Savage Prophet: A Yancy Lazarus Novel (Episode 4)

by James A. Hunter

  “Okay,” I said, “so we know how we can’t leave. What other options do we have, ’cause I’ll willing to bet a bank vault full of unmarked bills that those Gwyllgi are coming for us. We managed to kill two”—I held up two fingers to emphasize the point—“and that was in a confined space where we could fight ’em head-on. If a pack encircles us out here in the dark, where they can maneuver from shadow to shadow, we’ll last all of fifteen seconds. So we need options.”

  “The Cubiculi ex Ostia,” she said, snapping her fingers. “If I had to guess, I’d say that’s the quickest way out. Gee, the only way out at this point. Not even the defensive dome can keep us from leaving through the Portal Room, and even in emergencies, the Cubiculi is required to remain open and operational for the purpose of troop dispersal.”

  She frowned and tapped a finger against her chin. “There shouldn’t be any extra guards assigned to the post either. Three guards,” she said, nodding enthusiastically, her grimace turning into a dimple-cheeked smile. “Officer of the Day, one duty guard, and an assistant. Shouldn’t be any more than that. If we move quick, we could be there in …” She paused, rocking her head from side to side. “Five minutes. Yep, five minutes.”

  The shadow-wargs cried again, their raspy yowls rising up into the night. They were closer now. Much closer. Drukiski’s smiled faded and slipped away, replaced by a look of growing dread.

  “We’d better haul some serious ass, then.” I absently glanced over my shoulder, searching the shadow-coated hills for some sign of movement, for some sign of the encroaching pack. I saw all of jack-shit, which made me more worried instead of less. How the hell did you fight an enemy you couldn’t see?

  SIX:

  Red Tape Ninjutsu

  We stole through the night, stalking through the shadows as quick as the dark would allow for, which didn’t feel quick enough. Not by half. The yowling of the wargs carried on the breeze—intermittent, but closer every time they sounded. It didn’t help that we had to navigate the terrain well off the beaten path, cutting our way behind the cottages and shops, trudging through grassy fields, toes catching on buried stones or tree roots, all in a bid to remain hidden.

  It was unlikely someone would stop us on the road—what with all the craziness running amok—but that wasn’t a risk we could afford to take. Better to play it safe and stay far away from everyone. No telling who could be trusted.

  Our movements were further restricted by a thick layer of silvery fog blanketing the ground, obscuring the landscape for a half-mile, giving us a limited visibility of about six or seven feet, tops. That mist, though supremely inconvenient for moving fast, was of my doing. I couldn’t be sure whether the Gwyllgi hunted by sight or not—Drukiski seemed to think so—but if we couldn’t see jack-shit, that meant they couldn’t either.

  How the hell did you fight an enemy you couldn’t see? You leveled the friggin’ playing field, that’s how.

  A cool wind swirled around us—another Vis-wrought construct—disturbing the fog, spitting my scent out in every direction, spreading it through the fog and around Moorchester like bloody chum in the water. If the Gwyllgi didn’t use sight to hunt, they sure as shit used scent, but with my smell plastered over every inch of the fog, they’d have a helluva time tracking me down. Not to mention, the billowing fog had the added benefit of dampening sound, which further masked our movements from any preternatural senses. At least in theory …

  With supernatural assholes like the Gwyllgi, though, you could never really be sure they didn’t have some other sensory ability tucked up their metaphorical sleeve. But hey, if my plan didn’t work out, I could always resort to blowing shit up.

  That’s my fallback when subtlety fails me. Which is often. Like, almost always.

  Surprisingly, though, the howling faded after only a few minutes of steady hiking, and before I knew it a rectangular structure of ancient brick and stone loomed up out of the fog. The place was completely windowless, with gray marble pillars marching across the front like soldiers standing in formation. If you didn’t know any better, you might think it was a family mausoleum, and you’d be partially right, since it had served that purpose a thousand years ago.

  This building, like most buildings in Moorchester, however, had been repurposed.

