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

by James Hunter

  Behind the wall of asshole snake-men—clearly visible, since the Brothers were four foot nothing—was a big ol’ hefty son of a bitch in a bloodstained lab coat. Presumably Doctor Hogg, though his back was to me. Also present was an old buddy of mine. And by old buddy, I actually mean an evil dicknoodle bro-hole who I should’ve buried right and proper months back: no good, shit-talking Fast Hands Steve. A world-class asshole, if ever there was one.

  Fast Hands was a gruff, stocky, man-like thing. A halfie I’d had the displeasure of running afoul of in the Hinterlands and the pleasure of later killing in future Seattle—well, one version of him, at any rate—though not before he’d pumped bullets into my shoulder, knee, hand, and guts. Son of a bitch had damn near killed me, so there was certainly no love lost between us.

  Matte black eyes peered out from his blunt face, and his snake’s tongue flickered into view. His muscled arms were covered in copper scales. When I’d first run into this colossal pile of turd-baggery, I’d assumed one of his parents was Naga—serpent-like deities who hailed from India and parts of southeast Asia—but I could plainly see I’d been dead wrong. Though Fast Hands was taller, broader, and more human-looking than the others, clearly he’d fallen from the Little-Brother-gene-tree. Side by side, the family resemblance was uncanny.

  Steve ambled toward us, casually spinning his trademark six-shooter back and forth between his hands, one normal and scaled, the other a robotic appendage, equal parts gunmetal-gray and flashy chrome. Ferraro was responsible for the fancy prosthetic—she’d blown his hand off in a bar fight after he got a little too frisky. The doctor blatantly ignored us, rushing between filing cabinets, scooping contents into a black bag.

  “Agent Ferraro, it’sss ssso good to see you,” Fast Hands said, his raspy voice drawing the sss’ into a reptilian hiss. His eyes locked onto her, hardly even noting me or Winona. “I’ve been thinking about you an awful lot since the last time we parted ways.” He stopped twirling his pistol and held his metal hand aloft, as though to remind her of the way that parting had ended. “The good doctor, there”—he jerked his head back toward Hogg, who still bustled about the lab—“promised me I’d have a chance to square up with you eventually. After Yancy and the apes showed up at the motorhome, I knew it was only a matter of time.”

  “You know what, Fast Hands?” Ferraro said, her voice strained from pain, but coated with the rough, hard-worn edge of a salty Master-Guns with thirty years in the Corps. “I’ve been looking forward to seeing you, too—thought this time I’d make good on my promise and turn you into Limp Dick Steve.”

  She didn’t hesitate. Before the words were even out of her mouth, she had her Glock spitting rounds downrange at Fast Hands. Another thing I admire about Ferraro: she’s never one for bullshitting with the bad guys. Screw banter must be the number one rule in her playbook.

  Fast Hands’s metallic arm let out a brief flare of blue light—bullets ricocheted with a whizz and whine. He smiled at us, his fangs gleaming in the firelight from the oil drums. “I really oughta thank you, Nicole.” He said her first name in an intimate and familiar way, a stalker rehearsing a beloved phrase. “This new arm the Doc set me up with is a far cry better than the old one. Damn fine technomancy. Cuttin’-edge, y’kin it?”

  If Doctor Hogg had created that fancy arm for Fast Hands, it meant he was more than just a Rube geneticist mixed up in some bad business—it meant he had at least a limited, specialized ability to manipulate the Vis. He wasn’t a full-fledged mage, I was sure I would’ve recognized him if he was, but this revelation was still a game changer. This asswipe could infuse and combine the scientific with the supernatural, a damned dangerous combination even in good hands. And even though I didn’t know Hogg from Adam, I could already tell this guy wasn’t gonna qualify for the humanitarian of the year award.

  I stepped forward, leveling my monster-killing pistol. “Maybe your toy will stop a nine mil round, bub, but how do you think it’s gonna fare against my piece?”

  “You fire,” Fast Hands said, “and them thar lizard-men”—he waved his metal gauntlet at the assembled line of half-pint reptilian freaks—“might take offense.”

