. You deal with getting us gussied up, and I’ll deal with this latest nightmare. I just needed to hook you up in case this turns out to be as bad an idea as I think it will.” As she took a step farther into the forest, her foot sank six inches into the mud. “I friggin’ hate the swamp.” She yanked her foot out of the muck but had to lean down to retrieve her tennis shoe and slip it back on.

  With the newly added layer of mud inside the water-logged sneaker, her foot slid around even more than usual. Instead of sticking to the deer path that cut through the brush, she headed toward higher ground in hopes of not falling on her ass.

  “Looking for me?” At the top of the incline, a woman stood under the limbs of a massive oak tree. Her clean and dry green dress sparkled like it had been coated with glitter.

  “Were you the one who sent the dragon to kidnap me?”

  The ethereal woman stepped away from the protective tree branches. “I strongly doubt anyone makes you do anything you don’t want to. The handle of your katana is still sticking out over your shoulder. If you’d wanted to leave, either you’d have lost it in battle, or you’d be covered in dragon blood.”

  Doodlebug felt over her neck to the sword handle. “Maybe I just didn’t want to fall to my death. Besides, your lizard had me pretty tightly in his grasp.” The rain passed right through the woman in the green dress as if she were a ghost. “I know you. You were present when Jennifer’s soul left hell and was returned to her body in life.”

  “I’m Chloe Aberrant, swamp witch, friend to Sanguine Delarosa, and guardian of what her grandmother, Agnes Delarosa, created.”

  “Hell’s version of Mother Nature. I’ve heard the stories.” Doodlebug wasn’t impressed with the title. Knowing who forged the bars of the prison cell didn’t make much difference to the rival gangs locked inside. As for Sanguine Delarosa, hell’s only angel was more myth than fact even if Sere had tasked Doodlebug with finding her. “Did we really have to meet out here?”

  “I can’t exactly show myself in the Crown Astoria. Even swamp witches have limitations. Come back to my cabin, and I’ll answer all of the questions I can.” Chloe headed into the forest.

  Doodlebug followed the woman, whose feet glided over the marshy ground. For every step Chloe took, Doodlebug left a two-inch-deep sloppy impression. Under a section of woven branches so thick even the rain couldn’t penetrate, the witch stopped beside a pair of tree trunks. Doodlebug didn’t see the door in the thin gap until Chloe opened it and stepped inside.

  She followed the swamp witch into a room that smelled of incense and mold. Witch farts, Dooly joked.

  Doodlebug had to stifle her laugh at the shared mental quip. “You could have found a less abductive way of talking to me. Anything would have beat being flown out to the swamp by a winged bat-lizard.”

  “Other methods would have risked being noticed by your enemies, and I’m not sure how far to trust those around Sere.” The witch’s green eyes were as intoxicating as absinthe.

  Doodlebug looked around the cabin as an excuse to break eye contact. “We have that in common. At least in hell, I only have to deal with ghosts and goblins, harvesters and freaks. Liars and cheats are a whole other-world type of demons.”

  The woman shimmered in the candlelight. “I suppose the hell nursery rhyme is as good a place to start as any. As one of the few doppelgänger freaks pursuing harvesters, you already understand the second part of the saying.” Chloe spread her arms, letting the light pass through her. “I guess as a member of one of the ghost communities, I can offer you a bit of an explanation regarding the spectral beings. I used to mentally project into hell to talk to Sanguine while she raised Sere. I still do to keep an eye on things, but I wasn’t the only apparition. Kendell and her gang used seven gates between life and hell to keep tabs on the devil Malveaux that they’d cast to this dimension. Being spotted was always a concern. Stories have a way of taking on lives of their own.”

  Doodlebug wondered how Jennifer floating through the Quarter might have affected the old nursery rhyme, but that wasn’t something Chloe, as a resident of life, was likely to know. “Goblins, then.”

  Chloe settled into a chair covered with a crocheted blanket. “Drugs do weird things to people. The professor hadn’t expected to snag individuals in the tenement buildings that neighbored the French Quarter as blueprints for his mannequins. A doppelgänger in hell is as much a projection of how a person sees himself as their physical appearance. Take a crazy man who keeps talking to himself in life, hop him up on cocaine, and you get a three-headed gargoyle in hell constantly at war with himself.”

  “I’ve noticed some strange-looking beasts around the cemetery. You’re saying those goblins are actually deranged doppelgängers? Why aren’t those monsters all over the city?”

  Chloe shrugged. “They have short lifespans. Demented doppelgängers lose
their way in hell, so they miss their body’s updates. A running program is only as good as the software behind it. Unlike a regular doppelgänger, who might become a harvester, if a goblin doesn’t get periodic updates, it risks getting shut down and the spirit released as a ghost. Even if they do follow their real’s lives, druggies among the living have a tendency to sober up or take something new. The chemically induced change in their real affects the goblin in fundamental ways that aren’t always compatible with their previous image. The tortured beasts can only handle so many modifications before they end their existence one way or another.”

  Doodlebug took a seat on the sagging couch. “I still don’t understand why there’s a divide.”

  “Ah, the mysterious coma in the nursery rhyme. Before you entered the cemetery, you had to jump some streetcar tracks—overhead-run electric lines. That power comes straight from the World Trade Center. A doppelgänger is powered from the professor’s equipment, which allows them to wander anywhere in the city—at least until they need an update from their real’s projection. Since the harvesters and goblins can’t rely on the professor’s equipment, they need a more direct power connection to keep them going. Those power lines feed the monsters, but they also work like an electric security fence.”

  Doodlebug pulled out her sword. “So the big question is can I kill a goblin?” She aimed the tip at Chloe. “Or a ghost?”

  The swamp witch passed her hand through the sharp blade. “If you’re talking about a mental projection like me, no. But you already figured that out when Jennifer was here. As for a conventional goblin-originating ghost, being disconnected from a body and without the professor’s computer to run home to, the lost spirits eventually dissipate like morning fog.”