  Now the crypt, lurking at the base of the hill near the chapel, served as the Cubiculi ex Ostia. The Chamber of Doors. One of the Guild’s greatest secrets. Buried deep inside, heavily guarded and in a fortified pocket dimension, was the Guild Vault—the repository for all the dangerous weapons the Guild had accumulated over the years. But that wasn’t its only purpose. Nope. If you knew how to navigate the Chamber, you could effectively find a Way, an interdimensional portal, to just about any-damn-where you could possibly need to go.

  Even inside the Guild, the Chamber’s existence, and its abilities, weren’t widely known. Hell, even those in the know avoided the Cubiculi ex Ostia unless great need dictated otherwise. Navigating the Chamber was tricky. Dangerous. True, you could use the Chamber to travel anywhere—Inworld or Out—but if you didn’t know your shit, you could just as easily end up wandering aimlessly in the Ether, the void between the worlds.

  Well, you’d wander aimlessly until one of the eldritch beings lurking in the Ether turned you into meat-paste and used your remains as floss. And, even if you avoided that unfortunate fate, you still might find yourself in some backwater stretch of Outworld:

  An endless ocean filled with unseen horrors.

  Or a realm bursting with toxic gas that’d choke the life from your body.

  Or maybe one of the circles of Gehenna, where the air burned with sulphurous hellfire hot enough to boil the blood in your veins.

  Even worse, there were pathways that ran through the Mists of Fate: worlds where you could live a thousand lives. All the lives that could’ve been had you made different choices. Walk into a shadow like that by mistake and you’d end up a gibbering maniac, curled into the fetal position, drool dribbling from your mouth while you finger painted with your own shit.

  And the Cubiculi ex Ostia was our way out.

  Though, I suppose it was possible the Chamber could also deliver us to some shadow version of the Big Easy that was nothing but rib joints and free beer. A man can dream, right?

  As we picked our way closer, I saw the trio of guards, just as Drukiski had predicted. Black-cloaked figures: two women and a man. Beneath the archaic cloaks, each wore tactical body armor with a sidearm sitting on one hip and a silver sword poking up over a shoulder. Still, it was only three guards, which was a lucky break. As powerful as the Cubiculi ex Ostia was, it could only be used to leave the compound. Not to mention only those who knew how to use it—i.e. highly placed Guild initiates—would ever willingly dare to try.

  The Chamber itself was its own security. The guards were basically a glorified chain-link fence blocking off the equivalent of a supernatural minefield.

  I came to a halt and crouched, eyes scanning the murky fog as I pulled Drukiski in close. She squatted down and leaned into me, her ear inches from my mouth. “We need to get in there now,” I whispered, drawing in a flood of Vis, preparing to blast my way through the guards. I wouldn’t kill ’em—poor schmucks were just doing their job, after all—but each would have one helluva headache for the next few weeks. “You stay here and keep quiet, I’ll get us past those three.”

  “No,” she mouthed, then gave a short shake of her head. “I can’t let you do that,” she said, voice a quiet hum filled with urgency. “If you hurt them”—she nodded at the black-cloaked magi—“well, there’s no going back. For a violation like that, you’ll end up doing twenty-five to fifty in the Tullianum.” She paused, her lips drawing into a fine line. “Leave this to me,” she said with a nod. “I can do this. I can get us through. Just stay close.”

  Without further comment, she stood, primly adjusted her gore-splattered shirt, then ran a hand through her hair as she squared her shoulders and set off toward the guards
. Anxiety exploded in my center, pushing out tendrils of fear into my body. There were Gwyllgi closing in all around us. A high-placed traitor gunning for me. A potential death sentence dangling over my head like a razor-honed guillotine blade. Guild operatives standing between me and freedom. And, worst of all—the fact that really had me sweating—my life, my fate, was in the hands of an office worker.

  Jeez.

  But she’d thought of the Cubiculi ex Ostia in the first place, she’d managed to lead us here despite the fog, and she’d been right about the number of guards. So maybe, maybe she could do it. Probably. Possibly. Fine, a total crapshoot. But even a sliver of hope was better than nothing, I guess. I stood with a groan and turned, shuffling backward toward the mausoleum, eyes constantly running over the fog, searching for the telltale electric-blue eyes of the wargs.

