Strange Magic: A Yancy Lazarus Novel

by James Hunter

  Everything was still and quiet in my mind as both my instinct and I weighed and considered options, looking for any avenue which might deliver us Arjun.

  “What about Harold the Mange?” my instinct asked after a minute. “We still have a working relationship with him, sort of. He could probably do what we need.”

  “I dunno … things didn’t end so well last time we were together,” I said. Last time Harold and I parted ways, it was after he’d tried to cocoon me in his lair with the intent of devouring my innards. Take note all you members of geekdom, trying to cocoon someone in your lair is not a good way to create long-lasting relationships.

  “Yeah, but it was nothing personal,” my instinct continued. “He just lost control of his hunger. I’m sure he won’t hold that fiasco against you. He’s reliable, at least so far as Hub Dwellers go.”

  “Still …”

  “Listen asshole, it’s either Harold or Ailia—I’ll let you make the call.”

  Well if those were my options. “Fine, I guess Harold might work. But it’ll mean a trip into the Hub and I don’t have anything to sell him, so I’ll owe him one.” Owing someone a favor might not sound like a whole lot, but in the preternatural community a favor can be a big deal. In the regular world of Rube mortals, owing someone a favor means you’ll help them take an old couch to the dump. Heck, if it’s a big favor you might even help them move.

  In my circles, however, it meant I would be indebted to Harold in a big and official capacity. But that was a worry for Future Me. Plus, I could always try to barter with him, if I played things right I might even be able to set some decent terms to the favor. A little mercy for Future Me wouldn’t be a terrible thing if I could manage it.

  I didn’t want to go into the Hub, I didn’t want to deal with Harold, but I did want Arjun. And since the only other option was Ailia, Harold and the Hub seem like a regular bouquet of sunflowers and daisies.

  “I can see those wheels a turning,” said my instinct.

  I drank my scotch in reply. “Alright, we’ll try Harold.”

  I opened my eyes, letting the padded leather room vanish back into my mind. Greg was staring off into space, apparently as absent as I’d been. I splashed around in the water, stretching cramped arms and legs, which had been still for too long.

  “So what’s the plan?” he asked as I settled back into place.

  “We need to go make friends.”

  TWENTY:

  The Hub

  I filled Greg in on the plan: his job was to connect with Morse directly and Yraeta, through H & R from New Orleans, and see if both organizations would be willing to play ball. If Greg could play the diplomat well enough—and I was confident he could—I’d have some significant firepower at my disposal. With the combined criminal forces of Morse and Yraeta, it’d be easy to get rid of the Rakshasa army for long enough to give me a clear shot at Arjun. All that left me to do was bounce on over to the Hub, track down Harold the Mange, see if he had the goods on Arjun, and then strike a potentially life threatening bargain.

  No problem.

  I left Greg to his work. He’d have his hands full, but then so would I. I got into the Camino and headed out to the 101, which eventually dumped me onto the 126. I cruised north and west for maybe twenty minutes, before stopping in Santa Paula.

  In Santa Paula, there’s this old-timey, glass-fronted butcher shop: Sam’s Meats. The store had been there for ages; a yellow brick building, sporting big glass windows with prices and sales stenciled on by hand in big green, orange, and white script: Sale, Top Sirloin $6.99 per pound, read one glass panel. There aren’t too many places like Sam’s anymore. Most little family run butcher shops have gone the way of the dinosaur, driven to extinction by the giant asteroid that is big market business.

  I could feel for Sam. He was a relic and a curiosity from a different age, hanging on against the march of progress. Most days, I’d say that describes my life too.

  I’ve bought ribs from Sam on a number of different occasions—let me just say that the man knows his shit—but that wasn’t the reason I’d come today. A shame all around. Instead, I’d come to Sam’s because there also happens to be an entranceway to the Hub nestled right behind his rollaway dumpster.

  Every major city—and even most minor ones—have one or more doorways to the Hub: portals that cross over from the material plane and into an in-between place, which I like to think of as Earth’s waiting room. LA, and its surrounding areas, has fourteen entrances to the Hub that I know of for sure, though in a city as big as LA there could be lots more.

