Savage Prophet: A Yancy Lazarus Novel (Episode 4)

by James A. Hunter

  A coup, Darlene had said.

  In its own way, that meant the Guild itself had suffered a death blow as well, which was just as shocking in its own right. Obviously, I had no real affection for the Guild, but it was an unbroken institution, a beacon standing against the dark things prowling in the night. Now, however, it was a shattered ruin, smashed to pieces and—like one of Beauvoir’s zombies—resurrected and forced to serve a new master. A master who trucked with dark gods, an asshole who hoped to murder humanity by the millions, billions even, and enslave the rest.

  In the short term, it also meant I wasn’t going to get any help from the Guild. There would be no backup coming to support me against the Prophet and Ong. In fact, if Black Jack was dirty, calling the shots, and now in control of the Guild, it meant …

  It meant that what remained of the Guild would be aimed firmly at stopping little ol’ me. ’Cause the odds weren’t already stacked against me enough.

  Shit. A big ol’ heap of it, delivered to me in a picnic basket.

  Darlene added another tidbit, a juicy cherry on top, confirming my suspicions: “There’s also a rumor flying around that a group of battle Judges have deployed to Thailand—they’ve got to be headed to your rendezvous with the Prophet, you think?”

  “Of course they are,” I replied, voice flat and dry as the Mojave. “And Black Jack is probably with ’em.” I shook my head, those overwhelming feelings from the alley flooding back in, crushing me beneath their weight. All I wanted was to hang up the damned phone, turn on some down-and-out blues, curl up on the couch, and die. Just close my eye and die. Had a bottle of Valium in the bathroom and a bottle of Glenmorangie back in the pantry that’d get the job done right.

  “So what do we do?” Darlene asked, a faint tremble running through the words.

  “I don’t think there’s anything you can do, Darlene. No offense intended, but having you at my side isn’t gonna do much against a squad of battle-hardened Judges with Black Jack at the helm. You show up, you’re just gonna get yourself killed, and I don’t wanna live with that on my conscience.”

  She was quiet for a moment, save for a couple of soft breaths. “We can’t give up,” she said. “There’s got to be something I can do to help.”

  “Darlene, as much as I hate to admit it, what I really need is the Guild. I need manpower, backup. I need the Fist of the Staff in my corner. And that? That’s not a possibility.”

  “Maybe it is,” she said in a whisper. “I’m not sure, but I think I could get into Moorchester. If whoever is running this coup hasn’t wiped and rebooted the security system—which they probably haven’t, since it takes a good while—I bet I’ll still have administrative access. As an O4 grade officer I can get to the holding cells. And if all the big hitters are going to ambush you in Thailand, then maybe I could bust our Judges out. Maybe even get to a few members from the Senior Council.”

  “Darlene”—I fidgeted, restlessly running my free hand over my jeans, not wanting to say what I was thinking, which was that her idea was bat-shit crazy and had approximately no chance of working. Shit, even if she did somehow manage to sneak in, which she wouldn’t, there was no way she could possibly do all that and make it to my rendezvous with the Prophet in time. No way. Just couldn’t be done—especially not by her.

  “Please,” she pleaded, cutting me off before I could force out the painful words. “I can do this, Yancy. I need to do this. Maybe I’m not a hero like you or Ferraro, but I’m the only one who has a shot at getting in and getting out. I need to try. Besides, no one is going to pay me any mind. Around Moorchester, I’m a little like office furniture: there, but forgettable. I can slip by.”

  “This isn’t some game, Darlene. You could die,” I said. “Darth-Bathrobe took it easy on you in that temple, but if you try to infiltrate Moorchester and organize a jailbreak, they’re gonna take off the kiddy gloves. And if they do that, you’re as royally boned as they come. You’ll lose your family. You’ll never get a chance to see your husband or kids again. Are you willing to pay that price for a shot in the dark?”

  “And what will the world look like for my family if I don’t try? If you die and Elder Engelbrecht becomes a living god? How will I face myself in the mirror every day, knowing I might’ve had a chance to make a difference, but chose not to? Maybe I’m just an office worker and maybe I’m in over my head, but I still need to be able to live with myself when this is done.” She sounded scared, but she also sounded sure, and I knew there wasn’t anything I could say to change her mind.

