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

by James Hunter

  What’s more, the piano felt alive, at least in a rudimentary sense of the word—it responded at the level of thought, somehow sensing what I wanted to play and, in turn, lending me the skill necessary to pull it off like a friggin’ pro. Don’t get me wrong, I’m pretty decent behind the black and whites, but on this thing, I was much, much more. Too bad I didn’t have one of those old-timey powdered wigs and a dashing doublet with tails—that would’ve really pulled everything together.

  I surveyed the ballroom, which held the tense and anxious sense of a soon-to-be battlefield. I sat on a raised platform at one end of the ballroom, overlooking my team, who looked small, feeble, and far outclassed by the legion of creatures loitering on the opposite side of the room. Thankfully, the high nobles were all sitting the tussle out, otherwise there would’ve been very little sport to the whole thing. Even with their absence from the battlefield, however, the odds were still crazy-stacked against us.

  This matchup felt about as lopsided as they came. Like pitting a handful of adorable kittens, romping through a pile of yarn, against a pack of rabid, genetically engineered Rottweilers wielding chainsaws.

  The Dullahan and his doom mount were lined up on the other side, the horse pawing anxiously at the floor as the rider prepared to make good on his promise and add my spinal column to his whip. There were a handful of pale-skinned, bat-winged Tiktiks lurking on the left side of the hall, nervous and jittery. Tiktiks preferred to ambush their prey, so this kinda open brawl would understandably make them uneasy.

  I spotted a cadre of Bubak—living scarecrows, who fashioned the skins of their victims into new body parts. They were all sporting handsome, colonial-era jackets and britches and were absolutely brimming with excitement, their disjointed limbs dancing and shaking in erratic spasms.

  There were wart-covered, green-skinned trolls; glimmering blue-skinned Kobocks from the Deep Downs below the Hub; and maggot-white Blemmyes, who hailed from Africa. No heads to be seen on those fellas, though: each had a giant face with jagged teeth protruding from a distended stomach. And those were just the critters I recognized.

  Assholes even had an evil unicorn. Whenever I tell people I have night terrors about unicorns they always laugh, but that’s only because they’ve never seen one of these suckers. It was built more like a rhino than a horse: big and beefy, with a pebbled blueish-black hide and a single twisted spike of ebony, sharper than a surgeon’s scalpel, positioned between eyes like globs of molten gold.

  But we’d teach ’em all a thing or two.

  I mean sure, we were badly outnumbered. And yes, they had way more skill, muscle, and talent on their side. But we weren’t showing up to this gunfight empty-handed. Kong and Winona had some serious friggin’ muscle, and James would dish out some Grade-A-asskickery. Ferraro and Greg were both mortals, but they looked fierce as hell in their formalwear, sporting more personal armaments than a small police force—a cross between James Bond and Conan the Barbarian.

  But, most important of all, we could do this because we had no intention of playing by the rules. “Forewarned is forearmed,” Lady Luck has said to me more than once, and I’d actually taken those words to heart. I’d thought long and hard about how to use the magic candles to our advantage, how to subvert expectations so we could come out on top. So, during our brief interlude before the show, we’d come up with a plan. Kind of. But only time would tell if our plan carried water, or if it would leave us all as dog treaties for the Hellhounds. In my experience, however, any plan, even a bad one, is a helluva lot better than indecision.

  The Sirens moved to center stage, breathtaking and captivating, drawing every eye in the room as they moved. The band took up their positions behind the three, crazed grins already splitting their otherworld faces.

  “Excellent,” Peisinoe said, her words ringing across the hall. “All the participants are ready for the dance, it would seem. Now, the battle shall be won under the following conditions.” She held up one delicate finger. “One, after all the combatants on any given team die to a man. Or two”—she added another finger to the count—“if one side should ask for quarter. Please bear in mind, however, we will certainly offer none.”

  “I’m not worried about it, Hotcakes” I said. Great streaks of sweat rolled down my neck and back, giving away my lie. “You’d better hope we’re feeling more gracious once we get done whipping the dance floor with your minions. Maybe we’ll decide to offer y’all a free pass.”