  What exactly is the Hub, you’re probably wondering? It’s a real shithole, is what it is—and this is coming from a guy who’s seen about every filth-covered dive bar or motel in America. The Hub is the plane of existence which directly connects to our material realm, and it’s the place where most beings from the far-flung reaches of Outworld cross over. If you’re a troll or hobgoblin visiting from The Endless Wood, you have to cross over via the Hub. If you’re a Valkyrie on leave for a long holiday weekend of skiing in the Alps, you’re still going to have to pass through the Hub.

  Think about the Hub as the material plane’s version of a Greyhound Bus station: the Hub doesn’t connect to every plane—Heaven and Hell for instance—but it’s where a guy can enter or exit from our plane of existence into another. There are, of course, exceptions to this rule: Angelic messengers, for instance, have free-reign to go wherever the hell they want, whenever the hell they want. Human magi can also summon a being directly into our plane by acting as an anchor into our realm and then tearing a hole in reality.

  Generally though, for most things—leprechauns, Low Fae, or other dark denizens—the Hub is the revolving door in and out. One big bus station. Like any normal bus station, you might well get rolled if you fall asleep there and it smells a little like urine.

  Harold the Mange was a Hub Dweller and Harold was my best chance at getting to Arjun, which meant I had to suck it up, put my feet to the pavement, and trek through the Hub. I opened myself to the Vis, letting energy flood in, filling each cell. Opening a doorway to the Hub, even a pre-established one, takes a lot of energy. At least it does for me.

  Creatures from Outworld can more or less come and go as they please with relative ease—they’re just less materially real than human beings, so crossing over is no big thing. Most of them can just kinda phase through the weak places.

  For humans, crossing over is a bit trickier and takes some power—though, admittedly, I’ve seen magi who can open a door to the Hub with a trickle of power so low, I wouldn’t be able to snuff out a candle’s flame. I can’t, for the life of me, figure out how they do it. There’s some trick to the thing which I’ve never mastered. Fact is, not everyone is good at everything: portals, conjurations, and dimensional crossovers are not my bag, too much finesse. For me, opening a way to the Hub never feels like turning a doorknob, it feels like prying the door off a safe with a crowbar. But, the end result is the same and that’s what matters, right?

  Doorknob, crowbar, potato, potahto. Whatever.

  To me, results speak their own language.

  I focused my will, spinning hundreds of razor-thin strands of radiant heat into a rough lattice square, overlaid and woven through with streams of air, and knots of earthen power. The immense structure—though invisible to the naked eye—vaguely resembled a medieval castle gate, which is kind of what it was, I suppose.

  I forced the working into position, overlapping the weak spot in our plane, which hid the entranceway to Hub. My body strained to hold all of the separate strands of construct in place; keeping all of the pieces of this weave together was like juggling a half-dozen chainsaws, while mowing the lawn, and cleaning a sink full of dirty dishes. I was hurting.

  When I’d finally finagled the construct into place, I let it unravel while simultaneously whipping up a force shield to protect myself from the blow back.

  A quick lesson on Vis constructions: all constr
ucts are composed of a variety of elemental pieces. Each woven together in an endless number of patterns and forms. For all you knitting buffs out there—there’s got to be a few, right?—it’s a little bit like knitting, (it’s the best analogy I have to work with so cut me a little slack). In knitting, there are a whole slew of different yarns to work with, a ton of different patterns to choose from, and about a million different shapes a piece can take—socks, washcloths, ridiculous sweaters you’ll never wear. You get the idea.

  But if you don’t tie off the piece correctly, those socks will fall apart on you every single time.

  Working with the Vis is no different. If you pump a whole bunch of energy into a massive construct and don’t shape it through an effort of will, the damn thing will unravel and literally explode in your face. So when I said opening a way to the Hub is kind of like prying open a door with a crowbar, what I really meant is that it’s like blowing a door off the wall with a shape charge. The construct I’d made was basically a big, shape-specific bomb—amped up with a whole bunch of juice, and then left to blow up as the underlying lattice unraveled.