  “You think we’re scared of these punks?” I asked. “We’ve already waded through an army of your shithead kin, so what’s a few more to us? But I’m a charitable fellow—”

  “Oh, I remember your charity,” Fast Hands interrupted. “You’re a right saint. Saint of lo-eared assholes, I’d say.” He sneered.

  “Let’s stop bullshitting,” I replied. “Here’s what I’m offering. Lay down your peashooter, get on your belly where you belong, and maybe you get outta here alive.”

  “Don’t dicker with me, partner. You’re bluffin’ right through your teeth, and we both know it.” He grinned, nice and wide, then rolled his head to one side, his tongue kissing the air.

  I shrugged. “Just remember what happened last time you called my bluff—you came out one hand short. Maybe, if you like that shiny new toy so much, you can keep screwing around and I’ll see to it your other hand gets the same treatment. Then folks can call you No Hands Steve, how’s that sound?”

  “I’m finished here,” Hogg yelled, his voice low and sludgy, oddly swine-like, which perfectly suited his roly-poly appearance. He pulled the duffle strap across his broad torso and waddled toward the far end of the room, heading toward what looked like an emergency exit.

  “Pleasure to see y’all again,” Fast Hands said, walking backward, keeping his pistol out and his eyes fixed on us. “Nicole”—he nodded toward Ferraro—“I wager we’ll see each other again, real, real soon. But since you’re here, there’s really someone I’d love for you to meet—I’ve told her all about you and she’s even promised to keep you alive for me.” He smiled in the same way a hungry wolf grins at a wounded sheep and offered her a lewd wink. “Mama, they’re all yours.”

  Fast Hands spun and bolted for the emergency door, pausing just long enough to punch a set of numbers into a keypad near the frame before disappearing through in a flash of opalescent light. Which meant the emergency exit was actually a temporary portal, a Way, to some other place. An eyeblink later, a pair of shaped charges, positioned on either side of the doorway, erupted in a belch of flame, caving in the exit, ensuring there was no possible chance of pursuit. Man do I hate it when bad guys think ahead.

  To be completely honest, though, I hardly noticed Fast Hands’s exit, because my attention was fixed on the sudden appearance of Fast Hands’s ass-ugly mother. The Queen of this particular brood. Although this was my first scuffle with the Little Brothers, I knew all the critters we’d tangled with so far had been male—there was a reason they were called the Little Brothers, after all. And that was because there was only ever one female per brood and the rest were her bugger-nosed offspring. Kinda like ants or bees, except, you know, psychotic lizard-creatures wielding rusty, blade-edged garden-tools-of-death.

  It appeared that the female of this species—like many other animals in the great wide world—was a far more terrifying and dangerous adversary than her male counterparts. I’d never seen one before and I sorta wished I could’ve kept it that way.

  She barreled into the room from a connecting corridor, the floor rumbling under the weight of her footfalls, the walls resonating with her bellowing roar. Six feet of muscle, claws, fangs, and glimmering scales—hers were a shade of luminescent cobalt and shimmering copper, just like Fast Hands’s. To help you get your mind around her appearance, first envision a centaur—the mythical half horse, half men of ancient Greece—now cover that imaginary centaur with scales, give it razor-sharp talons, black spikes, alligator teeth, and its own army of snake-children. Okay, now you’re in the ballpark.

  She surged forward like an oncoming freight train, running on four squat legs, though she also possessed a formidable set of muscled arms that protruded from her sinuous torso.

  Dammit.

  Kids, this is exactly why you shouldn’t buy those tiny, cutes
y pet gators. Sure, they start out adorable and snuggly, but sooner or later they get bigger. You end up flushing them down the crapper, and they, in turn, start having babies, who will one day invade the human world, murder you horribly, and sell your leftover pieces to the highest bidder. Consider yourself warned.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” Ferraro said.

  We didn’t have long to dwell on the asstasstic nature of our situation though, because the Little Brothers darted forward right along with their sewer-gator Mama, all converging on us as a single unit. Ferraro and I fired into the mass, her covering the left flank while I took the right, each of us working like a couple of gun nuts down at the range for a day of target practice. Winona—being a giant, don’t-take-no-shit Sasquatch—swam into the fray like an Olympic athlete taking to the pool, lashing out with her good arm, sending Little Brothers cartwheeling through the air as she headed for a crash course with the Queen.