  The click of a safety disengaging hit my ears a second later.

  “Halt,” came a no-nonsense female voice, thick with a German accent. “Identify yourselves now.” I stole a look at the guard over one shoulder. She had her sidearm trained on us—a black Beretta 92 with a rail system and a mounted flashlight. A thin beam of yellow light cut a swath through the misty haze before landing on me and Drukiski. I stopped, blinking against the harsh light, keeping my hands low, making sure to move nice and slow.

  I’d hate for anyone to make a mistake, like blasting my head full of lead. Hard to recover from an oopsy like that.

  Drukiski, though, kept right on walking, folding her hands behind her back as she moved, cool and confident, every inch of her radiating an I-have-a-right-to-be-here attitude. Not wanting to be left alone in the fog, I angled my body—so I could keep one eye on the conjured mist and the other on the guards—and crept after her.

  “Blackbag,” Drukiski said, coming to a halt a few feet from the Cubiculi. “Name, Judge Darlene Drukiski.”

  A brief look of confusion flashed across the gun-toting fräulein’s face and the pistol barrel dropped, even if not lowering completely. “Bowling ball,” she responded eventually. Sign and countersign.

  Any thought of the guards left my mind, though, as I spotted a set of blues eyes staring at me from the edge of the silver fog. The rest of the creature remained hidden, obscured by shadow and mist, but there was no mistaking those eyes. They burned with cold fury, regarding me solemnly for a long moment before flickering to the trio of guards loitering a few feet away. Hesitation. Another set of eyes joined the first, these gliding back and forth through the mist as the second creature paced.

  They were waiting for something, but what?

  A third hound joined the party a second later.

  Still, they didn’t come closer, but rather observed the guards behind us, careful to remain unseen. Obviously these things were after us, but maybe they had specific orders not to engage Moorchester’s other personnel? That was the only thing that made a lick of sense to me.

  “I’m sorry, Judge Drukiski,” the gruff officer said, “but the compound is on lockdown. No one in, no one out. General orders, ma’am.”

  “Exactly right, sweetheart,” Drukiski replied calmly, motherly smile glued firmly in place. “In the case of a security breach, all entry and egress points are secured until an all clear is issued by the base commander. All standard procedure in accordance with the Special Operations Defensive Protocol Reference Manual, Second Edition, chapter two. But there are exceptions.” She bobbed her head.

  “Like us.” She smiled, nose crinkling, then swept one hand toward me.

  “Like you,” the guard repeated skeptically. “And who exactly is your friend, Judge Drukiski? He looks …” She paused, brow furrowed. “Unwell.”

  “Oh, don’t worry about him,” she said, folding her hands. “He’s fine. And his identity isn’t important. We’re on special assignment from the arch-mage, and as an O4 grade officer with the Judges Office, the containment order doesn’t pertain to me anyway. Not at this location. You can check the reference manual if you’d like—you’ll find all the pertinent information listed in the chain of command section. Appendix B. You do have a copy of the reference manual with you, dontcha?”

  The thickset female guard with the Beretta wilted a tad, glancing uncertainly toward the other guards. “Well, ma’am”—she cleared her throat—“no, actually.”

  A gangly male guard with spidery fingers shrugged, his lips turning down, eyebrows raised. “It’s Judge Drukiski.” His words were clipped, precise, British. “If she says it’s in the regulations, it’s in the regulations.”

  “Maybe we should call it in?” the fräulein offered to her fellow guards.

  “Oh sure, of course,” Drukiski replied, issuing them all a hard smile. “Please, by all means feel free to call it in. Though gosh”—she paused, crossing her arms, tapping a foot restlessly—“I imagine the Command Staff probably has quite a bit on their hands already. I sure know I wouldn’t want to be the one bothering Arch-Mage Borgstorm or Fist Leader Quinn right now. Especially for a redundant, unnecessary request. But”—she shrugged apologetically—“you just do what you think is right. I completely understand.”