  Peisinoe smiled, blew me a sensual kiss filled with illicit promise, then snapped her fingers as she began to sway and groove in time to the slow, steady beat of a stately waltz. “Vienna Blood,” I think.

  Strands of music, like wispy ropes of Christmas garland in a myriad of hues—electric blue, regal gold, the brilliant purple of violets in full bloom—drifted from the stage, entwining around the partygoers. The guests-turned-soldiers began to dance, each moving and bobbing, creatures gliding across the floor in elaborate and elegant patterns. Dipping, nodding, twirling, joining together then breaking apart once more. A kaleidoscope of horror and beauty, spinning across the floor.

  I could tell this was a warm-up number, a little foreplay so to speak, before the real show got hot and heavy. For whatever reason, the Sirens seemed to be giving us a fighting chance.

  I followed suit, easing my fingers down, working at the keys.

  “Eye of the Tiger” filled our end of the hall with its fire, with its underdog optimism, crying out its challenge and defiance as the piano emitted spikey waves of twisting orange and maroon light. Even cooler, I heard the ghostly whisper of a pair of guitars, a deep, thumping bass, and a raucous set of drums swirling through the air around me. The instruments were ethereal things, not alive and vibrant like the Sirens’ big band, but there nonetheless. Spectral players accompanying my jam, summoned from my mind and soul by the badass piano before me.

  Still, for all the awesomeness I was laying down, my strands of mind-altering music were nowhere near as focused or powerful as the Sirens.

  Our opponents glided across the floor in perfect harmony: a single entity utterly controlled by the music emanating from the Sirens. My team, on the other hand, stood around looking like a bunch of mooks waiting to get their collective asses kicked. Ferraro and Greg were both doing some warm-up stretches, while the Bigfeet shared worried glances—glances that said, in no uncertain terms, We’re totally boned beyond belief.

  A real confidence booster for me.

  James looked completely preoccupied and distant, as though there were a million other places he’d rather be. Not that I could blame him—there were definitely a million other places I’d rather be: a bar, the DMV, a cell in a supermax prison. Anywhere, really.

  I was doing something wrong, but I wasn’t sure what. The Sirens’ music was like 120 proof moonshine: you could get downright shitty off the stuff just by taking a whiff of the fumes. My music was more like lite beer—it’d get the job done, but only after you’d slogged your way through a thirty pack.

  I drew more deeply from the Vis and sent out my wispy, invisible probe of spirit, examining the piano for the secret I was obviously missing. It didn’t take more than a handful of seconds to figure out that the instrument was basically an uber-powerful glamour machine, pumping out music laced with our suggestions, emotions, and intentions. And at this range, those suggestions—cleverly imbedded into the tunes—were elevated to the point of compulsion. But it was also quickly apparent that the music itself was less important than the intention of the player laying down the jam.

  The music was a vehicle of sorts: a delivery system implanting commands into the subconscious mind of the hearers. It was the emotional state of the player, however, that determined how effective the commands would be. It wasn’t enough to simply play a badass, get-pumped tune, I needed to feel that way in my heart and soul. But I was an emotional train wreck. I didn’t feel motivated. I felt sweaty palmed and scared, like a man who’d jumped into shark-infested waters c
overed in fish guts without even the advantage of knowing how to swim. I felt defeated, betrayed, and tired. The piano was drawing those things out instead, feeding them into my crew.

  And that just wouldn’t do. Right now I needed my team to be sharp as razors. I needed them on their toes, ready to obey at a moment’s notice, ready to follow my commands without a second thought. Which meant I needed to harness that emotion within myself.

  I drew in strands of delicate, twisted spirit and will—pumping the construct into the piano in the same way I’d feed a glamour construct into the mind of a person—strengthening and reinforcing my tenuous connection to the instrument. Then I closed my eyes, letting my fingers move by instinct—guided both by years of practice and the power of the piano itself, drawing my talent out, spurring me onwards.

  Slowly, I shut out the world around me, focusing on the power roaring through me, raging in me. I envisioned an inferno burning like a forest fire in my mind, a consuming blaze of Vis more than happy to eat whatever I had to offer it.