  For better or worse, she was gonna march off to Moorchester on an almost-certain suicide mission.

  “No talkin’ you outta this?” I said at last.

  “No.” Her voice was hard with resolve, the quiver of fear gone.

  “Alright, Judge Drukiski. You do what you gotta do. If, by some miracle, you make it out, shoot for Sala Keoku, got it?”

  “On it, boss,” she said, with way more pep than anyone had a right to. “And, Yancy, in case we don’t see each other again, I just wanted to say it was nice working with you. If I only got one field assignment, I’m glad it was with you. Good luck—I’ll be praying for you.”

  “You too, kid,” I replied. “You too.” Then before the already awkward goodbye could stretch on any longer, I set the receiver back down into the cradle, killing the conversation.

  I wanted to sit a spell longer, to rest and shut my eyes, but I didn’t have time for that, so instead I pushed myself upright with a groan of protest.

  Okay, so I’d be alone against the Prophet, an elite mage wet-works team, and the living incarnation of death. Admittedly, not the best situation. In fact, I couldn’t think of any situation where the deck had been so stacked against me, but none of that mattered. Somehow, some way, I was gonna get Ferraro back and stop the Prophet from getting that damned Fourth Seal. Either that or kill that evil crapstick, and screw Lady Fate and her warning.

  And though I was going alone, I’d be far from defenseless.

  I strutted over to the armory at the end of the room and pulled open the heavy steel door guarding my weapons depot. The room beyond was a twenty-by-twenty-foot box filled with assorted badassery of every flavor. Against the right wall hung my stock of Rube weaponry—since helping out a gun-running biker named Gavin Morse, my collection had grown considerably.

  I had mounted wall racks with just about everything a Fix-It man could ever need: a trio of M-4s, an AK, a pair of AA12 machine shotties—each equipped with a 32-shell drum and a fire rate of three hundred rounds per minute—some pump action shotties, and a host of handguns. Berettas, Glocks, Colt 1911s, Saturday Night Specials, a few sleek .22s, and a cadre of MAC-10s. Maybe not quite as well stocked as Lady Fate, but I certainly had enough illegal firearms and explosive ordinance to give the ATF nightmares for the next century.

  Running beneath the wall racks was a heavy-duty steel table, complete with a couple thousand dollars’ worth of reloading equipment. I couldn’t make loads for the few heavy-duty machine guns in my care, but for everything else, I could customize rounds without ever having to outsource. Silver-lead rounds infused with Vis? No problem. Powdered-iron cores cased in steel? Can do.

  On that table rested the new piece of equipment I’d acquired from Lady Fate. I smiled in spite of myself.

  Yep, going alone, but definitely not defenseless.

  And the Rube weaponry wasn’t even the most dangerous stuff in the room. Not even close. A bank of storage lockers ran along the left-hand wall; a few of the lockers were empty, but most of ’em housed items of power, many cursed, all of ’em extremely dangerous. Power-wrought knives used to summon demons; a shrunken head that allowed the holder to invade dreams; a section of stained glass, uncovered at Saint Paul’s Monastery in Jarrow, that could offer a peek into the darkest parts of hell.

  Bad, bad stuff, all of it, and far more dangerous than any of those boom-boom sticks on the wall. And that was just the tip of the iceberg. The worst of the
lot, items too dangerous to even think about touching, resided in a lead-lined vault warded with powerful containment runes.

  Items like the Crook of Winter.

  I slipped off my shoulder rig, which housed my behemoth pistol, and replaced it with a dark brown gunslinger belt, which sat low on my hips. I bent over and, with quick fingers, tied the holster tight against my right thigh with a thin strip of leather. I slipped my Frankenstein pistol into its new home, then donned a beige flak jacket with a drop pouch drooping from the side and started collecting my toys. A few flashbangs went into pouches attached along the front of the tactical jacket. My Vis-imbued K-Bar got added to the gun belt, while a few speedloaders went into a loose pouch on my vest.

  I tucked a sleek, subcompact Glock 26—affectionately called a Baby Glock, ’cause it’s just so cutesy-wutesy—into a leather holster in the small of my back. Never such a thing as too much firepower in my book.