  FYI, this is not a safe thing to do, and is generally frowned upon by the magi community. Irresponsible and wildly dangerous, they say. Meh.

  Like I said, results speak their own language.

  A thunderclap ripped through the night as my incomplete construct denoted with a flash of silver light, sending out a rush of hurricane force air and a whirlwind of particulates, mostly dust and trash from the alley way. The blast was big. My force shield deflected the majority of the debris, though the strength of the explosion did rock me back on my heels for a second. I blinked my vision clear from the light of the explosion. Before me hung a black hole falling in on itself where my working had been moments before.

  Believe it or not, the black hole of doom was actually part of the plan. The first detonation was the initial result of the working coming undone, but the implosion would actually create the door. Once there was sufficient gravitational pressure, the weak spot in our plane would cave, granting temporary access into the Hub. The black hole condensed—the gravity of its vortex immense, falling ever inward. Eventually, the door way opened with another thunder crack. A jagged rip, eight by ten feet, hung suspended in the air, the Hub’s hazy, mud-colored sky filling the view.

  I dropped my shield and let the Vis go, yielding to the gentle pull from the now open portal. I didn’t want to venture into the Hub, but it was better to be done with the thing. The rift let me out into the back alley of a notoriously ill-reputed bar called The Lonely Mountain, which boasts a list of clientele that reads like the horror shelf at the local bookstore. It was also one of the frequent haunts of Harold the Mange, my target and possible ally. Even if Harold wasn’t in residence this evening, there would probably be someone who could give me a clue as to his whereabouts.

  I made my way around to the front of the bar. The building was a hulking thing made of craggy, gray stone, which might well have been transported out of the Arthurian era—part mountain, part castle. High windows, fixed with black metal bars, shed both orange-red flame light and the muffled—though barely—sound of other worldly orgasmic moans. The Lonely Mountain is mostly a bar, but it also doubles as a high-class brothel. Brothels in general are a no-go in my book—real men shouldn’t pay for women—but this place carried an extra dimension of grossness … I’ve seen some of the ladies and gentlemen working this place—it’s not a pretty sight.

  A man in his late fifties attended the door: black hair, flecked with gray, ashen skin, tattered clothes, and a blank, vacant look etched across his face. He was a zombie. There are a great multitude of zombie species—everything from sentient, nearly human zombies, to the mindless brain-eating kind which fill the majority of movies these days. This guy fell somewhere in between. He was dead, and recently, by the look of him. Someone with access to the Vis (and a dark inclination) was animating the body through a construct and feeding the creature a basic set of instructions to follow. Throw out troublemakers, maybe.

  I marched past the zombie bouncer, who never even noticed my presence, and pushed through a pair of frosted double doors that read: The Lonely Mountain, followed by a stern warning, No Fighting, No Trouble, Violators will be Incinerated.

  The Lonely Mountain was such a popular and happening joint due, in large part, to the fact that the proprietor was a fierce and unforgiving man named Firroth the Red. Firroth wasn’t actually a man at all, but a Red Dragon—hence the Red part. Like most Dragons, Firroth was ferociously jealous of his treasure, which happened to be his bar and brothel, and would, literally, incinerate anyone who threatened its safety. The Zombie bouncer out front was only a formality since everyone this side of the Hub knew that Firroth was the bar’s real enforcer. It made The Lonely Mountain a great place for business meets, though, since no one wanted to put a toe on the wrong side of the line where Firroth was concerned.

  Harsh, thumping music poured from the room. Muted red, orange, and amber lighting filled the space with pockets of illumination, though overall the bar remained a dark and foreboding place, a cave dimly seen—it actually kind of reminded me of The Full House. Maybe Morse and Firroth had the same interior designer, stranger things have happened.