  I fed it everything: I pushed my worry and anxiety into the golden flames, tossed in thoughts of revenge and fear. Hell, I even let the impending battle, looming before us, burn from my mind. Those things were important, true, but they were also distractions, each tugging me in a different direction. Each a subtle emotion, which the piano would siphon off and send out. After a few seconds, only blackness remained, an empty space devoid of all except the fire’s crackling intensity.

  Focus, resolve, determination, coupled with tight-bellied fear and precise obedience. These were the things we needed to survive. I cast my mind backward, away from this place and into a different time, conjuring up an old memory—a powerful memory I could draw on and channel into the piano …

  Tongues of flame erupted, splashes of red and yellow washing over the walls of my mind. In a snap, the dark space transformed from a place of tranquility and serenity into a room brimming with chaos and screaming.

  “Lights, lights, lights!” someone bellowed inside my head, the voice deep and rough. The fire morphed and shifted into the blare of overhead sodium lights, flickering on and off in a manic strobe. My eyes flew open, my chest beating wildly against my ribs. I threw aside the green wool blanket covering my torso, sitting up in a rush and swinging my legs out over the edge of the thin mattress. Where was I? The hell was happening here?

  I was no longer in some otherworldly drinking hall. No, this was 1966 and I was at Marine Corps Recruit Depot, San Diego—the forge and crucible designed to take young, disobedient civilians and hammer them into hard, cool-headed, steely-eyed warfighters.

  This is all a memory, a soft voice whimpered in the back of my head. The squeak and clatter of metal-framed bunks drove the voice away. I needed to get my ass on line before the drill instructor discovered me in the rack, there was room for no other thought. Only white-knuckled need remained. I slid from the bunk, toes touching down on freezing linoleum—

  Too late. The drill instructor towered at the end of the narrow aisleway between bunks. Staff Sergeant Pettit. His face twisted in a contorted grimace of fury, red creeping up his neck and cheeks as he stared at me from beneath the brim of his brown smokey-bear.

  “I guess I’ll wait on you, right?!” he screamed, grabbing hold of my blanket and ripping it away, hurling it into the squad bay before taking the edge of my bunk and shaking it with the force of a hurricane. “Get on line right daggon now, recruit! GET! ON! LINE!” Then he shrieked, an inarticulate cry of frenzied wrath that rang in my head like a fire engine’s siren. That cry conveyed one thing: Panic, panic, panic.

  I slipped forward, trying to edge past him.

  The blow landed in the center of my chest, not hard enough to knock the wind from my lungs, but hard enough to send me reeling backwards. I grabbed at my mattress, steadying myself.

  “And I guess the drill instructor’s gonna move for you, right?! Right, you nasty piece of garbage?! How ’bout a daggon friggin’ aye-aye, sir!” He screeched again, moving back just far enough for me to make it to the edge of my bunk.

  “Aye-aye, sir!” I hollered back, moving without a thought, frantic to get on line before any of the other drill instructors noticed something was amiss and flocked toward us. In boot camp, any infraction, no matter how slight, carried weight. Like the gravity of an imploding star that could suck in every D.I. in a five-mile radius.

  I snapped into the position of attention the second I cleared my bunk, back straight as a plank, feet at a forty-five degree angle, hands balled into fists, thumbs aligned with where the inseam of my trousers would be if I had pants on.

  The D.I.’s mug crowded into my vision, his nose inches away from mine. “Open your daggon mouth, recruit! Aye-aye, sir!” Spittle flew from his mouth as he shrieked, brushing up against my cheeks and lips.

  I didn’t care. “Aye-aye, sir!” I yelled. Anything to soothe his hellish, hair-trigger temper. Anything to see him move on to some other poor schmuck dumb enough to join the Corps.

  “I swear, Lazarus, if you don’t open up your daggon friggin’ mouth right this second, I’m gonna run you into the dirt. And when I’m done, I’m gonna dropkick your ass off the roof, watch your body splat on the sidewalk, then run your daggon corpse into the dirt! NOW! OPEN! YOUR! MOUTH! Aye-aye, SIR!” he commanded, the bellow reverberating in my teeth.

  “Aye-aye, sir!” I screamed one more time, drawing on everything I had, pushing from my diaphragm.

  He gave me one more cold, calculating look, then disappeared in an eyeblink, darting across the squad bay, his wrath triggered by someone scratching their nose when they were supposed to be at attention.