  For the briefest moment, I considered going over to the lockers and procuring some party favors that might help level the playing field—after all, this was the day the world might die, so it seemed appropriate. In the end, though, I decided against it. These days I was a danger, a danger to myself and anyone close to me, and it’d be reckless to take up any of those trinkets.

  Next, I secured the Crook of Winter from the vault; its slick voice, oily and alluring, reached out to me as my hand closed around the weapon—desperate to foist dark temptations into my head—but I pushed those images away. Believe it or not, but it was surprisingly easy to ignore the ancient fae weapon after spending the past few months suppressing a genuine fallen angel. Guess what they say is true: whatever doesn’t kill you, only makes you stronger.

  Though in the case of Azazel, the verdict was still out, since he could do worse to me than death.

  Lastly, I scooted back over to the table running beneath my weapons rack and grabbed my parting gift from Lady Fate, slinging the beastly thing over one shoulder before heading up the stairs and into the derelict barn above.

  The barn’s interior wasn’t anything special, in fact it was designed to look normal and boring as an additional layer of camouflage to throw off would-be sleuths. The floor was dirt covered, with some old hay strewn around. A workbench ran along the wall to my right; some ancient hand tools hung on mounted brackets.

  There was a loft overhead, which looked appropriately ominous and foreboding, but which was really just an empty storage space. A wheelbarrow sat in one corner amidst some digging equipment—a couple of shovels, an old pitchfork, and a rusted pickaxe. The only truly exceptional piece of equipment sat to the right, covered by a heavy-duty canvas tarp. My motorcycle: a vintage ’43 Indian custom bobber. A mean-looking cruiser in black and silver that could’ve come right off the battlefield of World War Two.

  I’d had Lady Fate drop me off just outside the Farm, and since my Camino waited down in Gunnison, I needed a set of wheels, and the bobber was just what the doctor ordered. I pulled off the canvas covering the bike and eased down into the saddle.

  THIRTY-ONE:

  Sala Keoku

  I tooled through Sala Keoku on my motorcycle, the engine grumbling and rumbling softly beneath me. The trip had been a peaceful one, devoid of any action-packed jackassery, which was fine by me, but it’d been a long one, too. Turns out, there’s no Hub entry anywhere close to the strange shrine. Could be, Ong had gone to the trouble of closing any entryways too close to his vacation home—not an easy thing to do, but the demon Naga would certainly have the power to accomplish the deed—so I’d had to drive up from some city a couple hours south called Udon Thani.

  Nice ride, actually, though it’d eaten up a big chunk of my scant time.

  My headlight slashed through the encroaching dark as I maneuvered deeper into the shrine, though I’m not actually sure “shrine” is the right word. This place was Weird with a capital W, and it reeked of Vis and Nox in equal measures—the stuff seemed to loiter in the air like a dust cloud. Sala Keoku was a sprawling garden, nestled on the outskirts of the Thai city of Nong Khai, surrounded by thick jungle growth with a towering temple at its center, similar to the one we’d seen in the Hub.

  But it was way more than just a temple or a garden. The sprawling compound was packed with paved walkways carving through jungle greenery, displaying beautiful nooks and crannies of manicured vegetation. And scattered throughout those gardens and along those walkways were statues. Lots and lots of statues—and not little garden gnomes or cutesy birdbaths being upheld by stone cherubs.

  Ah, no. Not even close.

  These statues were hulking gray things of stone and concrete stained black from the monsoon rains. Giant sculptures, some the size of a man, others as large as Mack trucks, and even more that could rival large buildings. They were creepy as all get out and there were two readily apparent themes: snakes, or more precisely the serpentine Nagas, and death. Death and destruction in a myriad of forms.

  On the right: a blocky Buddha head with three faces—so similar to Lady Fate it was uncanny—with a towering crown composed entirely of carved skulls.

  Up ahead on the left loomed a cadre of serpent women, each at least nine or ten feet tall. Each had the long fat tail of a cobra, but the face and torso of a human. Well, mostly human, except for the fact that each also had eight arms, which all bore a different deadly weapon: spears, tridents, circular chakrams, battle-axes, whips of bone, curved swords, and other, stranger things.