  Smoke—both the tangy aroma of tobacco and the musky, sulfurous stink always hanging around dragons—loitered in the air. The ground level was cavernous, chock-full of jagged hanging stalactites, glowing in various hues, and deep recessed booths housing the bar’s assorted patrons. In the Hub, buildings are often much larger on the inside than they appear outwardly, which was certainly the case with The Lonely Mountain. I didn’t look too closely into those shadowed booths, I didn’t what to see what nightmares were walking tonight.

  I also didn’t want to be seen. Magi are not well loved in the Hub. To most preternatural beings, human are prey animals—snack food—and to them, magi were a perversion of the natural order.

  A cursory glance didn’t immediately reveal Harold, but that didn’t mean much, he might well have been lurking around somewhere. Aside from having a massive ground level, The Lonely Mountain was also several stories high.

  I’d have to ask around, something that could prove to be a bit trickier than it sounded.

  TWENTY-ONE:

  The Lonely Mountain

  I pulled up a stool at the bar. Though most of The Lonely Mountain’s patrons were tucked away in the recessed and secluded booths lining the bar’s interior, a few forlorn souls lingered at the bar proper: eight men—or what I presumed were men—and one woman, all of whom looked more or less human, though that didn’t mean much, not here. Lots of things can look human with a little effort. There was even a chance some of them might be. People of all stripes, classes, and nationalities have found their way into the Hub from time to time: thralls, slaves, or tourists who’ve made terrible deals with varying supernatural factions. Shit, in the New York Underground, there’s even a portal that any Rube can come through—no Vis required.

  On the stool to my right sat an overweight and slovenly man with thinning hair, nursing a dark brown stout. He looked like the Horsemen of Death was stalking his trail. Off to my left, with one stool between us, was the female customer. She was a plain Jane: dark slacks, a silky-white button down blouse, dark shoulder-length brown hair pulled into a ponytail, and a pair of thin black glasses. Her face was thin and angular, a little too harsh to be beautiful, though she could pass for handsome.

  She looked entirely out of place here, which immediately set my instincts a ringin.’

  Firroth the Red stalked up to me from the far end of the bar. Though he was a dragon’s dragon, he wore the guise of a man—a huge and dragon-ish looking man. He must have stood at eight feet and had a swath of fiery-red hair, which shimmered gold and orange in the light. The guy was also built like a straight-up brick house—his muscle’s had muscles large enough to lift weights at Venice Beach. Scrolling tribal tattoos of blues and blacks snaked up his arm
s and around his neck, so delicate and finely worked they looked like artful scales, which they may well have been. A cigar—fat, black, and reeking of dragon stink—jaunted from the corner of his mouth at a rakish angle, always burning but never diminishing.

  His eyes were the color of molten-gold, slit by a thin razor cut of black—they were the cold and cunning eyes of a reptile. Lots of things in the Hub might be mistaken for human, Firroth was not one of those things. He may have elected to sport a human suit, but it was an unconvincing costume.

  “What’s your order, mage?” he growled, and I was immediately reminded that Firroth is not the kind of bartender you come crying to after a rough day. He’s friggin’ terrifying.

  “What’ve you got?” I asked, lowering my shoulders, trying to appear casual and unimpressed.

  “Everything,” he said flatly. “I’ve got anything and everything for the right price. So what’s your drink?”

  “I’ll take a Jack, neat, and any information you’ve got on Harold the Mange.”

  “Don’t know what business you’ve got with the Mange,” he said—picking up a filthy glass, wiping it gingerly with an even filthier rag, before pouring my drink and setting it in front of me—“but this place is strictly neutral. You saw the sign, right.” It wasn’t a question.

  “Listen, Red.” His eyes flashed in response, and I knew I’d made a misstep by not keeping things wholly professional, but I soldiered on. Best to never show a predator that you’re weak or nervous. “I’m not out to break tables, throw chairs, spill blood, or otherwise bring trouble to your fine establishment. I just need some info.”

  A wave of smoke, hot and heavy, billowed out from Firroth’s cigar. The thing looked like a friggin’ jet engine. As the smoke cleared, Firroth shot me a wink and pointed toward the woman on my left.