Wendigo Rising: A Yancy Lazarus Novel (Episode Three) (Yancy Lazarus Series Book 3)

by James Hunter

  They might’ve been homeless methheads, but that didn’t give anyone the right to tie ’em up, hold ’em against their will, and treat ’em like animals. Like slaves. Anger reared up inside me like some mean-ass mama bear watching someone mistreat her delinquent, wayward, druggie cubs. Let’s face it, I’m basically a dirt-caked hobo myself, so these were my people.

  A part of me wanted to throw subtlety to the wind and pull a Moses instead: Walk right out into the open, demand these furry clowns let my people go, then bring on some Old Testament ass-smiting if they didn’t comply. Although God and I aren’t exactly on friendly terms, I’ll give Him this—sometimes, wrathful judgment and seventy-five-pound hailstones of doom really are the only way to get shit done.

  Winona tensed up around me, her muscles going taut, her hair bristling against my skin, as though she could sense the fury radiating off me. Once more something thin and faint brushed against my mental barriers. I lowered my guard, letting her words trickle through, a faint whisper in my mind:

  Patience. All will be made right. Wait for the Kinslayer.

  Yeah, patience. Always patience. I pushed my growing indignation away, setting it onto the back burner of my soul where it could simmer on low heat. That way it’d be nice and hot when the time finally came to serve up a heaping plate of assault and battery. I’ve always heard revenge is best served cold, but I prefer it melt-your-face-off hot with some barbeque on the side.

  The two human drivers moved forward—their motions slow, deliberate, and painfully non-threatening—taking possession of the three captives and hustling them into the panel van. The passenger, a short, bulky guy, also balding, but pretty ripped, loaded up into the back with the prisoners and pulled the sliding door shut behind him. Presumably to prepare the captives for transport, while also, quite wisely, getting his ass the hell out of Dodge.

  Something about the passenger tickled at the back of my mind. I didn’t recognize him, but he seemed oddly familiar. It was in the way he stood and moved: back straight, a cocksure swagger in his step, one hand resting near his belt, as though preparing to draw a weapon.

  I pushed the thought away, my attention snapping back to the Sasquatches. Even from thirty feet away, the tension in the air was palpable—the Chiye-tanka clearly weren’t all that hunky-dory with their human teammates.

  The third Bigfoot guard crouched low and hunched in on himself, squeezing his bulky frame through the narrow doorway. Once clear of the motorhome, he stood up to his full height, his head clearing the roof by a good half a foot. “You have your test subjects, now leave,” he said, his voice a dull monotone.

  The dumpy driver hesitated, running one hand across his pudgy face. “I, I …” He faltered and turned away, giving the van a once-over. After a moment he turned back toward the hairy guards, determination, or maybe fear, carved deeply into the lines of his face. The question was, what could make a guy like this more scared than facing down three borderline-hostile Bigfeet? “That’s to say,” he continued, “the Doc … well, he says we need more blood. His orders, not mine, you understand. I’m just doing my job is all.” He shrugged apologetically and twisted a golden wedding band hugging one fat finger.

  A handful of trees behind the motorhome shivered and swayed as something pushed past ’em and strode into the clearing, its gait stately, sure, feral, and confident as a lion strutting his stuff across the rolling Serengeti. And when I say something, what I mean is, I had no figgin’ clue what in the hell I was looking at. Human? Oh no. Not even in the same ballpark. I mean, if human beings were tennis, then this guy was Australian rugby—assuming rugby players wore spiked pads and wielded chainsaws. He kinda sorta resembled the Bigfoot guards, but only because he was also giant and fuzzy.

  The son of a bitch was easily as tall as Chief Kong McGrumpy-pants, but was clearly designed for a different purpose. Kong was all thick muscle and squat limbs, but this guy was a friggin’ beanpole: tall and gaunt, with the kind of ropy sinew you see on speed skaters or wolves too long without a fresh kill. I still bet he was plenty strong enough to rip me into a hundred bite-sized mage nuggets, especially since he sported a mean set of razor-tipped claws on the end of his long, slender fingers.