  The two gigantic ladies came together like a clap of thunder, their bodies slamming into one another with an impact I could feel in my bones, their limbs tangling together in a mashup of matted hair and slick scales. The Queen pulled Winona’s bad arm into a wicked arm bar, cranking her up onto her toes with a heave as her other scaled fist smashed into Winona’s exposed stomach, working her ribs and throwing blows into open wounds. Winona howled in rage as she smashed her big ol’ gorilla dome into the Queen’s ugly face, the head-butt of the century.

  The Queen lost her shoddy arm bar, clawed hands fumbling to regain the hold. Winona didn’t waste her chance—she dropped low and rocketed upward, slamming a sledgehammer-sized fist into the Queen’s cheek, sending the scaly broad staggering sideways, her reptilian feet skidding on the stone floor. The Lizard Queen regained her bearing, hardly losing a beat, and shot back in, raking vicious claws across Winona’s belly, digging deep trenches into her skin.

  But the Bigfoot was having none of that shit. Zero. Winona’s good hand blurred, wrapping around the Queen’s beefy throat like a constricting python. With a soft pop, the Queen’s eyes bulged outward, her arms flailing feebly. Winona lifted the snake-faced freak partially off the floor, and the Queen’s immense body weight worked against her. A makeshift gallows for the murderous creature.

  The Queen let out a strangled cry of desperation. The Little Brothers responded without thought, instantly shifting away from Ferraro and me, their steady advance ceasing completely as they turned and leapt onto Winona. They fell upon the Chiye-tanka like a pack of wild dogs, diving onto her back and throwing themselves around her legs, claws digging ruthlessly into her hair and skin, teeth biting down into muscle, metal instruments of cruelty—a meat cleaver here, a butterfly knife there—carving into her flesh.

  The malicious bastards were going to tear her apart, no doubt about it, and once they were finished with her they’d come for us. And let me tell you, in the piss-poor condition Ferraro and I were in, we’d be hard pressed to stop ’em. But if we could put the Queen down for keeps, we might have a fighting chance.

  “Ferraro, I need a grenade!” I shouted, my brain working over the details, quickly piecing together the least batshit-crazy plan available.

  She popped a few more rounds, paused, and drew out a matte black cylinder with the words “Grenade, Hand” and below that, “Offensive MK3A2 TNT” stenciled on in yellow lettering. She tossed me the explosive, which I caught and shoved into my coat pocket. Without missing a beat, Ferraro resumed shooting, round after round tearing into the Little Brothers.

  “Cover me,” I said.

  “About time you came up with something!” she shouted over the noise of her rifle fire.

  I holstered my pistol and made a mad dash for the dog pile of bodies in the center of the floor. I skirted around the edge of the bedlam, maneuvering toward the Queen’s unprotected rear, carefully avoiding her spike-covered gator tail, which lashed back and forth as she struggled against Winona’s chokehold. The Little Brothers were completely oblivious to my approach, which was all good since I was gonna be at a real disadvantage for the next few minutes. I held for a long pause, then—before I could think it through and realize what a terrible idea it was—I dove onto the Queen’s exposed and unprotected back.

  She bucked and struggled as my weight landed on her, the wild movements threatening to throw me to the ground, where I’d surely be trampled to death, which actually seemed like a fitting end, considering my life.

  I could see the obituary already: Yancy Lazarus, dead at age sixty-six, trampled to death by a Lamia, Brood Queen of the Little Brothers. He will be missed. But only a little. Yeah, there were definitely worse ways to go out, but truth be told, I wasn’t all too keen to make this my final hour. I had a shitload of ribs to eat, beer to drink, blues to play, and cards to hustle—even at sixty-six, I was far from ready for a pine box. I wrapped my legs around her torso, interlocking my ankles beneath her stomach, anchoring myself in place.

  I dug at her scaly hide with my left hand, fighting for purchase, struggling to maintain my precarious seat even as she fought to throw me. I fumbled my K-Bar from its sheath, and, once free, stabbed down, throwing my shoulder and body weight into the blow, trying to drive the knife into something squishy and vital. My blade didn’t even nick her, it was like trying to cut through sheet metal with child-safe scissors.