  I saw a massive elephant covered in tribal swirls, surrounded by a bloodthirsty pack of stone dogs frozen in time as they tried to run the pachyderm to ground. There were towering, fang-faced demons, monstrous stone toads, and a cobra as big as a city bus, trying to eat a perfectly rendered stone Earth.

  And rising above the tree line, visible from everywhere in the odd park, was a statue of the Naga King. Luang Phor Ong. Baron Samedi. The Fourth Seal Bearer. The towering sculpture was identical to the Buddha statue I’d seen back at Wat Naga Thong in Little Bangkok, save this one was concrete instead of gold and also ninety feet tall, dominating the skyline with its ominous presence.

  Some gut instinct told me that was where I’d find the Prophet.

  So, because I’ve learned it pays to heed your gut—the seat of the survival instinct—I guided my bike down a left-hand trail, which snaked around a small pond, then curved toward the king of all Naga statues. Sure enough, a few minutes later, my headlight landed on the Prophet loitering at the base of the incredibly bizarre work of art. Naturally, he wasn’t alone—not that I’d been anticipating anything else. Given how absolutely craptacular my life tends to be, I’d expected him to have an army of dark-gods with fifty-caliber machine guns, each mounted on an evil unicorn.

  Compared to that nightmare scenario, the number of reinforcements he had was actually a small comfort.

  Behind him, arrayed in a rough horseshoe, were six brown-robed shitweasels, their cowls drawn, hiding their faces from view. Magi. All of ’em.

  Another Brown-Robe stood to the Prophet’s left, tall and blocky, his face likewise buried beneath a deep hood, covered with unnatural shadow. He wore a silver gauntlet, though, which I recognized from my tussle with Darth-Bathrobe. Black Jack, then. Ferraro was on the ground in front of him, conscious, but bound and gagged with strips of duct tape. Bruises and thin cuts decorated her face; Jack had her black hair clutched in his metal-clad fist.

  I stopped the bike, letting it idle—its light illuminating the scene against the growing night—and climbed off. Then, with a sniff and a grimace, I hocked a loogie, spit staining the ground, and pulled out the crook, which I’d cinched down beneath the left saddlebag. I hefted the stick, solemnly regarding it as its cold power reached for me, yearning to be free. To kill. To freeze. To blanket the world in icy cold and endless frost. To do my bidding, until I grew tired of the dreary mortal world and consigned the planet to winter paradise. Another Ice Age.

  Once more I bludgeoned the thoughts into submission as I moved forward
, my shadow stretching out in the amber glow from the headlight. “What do we have here?” I said, my boots rapping on the stone walkway. “The Savage Prophet,” I said with a mock bow, “and the entire Legion of Doom. All the backstabbing Guild asswipes, in one convenient place.”

  “Give me the staff,” the Prophet said without preamble, eyeing the crook in my hand.

  “We’ll get to business in a minute, Beardy McGee, so just cool it. Now, who else we got here?” I asked, fixing my gaze on Darth-Bathrobe. “Wait, I got it, the Bathrobe Bandits. Not sure if you guys got the memo, but the Spanish Inquisition called and they want you to get the hell outta their century. Besides, who you all trying to fool anyway? It’s just me here. And I already know you’re under that hood, Black Jack, so how’s about we cut it with the cloak and dagger, melodramatic bullshit, huh?”

  There was a distorted chuckle as the hooded figure towering behind Ferraro inclined his head. He reached up and pulled back the cowl, revealing beyond any shadow of a doubt the man beneath. Black Jack Engelbrecht. I shook my head in disbelief all the same.

  “You always were cleverer than anyone gave you credit for,” Jack said, his voice no longer garbled. His grandfatherly gaze lingered on my face, noting the golden eye patch, then meticulously cataloguing the fresh scars, still raw and red, littering my cheek and running onto my forehead.

  “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry about your experience with Beauvoir. That kind of thing? Always bad.” A frown of distaste creased his face as his eyes took on the hazy cast of remembrance. “I’ve been tortured a number of times,” he said almost casually, “but the first always sticks with you. The Xhosa tribe took me prisoner during the Kaffir wars, in 1811, this was, and I still have nightmares.”