  The strangeness didn’t end there, however. Whereas Kong, Winona, and the three other Chiye-tanka I’d seen thus far were some shade of black, brown, or red, this ugly S.O.B was albino white, his hair pale and ghostly with splotches of creamy skin showing through in spots. His head was all kinds of screwy too—skull elongated and lumpy, his muzzle more closely resembling a wolf’s than an ape’s, and his eyes … well, the goofy bastard didn’t actually have eyes. Just maggot pale flesh stretched tight over his eye sockets.

  Creepy, and sorta familiar, but I was sure I’d never run across a baddie like this before. Guess this was just a night for deja vu.

  Now—because my life isn’t bizarre enough—this freak show was also wearing a golden tiara. An honest to goodness tiara. The kind of dainty trinket you might expect to see on a Disney princess: all delicate, lacelike curves and studded with diamonds with a fat ol’ ruby right in the center. The tiara would’ve been as funny as a tuxedo-wearing-bear-riding-a-tricycle except the damn thing reeked to high heaven of Vis-wrought power.

  “You get no more blood!” the thing said, his lips pulling back in a vicious snarl, revealing inch-long fangs instead of blunt teeth like the other Sasquatches had. “I am Achak, Chief of the People. I am Wendigo-tanka. I am no pet, no dog brought to heel before his master.” He stretched out his lanky arms, flexing his massive hands, the claws glinting red in the dying light of the day. If I were that unlucky shithead driver, I’d be hightailing it for the van, and then I’d be looking for a new pair of pants. But this dumpy guy stood his ground. I mean he was scared, sure—the tremble in his knees told me as much—but still he stood, like maybe he knew the creature was a pet on a leash, despite his protests. A rabid dog, not tame or safe, but muzzled.

  “It’s, it’s not from me,” the driver stammered, averting his gaze. “The Doc’s orders. Says he needs more viable test material. We just don’t have enough—”

  “And what care have I for the orders of man?” The Wendigo said the last word, man, as though it tasted foul in his mouth—telling, considering this asshat had murdered his family and eaten their corpses.

  “I don’t want no trouble,” the driver said, “but you know the Doc is close with the Boss. And no one wants to piss off the Boss”—he paused—“not even you.” The last was a mere whisper, but if I could pick it up with my enhanced hearing, the Wendigo sure as shit could too.

  The monstrous pale creature wheeled in a circle, arms held out like a fighter going into the ring. He lifted his snout to the darkening sky and let out a wail of challenge—one-third screech owl, one-third wolf howl, and one-third murder victim. A wave of goosebumps raced over my arms and legs.

  The goosebumps weren’t just a product of the bloodcurdling scream, either. They were due, in part, to what the dumpy driver had said: “No one wants to piss off the Boss.” I had a sinking feeling in my gut that maybe this whole Wendigo shit-storm was part of something much bigger than I’d first thought.

  What if this mess was directly related to the traitorous shitbird mage aiming to take over the world? I mean, here was a wannabe, an upstart—the Wendigo—who’d managed to get his hands on some kind of deadly Vis artifact, the tiara. That was an MO I’d seen recently. And I was in this neck of the woods to investigate the first good lead I’d found in months. The driver had even mentioned a doctor; I was looking for a doctor, too, a geneticist. What were the friggin’ odds? Since I was working as the mortal agent of Fate—literally, the Hand of Fate—I was guessing this wasn’t a coincidence.

  Probably Lady Luck would pop her head in at some point, drop me a folder with the details for yet another suicide mission, and then wish me the best of luck, which, of course, she would laugh her ass off at—Lady loved her some bad puns.

  Still, I couldn’t jump
the gun just yet. Take it from me, assumptions can get you into a lot of unnecessary and painful trouble—in this case the pain of evisceration. Besides, I wasn’t ready to kick this baddie’s teeth in without knowing a little more first, and that meant I needed to figure out what kind of power his sparkly, diamond-encrusted headgear was packing. If the Chiye-tanka were acting as out of character as Kong and Winona suggested, then that trinket was probably the culprit.

  I’ll take Evil Accessories for $1,000, Alex.

