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

by James Hunter

  I watched the seedy den catch blaze, the consuming fire a perfect mirror for the anger burning inside me. I offered the wall of heat my back and stepped into the real world.

  EIGHTEEN:

  Lucky Tip

  Winona was beat to shit, even after taking the disgusting, but nutritious, secretion from the Little Brother corpse. Nevertheless, she was a friggin’ rockstar and managed to carry the unconscious man over one shoulder, me in the other arm, and Ferraro on her back in what amounted to an epic piggyback ride. The Sasquatch was, however, moving slowly, which still happened to be faster than I could sprint on a paved running track. The trip to the mill had taken twenty minutes, but it took double that on the way out.

  By the time we made it back to our car, the sun had faded completely, ushering in the purple-black of early evening. It was later than it should’ve been—we’d gone into the mill around 1:00 PM, and the whole trip through the mill’s interior and the labyrinth beneath the Hub couldn’t have taken more than a couple hours, tops. But dimension hopping could do wonky things to time, or at least the way you experienced it. Whenever you travelled through the Ether, you risked exposure to wandering time pockets, which can either slow time down or speed it up.

  Ferraro slid off Winona’s broad back as the Bigfoot gently set me down, a small groan escaping her lips.

  “You gonna be alright, big gal?” I asked.

  “The damage was great.” She arched her back with a grunt, a series of soft cracks following. “But I will heal. I have salves and creams in the cave that will speed things along.” She halted, turning her head, looking off into the distance, which probably meant she was chitchatting with her dad. “Father is awake,” she said, confirming my suspicion. “I will need to tend to him shortly.”

  “What should we do in the meantime?” Ferraro asked.

  I rubbed at one arm, kneading at a tender spot where one of the Brothers had clubbed me, then suppressed a yawn with my fist. I needed to have my own powwow with the chief. We had an injured man who needed further medical treatment, however, and it would benefit no one to have the poor schmuck wake up in a cave surrounded by more of the Chiye-tanka. This poor guy was probably gonna have Bigfoot-related PTSD for the rest of his natural life.

  Ferraro and I needed to drive him up to Missoula and get him to a hospital, no two ways about it. After we made sure he got some medical attention, we could hit up the chief, then track down James and see if we could shake anything loose on that front. A breeze whispered through the night, giving me a whiff of the odor coming off me like gasoline fumes. I threw up in my mouth a little, but somehow managed to choke the bile back down.

  Right, new plan: First, get the victim to the hospital. Second, take a shower and clean my skin with bleach, burn my clothes in a fire pit, and grab some chow. Third, do all that other shit.

  A sense of overwhelming dread sunk in around me as I contemplated how bad things were liable to get, and how much I still didn’t know. What we really needed was a lucky break—we needed a new lead to fall in our laps. We needed to get in front of this mess somehow, and that meant figuring out what the bigger picture was.

  “Alright, Fortuna!” I hollered into the evening air, because I was tired and frustrated and it really didn’t seem like a little luck was too much to ask for considering who my boss was. “I could use a little bit of help here. This is obviously Hand of Fate business, so how ’bout a friggin’ break, huh?”

  A moment later I heard the hum of a car engine, shortly followed by a pair of headlights slicing through the dark.

  No way could that be her. No way in hell.

  A nondescript sedan, not terribly dissimilar from the one Ferraro and I had been tooling around in, pulled up. The engine idled softly as the window rolled down to reveal the grinning face of a plain-Jane woman, thin and petite, with shoulder-length brown hair pulled back into a ponytail. She had on a pair of rectangular glasses and wore casual business clothing: a cream-colored blouse, open in the front with a high collar, paired to a smart dark pantsuit.

  Fortuna, Lady Luck, professional and annoying as always.

  “I saw you folks standing on the side of the road and I thought you might be having car trouble.” She paused, her smile widening just a tad. “Is that—Yancy Lazarus and Agent Ferraro? And who’s that there … Winona Treesinger, daughter of Chief Chankoowashtay? Why, how fortunate of me to be passing by this way.” She snorted at her own joke. Lady had the lamest sense of humor in the world—the absolute queen of puns and lousy word play.