  The rigid plate scales along her back were like friggin’ armor, which blew more than an industrial warehouse fan, since my whole plan hinged upon cutting this she-dragon open. I let out a groan of frustration. There was only one other option, but boy was it gonna suck. I took a deep breath and then—because I can’t help but do irrationally stupid things—I swung over her scaly side and onto her pale-white belly, using my legs, still wrapped around her center, and free hand to cling tight to her torso.

  If I couldn’t get through the plates on her back, I’d just have to try the underbelly.

  Crocs had tough scales along their back too, but usually had soft, vulnerable undersides. I think. Maybe the Queen shared that particular anatomical similarity. Any chance was certainly better than no chance.

  With a heave, I jammed my K-Bar deep into her guts, the blade sliding in clean and easy. A warm, rank smelling gush of liquid spilled over my hand. So, so, so gross. I pushed away my natural inclination to vomit, curl into the fetal position, and weep for the next week, and instead tugged at the K-Bar, cutting a long, deep furrow through her abdomen.

  Once the grisly work was done, I dropped the K-Bar and fished the hand grenade out of my coat pocket—no easy thing when you’re clinging upside down to the slick belly of a reptilian she-demon. My arms and legs quivered from the strain of holding on, and I knew I didn’t have long before my body called it quits. I compressed the grenade spoon and realized, too late, I didn’t have a free hand to pull the friggin’ pin. I could try to do it with my teeth, but only if I wanted to have dental surgery afterwards—pro tip: never try to pull a grenade pin with your teeth.

  But with that pin safely in place, the grenade wasn’t much more than an intimidating paperweight. Jeez. Sometimes I swear I catch fewer breaks than the citizens of Can’t-catch-a-break-istan.

  I reached for the Vis still lingering in my body, just a feeble flow no greater than a leak from a faucet—a trickle only strong enough to maintain the weave blocking my senses from horrible, crippling levels of pain and misery. That construct was the only thing allowing my body to keep on going despite the fact that I should’ve felt like I’d been used for batting practice by the Yankees.

  I needed to pull the pin, though—everything was riding on it—and with a thin flow of air I could manage it. But I didn’t have the juice for both the pain-numbing construct and the flow of air, regardless of how minute it was. It was one or the other. I glanced at Ferraro. She was standing nearby, taking potshots at the Little Brothers fool enough to be in her line of fire. I thought of Winona, still wrestling with the Queen while a mountain of reptilian bodies pressed in on her, crushing her with the
ir combined weight.

  With the Queen dead, both Winona and Ferraro might have a chance at saving themselves and any of the surviving victims from the motorhome. Shit, there was even a chance they could save me, which I was definitely in favor of. Balanced against that, though, was crippling, soul-searing, otherworldly pain.

  So many good decisions, it was hard to choose.

  I sighed. Whatever. I let the numbing construct dissipate, and the full force of my injuries paid me a visit all at once, like an extended family reunion at Thanksgiving:

  There was Uncle John—the angry slash running up the back of my right leg—blowing up the toilet, refusing to use the air freshener, and hollering at the top of his lungs about the shitty economy. Meanwhile, Auntie Jane—my mangled ribs—fumbled a plate of mashed potatoes all over the brand-new carpet and carelessly walked away without bothering to clean it up. Little Susie—the nauseating, thudding pain building in my head—drew on the walls with a permanent marker while her mom was off sneaking a cigarette in the garage. I pushed it all away, momentarily kicking all those unwelcome guests to the curb, focusing on my task, even as black invaded the edges of my vision.

  Before my arms could give out completely, I conjured the flow of air, snagging the pin from the grenade and thrusting the canister up into the Queen’s gut. I thrust it in elbow deep, lodging it behind something which was hopefully vital. I let go of the spoon, triggering the grenade and giving me a four or five second window to get the hell outta Dodge before things got messy.

  “Fire in the hole!” I yelled, alerting Ferraro that the grenade was live and in play. I uncrossed my ankles and released my grip, dropping to the floor with a thud, rolling desperately to avoid the stampeding feet of the frantic Queen, still battling against Winona’s stranglehold.

  One monster foot came crashing toward me—

  With gritted teeth I rolled, narrowly avoiding the blow only to put myself within smashing range of her other foot.