  “Come on, Annaliese, just let them through,” said the last guard, a petite woman with braided black hair. “Annual reviews are next week—I don’t want to have a write up in my folder. Especially not from her.” That last was a mumble, but I still caught it.

  “Yeah, okay,” the fräulein officer—Annaliese, apparently—finally replied, sliding her pistol back into the holster at her waist. “You and your guest can go, Judge Drukiski.” She paused, worrying at her bottom lip. “Just one more thing?” she asked, a sheepish grin skittering across her round face.

  “Hmm, what’s that?”

  “Well, annual reviews are next week, and a recommendation from you could go a long way with the board.”

  “I’ll consider it,” she said with another warm motherly smile. The thickset fräulein edged aside while the other two unbarred the entry door, motioning us through with broad, fake smiles.

  Huh, how about that shit?

  Maybe I could learn a thing or two from her, after all. Who knew all those bullshit rules, which drove me batshit-crazy, were actually good for something? Like lawyering your way around all the bullshit rules, apparently.

  The irony was not lost on me.

  I glanced back at the Gwyllgi—there were five of those sons of bitches now—still lingering on the edge of the mist, staring hate and death and pain at me. A low growl built in the air as Drukiski and I headed into the Cubiculi ex Ostia, but the hounds made no move to follow. I grinned in spite of the terrible situation, feeling like this was a small victory, and flipped those asshole dogs the bird just as the door slammed shut behind me, cutting off the sound from outside, encasing us in silence.

  SEVEN:

  Cubiculi ex Ostia

  My good mood was fleeting as the sudden quiet of the Chamber—interrupted only by my breathing and the scuff of Drukiski’s shoes over the granite floor—descended on us. Despite the fact that this place hadn’t been a crypt in a thousand years or more, it still held the feel of a tomb. Cold. Dank. Dark. Dead. There was a power in the air, an unseen force that rejected our intrusion into this place, as though our presence was somehow profane, sacrilegious.

  I pulled up next to Drukiski and cleared my throat, the sound unnaturally loud, echoing off the walls. “That was crazy-good work out there,” I said, hooking a thumb back toward the sealed doors. “With the guards. Like some kind of paperwork, red-tape ninjutsu.” I shook my head, the rueful grin still plastered on my face. “And here I thought all those stupid standard operating procedure manuals weren’t worth the paper they’re printed on.”

  She blushed a little, bright spots of red growing on her cheeks. “Oh gosh, that was nothing, really. Besides, everything I said was more or less the truth. The general lockdown really shouldn’t have pertained to us anyway.” She fell silent, the confident administrator from a moment ago suddenly gone as the heaviness of the room
settled over us.

  She paced nervously, moving with the stiff shamble of a recent car-wreck victim, arms folded across her chest as though she were trying to physically hold herself together. That’s what shock looks like.

  “You okay?” I asked hesitantly, not really sure if I wanted an answer.

  She paused her restless shuffling and regarded me for a beat. “Honestly?” she asked, then shook her head, lips drawn tight. “I didn’t think it would be like this,” she said, pacing back and forth once more.

  “Being a real field agent. Going on missions. I don’t know what I was expecting, but not this. I thought it would be an adventure. Exciting. Like in a cozy mystery. A little sleuthing, a little travel, some interesting stories. My husband, he tried to tell me. He said, Darlene, this is just a midlife crisis. Buy a corvette, he told me, let’s go on a cruise. Take a vacation. Anything but this. He was right,” she said, “because this isn’t exciting. It’s scary.” She paused, rubbing hands along her shoulders as her gaze roamed over the chamber, taking in all the cold gray marble.

  The room itself was fifty or sixty feet long, all weathered granite and ancient marble, filled with an unnatural gloom that seemed to radiate from the walls. A living murk that pressed at us, fighting to submerge us into darkness. Marble columns, like those positioned out front, lined the room on either side.

  The columns offered a feeble illumination to fight against the pervasive darkness—each pillar was inscribed with a single long, looping line of text, running from the top of the column to its bottom, circling down in a tight spiral. The scrawl—flowing letters here, sharp angular text there—glowed with a watery opalescent light that didn’t offer much warmth or comfort.