  After a few more tense beats of posturing and chest pounding—both figuratively and literally—the Wendigo lowered his arms and skulked toward the human driver, a willful pit bull obeying at last. I’ll give the driver credit, he didn’t flinch or sprint away shrieking, which said there was probably more to him than strictly met the eye. The guy pushed one hand into his jacket pocket, dug around for a second, and brought out a pair of plastic test tubes, like the ones used to draw blood at just about any medical clinic.

  The Wendigo plucked the tubes from the driver’s outstretched hand, his monstrous palm quickly swallowing the plastic containers like a Rottweiler downing a couple of hotdogs. With great care, the Wendigo extended a claw and slashed a thin line across his forearm—blood, green and viscous, oozed to the surface like mucky sewage. He pressed one of the tubes into the wound, capturing the fetid liquid as it seeped and bubbled.

  It was now or never, best to act before I lost my nerve. I whipped up my invisible probe of spirit and air—the same one I’d used to examine the veil Kong had used to mask our approach—and extended it outward, watching it slither like a snake wriggling through tall grass. Hopefully, I’d be able to use a light touch, get a read on the Wendigo and his fancy head-bling without raising an alarm, and slip out undetected. A calculated risk, but nothing ventured, nothing gained and all that sage-wisdom-jazz.

  The probe brushed up against the Wendigo without issue, splashing over his skeletal body like a fine mist. There was power at work in him, and it made me want to puke my guts out, then scrub my tongue with a belt sander. I could taste him—his aura held the tang of spoiled meat left out in the sun for a few days, then thoughtlessly thrown into a car trunk to rot for another week. There was something inside the Wendigo. The Bigfoot’s presence was obvious, but there was a second presence which had taken up residence. A demonic essence, attached to his soul.

  A positive ID of the demonic culprit was impossible without a much more detailed examination, but my guess was a greater Guttur Belua. Slimy, nasty, gluttony spirits that worked for Beelzebul, one of the actual fallen angels of heaven and a chief prince of hell. Definitely not the kind of guy you want to bump into in a dark alley—heck, Beelzebul was the kinda thing even monsters didn’t want to bump into in a dark alley.

  Really, what the Kinslayer had done wasn’t all that different from something I’d done to myself a long, long while ago, back when I was still a young mage. Like the Wendigo, I’d bound an elemental spirit, grafted it right into my soul—Cassius Aquinas, an Undine of Glimmer-Tir, who lived inside my head, attached to my subconscious mind. What the Wendigo had done was similar, only on a larger scale and fueled by some Grade-A evil power. Like a Nazi-drowning-a-bagful-of-puppies, evil.

  I shifted my construct away from the Wendigo, homing in on the tiara perched so primly atop his misshapen head. Which is when everything went to shit.

  A crow, jet-black and the size of a large rooster, uttered a terrible shriek, which brought every head up and caused my probe to falter, just a hair. Instead of slipping in undetected and stealing a glance like a pro, my probe smashed up against the tiara’s wards—the equivalent of shattering someone’s windshield while they’re sitting in the driver’s seat. Needless to say, the Wendigo’s eyeless face swiveled right toward us, locking onto our exact position. Pretty much the worst-case scenario.

  The beastly thing howled, the sound accompanied by a blinding flare of light from the crown—blood-red like the stone at the circlet’s center. The combination was disorienting and left me dizzy and blinking splotches of white light from my eyes. It was actually a good thing Winona was holding me, or I probably would’ve fallen right onto my ass. It took a few seconds for my eyes to clear, but when they did, I realized we’d stepped right into a metaphorical heap of shit. The purple veil, which had been covering us seconds before, was completely and absolutely gone, and all of the evil, villainous types were staring right at us.

  FIVE:

  The Best Made Plans

  Everything happened all at once, chaos everywhere, like a bomb blast ripping into the night with heat, energy, and hectic motion. Kong closed the distance on the malformed Wendigo, one giant fist whipping through the air like a jet-powered rocket. The albino badass took the blow on his chin and staggered back a step or two, unprepared for the abrupt onslaught.

  I only had a moment to watch the action, though, because Winona dropped me to the forest floor and rushed past me to intercept the formidable trio of Sasquatch guards. I landed rather badly on the ground—by which I mean with the grace of a brain-damaged squirrel—fumbling my gun in the process.