  “Yeah, about as fortunate as a shotgun blast to the face,” I said, scowling. “I could’ve used some help before now, you know. For instance, it would’ve been nice to know that mill connected directly to the sewer ways under the Hub.”

  She looked me up and down, noting the rips in my jeans, the inhuman goo covering my body, and the blood on my … well, on my everything. “I suppose,” she finally said, “you do look a teensy bit rumpled, though otherwise you seem to be in fine shape.”

  “A teensy bit rumpled? Those freak-shows back there almost punched Ferraro’s ticket, you know that? Never mind how bad it’s gonna sting to disinfect all these cuts. And the taste in my mouth? That shit isn’t ever coming out.”

  “Yes, Agent Ferraro almost died,” Fortuna said patiently, a teacher explaining something elementary to a dense kindergartner. “Almost is the operative word, I believe.” Her tone was precise and clipped. “So perhaps you could stop being a waa-baby for just a moment, yes? As you know, there are rather specific rules about when and to what degree I may interfere in mortal events—even for the Hand of Fate.

  “For example, had I fully intervened when you first lost your powers and were incarcerated by the good Agent”—she beamed at Ferraro, standing a few feet behind me—“you never would have made an alliance with her and, thus, you would be very, very dead now. Likewise, had I told you about the mill, you never would’ve ventured in. Far too dangerous. And, as a result, Doctor Hogg would’ve been forty-two percent more likely to complete his nefarious undertaking. It’s a fine balance, really.”

  “You’re the worst boss I’ve ever had,” I muttered. “I’ve never been so unlucky in my whole friggin’ life. Now tell me why you’re here.” Not a question. She only ever showed up to point me in a new direction, generally a direction with the potential for bodily dismemberment and horrible death. She’d been marginally helpful a handful of times, I guess, but nothing to celebrate.

  “First tell me what you’ve uncovered,” she said.

  “Like you don’t know,” I replied, crossing my arms and shooting daggers at her.

  She rolled her eyes and gave me a disapproving frown. “Despite what you may think, Mr. Lazarus, Lady Fate and I don’t know everything. In fact, there’s a divine power at play, interfering with our ability to see accurately into the future. So, there are a few pieces of the puzzle that are missing—in fact, these puzzle pieces aren’t even on the table. Now, will someone please tell me what happened in the mill?”

  Ferraro stepped forward, placing her hands on her hips. “Let me do it,” she said, offering me an even look. “I’m better with the details, anyway.”

  “No skin off my teeth,” I said, turning my back and leaning up against Lady Luck’s car while I absently picked at some dried blood on my coat.

  “Excuse me,” Fortuna said, popping her head out of the window and glaring at me. “This is a rental and I don’t want you getting your mess all over it before I have to return it.”

  “The worst!” I threw up my hands and stalked over to Ferraro’s sedan, leaning up against that one instead.

  Ferraro went over the details, a thorough SITREP, or situation report, describing our conversation with the sheriff, our trek through the mill, and our grisly and unnerving discovery in Doctor Hogg’s laboratory.

  “Excellent work,” Fortuna said once Ferraro concluded her report. “I knew you and Mr. Lazarus were the right choice.”

  “So w
ill you finally tell us what you’re doing here?” I asked.

  “Yes, gladly.” She grabbed up her briefcase from the passenger seat and popped the car door. She slid out, carefully laid the briefcase on the car hood—it was a rental, after all—and immediately began rifling through its contents. “Mr. Lazarus, a little light here?” she asked, not so much as sparing me a backward glance.

  I grumbled, but acquiesced, moseying over and conjuring a floating orb of pale blue light above my palm.

  “Much better, thank you.” Second after second crept past, until she eventually pulled out a file folder, which she primly placed next to the briefcase. “Ah, here we are.” She drew out a photo of a man: an older Asian gent with dark skin and an unabashedly bald head, dressed in a pair of dark slacks and a button up.