  Not me, I wouldn’t twitch a finger until I heard the next command. I stood statue still, ready, focused, a coiled spring waiting to be released.

  This is all a memory, the voice in my mind asserted once more, this time louder, more insistently. The walls wobbled and faded, melting together and drawing back into a raging fire blazing at the center of my mind.

  I opened my eyes, the dance hall before me once more. But just beneath that I could almost see the recruit depot of memory, hanging before me like a hazy shadow. Good. I drew on that remembered fear, that urgency to obey, to act instantaneously. That was what boot camp was all about: Learning to stay sharp and focused even under the most stressful circumstances. To heed the call of your commander without so much as a moment’s hesitation. To comply exactly, urgently, and in precise detail.

  Though the tune didn’t change, the drifting lights floating from the instrument did—no longer disjointed, spiky waves of energy, but instead a smooth cloud of silky mist, curling like fine cigar smoke in a bar. And the music wasn’t the only thing that’d changed, the whole team now moved with purpose and intensity. Greg checked and rechecked his weapons. His jaw clenched, the panels of his brown face rigid.

  James swung his delicate cane sword through a series of broad, looping arches—some kata I was unfamiliar with. Ferraro stretched limbs in a variety of interesting yoga poses which grabbed at my eye. Even the hair on Winona and Kong bristled, stood stiff and at attention as they flexed massive arms and hands.

  The drifting siren song shifted, flawlessly melting into a madcap version of “When You’re a Jet,” straight from West Side Story. The baddies at the opposite end of the hall responded in a flash, breaking apart from their respective partners and advancing across the room in a tight formation, snapping their fingers—or clopping hooves in the case of the massive unicorn—as they danced forward. The display would’ve been ridiculous if it weren’t for the scowls, howls, fangs, and fur. A virtual ocean of living-terrors crashing toward us like a wave of death.

  TWENTY-SEVEN:

  Battle at High Noon

  The siren song shifted as the oncoming forces slammed into our front line, West Side Story giving way to a big band version of “Paint it Black” by the Stones—the very tune the Sirens had laid down during our first fight in Vietnam, so many years ago.

  Ko
ng and Winona rushed to the front, strands of my music working through them as they responded to my will and moved to my unspoken commands—recruits heeding the call of their drill instructor on the parade deck. Greg and Ferraro followed in on the heels of the Chiye-tanka, ducking low behind the mountains of muscle, using them as mobile defensive barriers.

  Winona and Kong were basically flesh and blood tanks, meant to absorb the brutal forward wave of attackers so Greg and Ferraro could play to their strong suit. Namely, laying down hard-hitting, suppressive fire and placing pop-shots at those beasties too stupid to keep covered. Baddies collided into the Sasquatches—a nasty pair of green, wart-covered trolls. Seven-and-a-half-feet of lanky muscle, bad teeth, and worse body odor.

  Great claw-tipped hands lashed out at Winona and Kong, but the pair of apes moved like greased lightning, easily dodging the blows while throwing out bone-shattering strikes of their own: fists and feet hammering into ribs and faces with inhuman strength and speed. The trolls flew back, unprepared for the brutality of the assault.

  Greg edged past Kong, M-4 tucked into his shoulder, and squeezed off a burst of rounds which chewed into the staggering duo of green-flesh. Meanwhile, Ferraro popped around Winona, raised her shotgun into the air, and blasted a bat-winged Tiktik attempting to get the drop from overhead. Ferraro’s specialty loads shredded its membranous wings, and the creature spiraled out of control, screeching like a giant owl the whole way down, before crash landing in a heap of broken limbs.

  Though my rendition of “Eye of the Tiger” was inspiring, we needed something faster, something you could really groove too. My mind skipped to another legendary, supernatural music battle, one for the fate of a man’s soul with a beat so contagious a corpse would shuffle along in time. My fingers fell into place as I shifted into “The Devil Went Down to Georgia,” a hard driving mix of up-tempo rock and rough-and-tumble country classic. The perfect backdrop for a gunfight at high noon, which is more or less what this was. Except for the fairies. And ballroom. And tuxedos. Whatever—in spirit, this was similar.