  I searched the ground, but it was slow going—and it didn’t help one bit that I couldn’t take my eyes off Winona. Let me just say up-front, for being a bona fide peacenik, Winona was one mean brawler. She danced among the guards, skillfully positioning her body to keep her attackers from surrounding her even as she smashed her balled fists into ribs and necks and faces. She also fought as dirty as a prison inmate backed into a corner: groin shots, biting exposed limbs, scooping up branches and brush to fling in the eyes of her opponents. My kinda lady … well, except for the giant, hairy, socially awkward part.

  The guards took their beatings in stride, handling the devastating attacks like drug addicts immune to pain, brushing off blows that would’ve put me in a pine box. She was good, but not good enough to hold off all three of those brainwashed guards indefinitely. She needed help, and one glance toward Kong told me he had his hands full to the max with the Wendigo, who had recovered from his initial surprise and was currently going to town on Kong like a hungry monkey in a banana factory. Shit was outta control, but I figured if anyone could handle the pasty freak, it was Kong.

  My hand finally brushed against the cool steel of the pistol barrel. I snatched the piece up in a hurry, slid it into its leather holster, and scrambled to my feet. I couldn’t very well shoot the Chiye-tanka guards—poor bastards were victims, too—and I needed to take the human driver alive if I could swing it.

  And speaking of the dumpy human driver, he pivoted toward me, his eyes growing wide with shock as he realized his clandestine shindig wasn’t quite so clandestine after all. His hand darted beneath his coat lapel, drawing out a compact SIG-Sauer P229, which he leveled at me before squeezing off a rapid-fire burst of shots. Apparently, he wasn’t worried about taking me alive.

  I threw out my left hand, palm forward, gathering in my will and sending up a shimmering mist of reddish light made of compressed air and wispy strands of radiant heat intertwined with my spirit. A quick and dirty friction shield, my go to against bullets and other life-threatening projectiles. Most of the rounds didn’t come close to touching me, instead burrowing into a nearby tree with the crack of splintering wood. The last two shots careened harmlessly into my shield, the lead rounds emitting a short-lived blaze of light before disintegrating into a fine spray of slow-moving and harmless powder.

  The driver gave the misty reddish shield a once-over, his eyes growing even wider in panic—buggy-eyed assface looked like he was gonna have an aneurysm—before turning away and sprinting for the van. Smart move. Guy knew when he was out of his depth, and this situation was the equivalent of treading water while a school of red-bellied piranhas closed in, the metallic scent of blood driving ’em into a feeding frenzy.

  Sadly for him, my Vis workings move a helluva lot faster than a short, overweight, middle-aged white guy running through the woods. I pushed my right hand forward: a concentrated spea
r of silver force swept across the ground, kicking up leaves and debris in its wake, before slamming into the driver. The force swept him from his feet, pitching him into a gnarled tree on the opposite side of the clearing. His head bounced off scaly wood with a sickening thwack, his limbs going limp in an instant. Hopefully the bonk to the head would put him out long enough for me to deal with the Sasquatch-death-brigade tangling with Winona.

  Winona was still holding her own, but the guards were starting to play it smart: one was engaging her head-on as the other two circled in from opposite directions. Only a matter of time before one of those brain-dead shitheels managed to get behind her, and then it would be game, set, match. The one circling right was closest to me, so he was the one I set my sights on. I hurled out another blast of silver force, this one as broad as a small Volkswagen, which slammed into the belly of the approaching mass of muscle and hair, doubling the creature over as he wheezed and fought for air.

  A wallop like that should’ve put him down like it had the human driver, but apparently these fellas were made of sterner stuff. Before he could recover and mount a proper offense, I unleashed one last bolt of energy, this one packing enough raw force to flip a friggin’ car. The construct connected with the underside of the Chiye-tanka’s fuzzy chinny-chin-chin, and the sucker went ass over teakettle, head smashing up against the forest floor over and over as he tumbled along the ground like a giant bowling ball. After three or four revolutions, the Bigfoot broadsided the panel van, rocking the vehicle up onto two wheels, threatening to overturn it. The van tottered for a moment like that, deciding whether to fall or settle. After a tense moment, something shifted inside, forcing the precariously balanced vehicle down. It bounced on squeaky shocks as it came to a rest.