  “Lady Fate and I knew the good doctor was responsible for unleashing the plague that will, in time, ravage humanity. We did not know, however, how the virus was created. Nor did we know where he was planning to release the agent—the variety of locations you discovered is larger than we’d been anticipating, but it does shed some light on a suspicion I’ve long held. All of those sites hold one thing in common: they are possible locations for this man, Luang Phor Ong.” She stared down at the photo, studying the image as if it were the first time she’d ever seen it. “Though it is disturbingly possible he is not really a man at all,” she finished.

  “Okay,” I said, scanning the picture. The man looked utterly normal, completely unremarkable, though, admittedly, people would likely say the same about me. “Why is he so important?”

  “Right,” Fortuna replied. “First let me backtrack a bit. As you should know, Lady Fate and I haven’t been sitting idly by, we’ve been digging on our end, too. The clue you received from the Lich, ‘The White Seal is in play,’ refers to one of seven biblical seals—the First Seal, to be exact—which, when collected and opened by the White King, will usher in the end of the world.”

  “The Seven Seals of Revelation,” Ferraro said, reverently crossing herself as she crowded in beside me to look at the contents splayed out on the hood. According to Ferraro, she was a recovering Catholic, so she got a tad sentimental whenever it came to the Big Guy upstairs and all of His business dealings.

  “Yes, precisely,” Fortuna said, smiling at Ferraro in appreciation. “I’m so glad he has you around.”

  “Wait. So this is some kinda Armageddon deal?” I asked. Nothing new there. Seemed like every Tom, Dick, and Harry wanted to jump-start the end of the world for one reason or another. Couldn’t people just be content to let our little mud-ball keep on spinning?

  “No, no. Not at all.” Fortuna shook her head, then slowly massaged her temples. “Only the White King can break open the Seals—such an event, True Armageddon, cannot happen before its appointed time, as is preordained by divine decree and recorded in the Tapestry of Fate. Enforcing the divine plan is what Lady Fate and I do, after all.

  “True,” she continued, “many choices are left to chance, left to the whims of mortal freewill, but the White King also has a will of His own. Though He does not often act directly, when He does elect to act, it is the absolute final word on the matter. And, since the White King exists outside of space and time, His direct actions are recorded beforehand in the Tapestry of Fate—the divine decrees upon which reality is built.”

  “Well, excuse me for not having the advantage of being a demigod.”

  She paused, quirking an eyebrow at me. “I am no mere ‘demigod’—I am the real thing, one of the great Principalities and Dominions of old.”

  “So if it’s not about Armageddon, what in the hell is it about?”

  She absently rubbed a finger along the edge of her glasses. “How can I put this so your primitive ape-brain can understand?” She inclined her head toward Winona. “No disrespect meant to the Chiye-tanka, of course.”

  “None taken,” Winona said.

  “The Seals themselves are powerful artifacts,” Fortuna continued. “Each Seal contains the essence of a powerful fallen angel, bound in the Pit until the day comes for them to be released upon the Earth. The Seals also hold demonic power … well, a portion of it, and bless the Seal Bearer with unnatural abilities. Deception, War, Famine, Death and Pestilence. These are the first four Seals—represented by the four horsemen, the White, Red, Black, and Green riders—followed by mastery over time, number five, and power over nature itself, number six. The seventh is …” she paused, “tricky to explain.

  “At any rate, the White Seal corresponds to the first horseman, the Beast Demon of the Abyss. Whoever has the Seal is utilizing its stolen power, the power of charismata and deception, both to draw followers to himself and to mask his identity and movement from Lady Fate. The tapestry, you see, is of divine origin, so only divine power may influence and distort it.”

  Holy shit was this heavy. I pushed away from the car, listening intently as I paced back and forth, feeling a sudden need to move, to act, to do something.

  “The Seals were originally handed out to seven guardians,” Fortuna said, “beings entrusted to preserve and resist the power of their respective Seals until the appointed time set by the White King. But if someone, say a highly placed member in the Guild, could assemble all seven Seals, they would command a power unequalled by any on the earth. They could become a living god in truth. Seattle was the last known location of the fourth Seal Bearer”—she tapped the photo—“this man here.

  “My Lady believes that whoever is behind this mad scheme intends to use the Wendigo strain, coupled with the Fourth Seal—Death and Pestilence—to create a global pandemic. To fashion an army of the near dead, completely loyal to the wielder of the Fourth Seal. We can only hope your interference tonight will at least delay the development of the Wendigo virus until you can track down the Fourth Seal and acquire it before our enemies do. But that is a matter to worry about later. As of now, we don’t even know where the Seal Bearer resides.”

  “So how do we find him?” I asked.

  Fortuna pressed her lips together. “You’re not going to like the answer, I’m afraid. Unfortunately, there is only one person privy to his current whereabouts.”

  “And that would be?” Ferraro asked, beating me to the punch.

  “Arch-Mage Borgstorm,” Fortuna replied. “The current head of the Guild of the Staff. Borgstorm and Ong go back a very long ways, and I have reason to believe they’ve stayed in touch.”

  Screw me sideways with a baseball bat. If Borgstorm was the only one with the info, we were shit outta luck. The arch-mage and I had an uneasy relationship—the kind of relationship a prison warden has with a noncompliant inmate—so it’d be damn hard to get any help out of her. And by damn hard I meant it was about as likely as the moon being made out of blue cheese.

  “Well, shit.”

  “My thoughts exactly,” Fortuna said. “But, we can worry about Ong later. For now, we should focus our efforts on preventing the doctor from perfecting the virus in the first place, rendering the whole affair a moot point.”

  “And,” Ferraro added, “if the person pulling the strings needs all seven Seals, then maybe we can track down some of the other ones. Do you know the locations of any of the other Seal Bearers?”

  “Brilliant idea,” Fortuna said. “Exactly the right course of action. As to tracking down the other Seals—I’m not at liberty to tell you everything …” She drummed her fingers on the hood. “Bloody rules, you know. But …” She glanced around like a fugitive about to commit grand theft auto. “It might serve you to take a look closer to home.” She discreetly pointed toward Winona, before reaching up and adjusting her glasses, a miserable attempt to hide the gesture.

  “Holy shit.” I wheeled around, facing Winona, who stood in a pool of inky dark, nervousness etched into every line of her body. “The chief is one of the Seal Bearers?” I asked. It was a question, but I was pretty damned sure I knew the answer.

  I thought back to the giant red creature Kong had morp
hed into during his knock-down-drag-out with the Wendigo. I’m not exactly a theologian, nor a regular churchgoer, but even I knew which of the four horsemen was big and red and scary as hell: the horseman of War. It even made sense in a weird sort of reverse logic—who better to give the Seal of War to than the leader of nonviolent, tree hippies?

  I caught Fortuna smile out of the corner of my eye, the grin looking somewhat crazed in my Vis-conjured light. She cupped one hand and brought it to her mouth. “Maybe he’s not quite as daft as I thought,” she whispered to Ferraro.

  “Answer me, Winona.” I scowled, ignoring Fortuna’s backhanded compliment. “You and Kong have been hooking and jiving anytime I ask a question, but I’ve got a right to know and you promised me we’d talk.”

  The Sasquatch scooted back a step further, as if she might just be able to sink through the ground and disappear if she refused to speak.

  “Winona, I need answers. I understand this is a big deal, but if you hold out on me I can’t make things right.”

  A tense moment of absolute stillness followed, like maybe she was deciding whether she should answer or just turn tail and bolt. But at last she nodded, her body sagging in defeat.

  “Only my father knows the true extent of the Seal’s power, so you must discuss the matter with him.” She sighed, the sound like a felled tree crashing in the woods. “But yes, he does possess the Seal of War.”

  I snapped my fingers and turned back toward Fortuna. “Holy shit that explains a lot. So whoever’s behind this isn’t just out to make an army of plague monsters, they’re after Kong personally. So, if we can protect the chief and stop the Wendigo, we might be able to end this crapalanche before it ever gets any real momentum. I think we can protect the chief, but how in the hell are we gonna lock down the Wendigo? Thanks to that stupid tiara, he’s got command of an entire army of Sasquatches.”

  “What kind of benefactor would I be if I didn’t have some help to offer?” Fortuna asked, sounding as smug as some Prius-driving, vegan hipster extolling the virtues of tofu.