Brimstone Blues: A Yancy Lazarus Novel (Yancy Lazarus Series Book 5)

by James Hunter

  If the trick with the wall was impressive, this was borderline miraculous.

  Healing people was hard, hard work. Imagine pushing a busted-down Chevy on bald tires up the side of a mountain. Now imagine that mountain was Mount Everest in the middle of a blizzard. Okay, you’re in the ballpark. And really, that makes sense when you think about it. The human body isn’t some Honda you can get a tune-up on—it’s a real mystery, a bona fide miracle.

  “Yep, we definitely need to have that talk,” I grumbled under my breath, staring as the wound closed completely, leaving behind a deep red scar.

  “Priorities,” he said again, handing me the flask, then standing. “Best if you drink the rest of that. It’ll help with infection and recharge your wards.” He paused, eyes distant, finger drumming on his fat belly. Thump-thump-thump. “You probably need to eat, too. That’ll help with the healing.” The last seemed more for him than me. “There are some critters nearby, so I’m gonna go scrounge up a meal. You should be okay. No Derby girls for five miles, at least, but if you see anything”—he bent over and tapped the handle of my monster-killing pistol—“use this. Just this. No magic, understand?”

  I dipped my chin in acknowledgment, sprawled my legs out with a grimace, and readjusted my back against the wall—there was a damned spit of rock poking me right in the kidney.

  He turned and wheeled away without another word, heading down a smaller connecting passageway, quickly swallowed by the darkness. I sat there against the wall for a while, my eye closed, grabbing what rest I could while keeping myself from true sleep. How darkly ironic would it be to escape Tez and her murderous crew, only to be disemboweled and eaten by some mindless creepy-crawly slinking by while I dozed?

  I’d never live that shit down, and I was just positive Levi would blab about it to anyone who would listen.

  He was totally that kinda guy.

  TWENTY-ONE:

  Shootin’ the Shit

  I’m not sure how much time passed as I lay there, leaning drunkenly against the wall, dancing a merry ol’ jig on the line between awake and asleep. It felt like a while. The whole time, I couldn’t help but think about what an utter crapfest this mission had turned into. True, Levi and I had escaped from the Roller Nation, and yes, we’d tracked down some leads, but we were still no closer to getting the damned scythe. That was the whole point of this excursion, and we’d come back empty-handed.

  Depression and anger warred inside my chest.

  Eventually, I heard the faint sound of skates on stone, which drew me from my dark, half-coherent thoughts. My eye popped open in the span of a heartbeat, and my pistol was up and ready, trained on the approaching noise. I let out a ragged sigh of relief as Levi’s bulky frame wheeled into view from the connecting tunnel, illuminated by spectral green light from the foxfire overhead. I uncocked the hammer, stowed my weapon, and absently rubbed the sleep from my eye.

  The great gray shit-kicker had a bundle of sticks tucked up underneath one arm, and something raccoon sized draped lifelessly over one shoulder.

  Although the lifeless thing was raccoon sized, it wasn’t a chittering trash bandit. Ahh, no. Levi’s catch was covered snout to tail with scaly black chitin and sported a host of claw-tipped, double-jointed legs, giant bat ears protruding from either side of its head, and a single milky eye. I held up a fist to my mouth and stifled the urge to projectile vomit all over myself as he dropped the abomination about three feet from where I sat.

  It landed with a wet splat, and even at that distance the scent of putrid meat and old shit hit me like a sucker punch.

  “Oh my God,” I said, edging away from the freaky critter before the corpse could leak on me. “What is that?” I asked, hooking a thumb toward the monster.

  “Dinner,” he replied completely straight-faced, not even a hint of a joke in his voice.

  “Yeah, I’m just gonna nope all the nopes that ever noped,” I replied, scooting farther away.

  Levi tilted his head to the side and offered me an unamused eyeroll. “It’s fine. They’re called potkan. I found a nest about fifteen minutes from here. They’re mostly harmless. Mostly. And edible.” He squatted down a few feet away and carefully arranged the dry sticks under his arm into a neat teepee, ready to burn. “You’re in bad shape. Food will help set you right. So, eat this or die a slow painful death. Your choice. Assuming you don’t want to die, though, I’ll need a little help with the fire.” He waved vaguely toward the pile of sticks, ready and waiting for a flame. “Just a little, though. Don’t overdo it.”

  I eyed the disgusting offspring of a common raccoon and a Lovecraftian horror from the outer abyss, then opened myself to a trickle of Vis and conjured a guttering fire. Turned out I didn’t want to die. The sticks were drier than a popcorn’s fart and went up in an instant. Levi settled down nearby, crossing his legs Indian-style, then picked up the mangy potkan, holding its gross body over the flames with his bare hands. Orange tongues washed over the black-plated creature and lapped at Levi’s blocky fingers.

  The golem grimaced, but left his hands to the flames, seemingly content with the situation.

  “Doesn’t that hurt?” I asked curiously, eyeing the dancing blaze.

  “Yes,” he replied. “But this helps me with the guilt. Self-castigation is good for atonement.” He didn’t elaborate.

  “What are you feeling guilty for?” I pressed. “So far you seem like a pretty straight shooter to me. Boring. Ugly. Awful. A terrible conversationalist. But a straight shooter.” I offered him a finger gun and a wink. “Certainly nothing so bad you need to set yourself on fire.”

  “It’s for the killing,” he said offhandedly, staring into the flames as his clay flesh turned pale white, and small fissures appeared in his skin. “I like it,” he said after a pause. “To kill. It makes me happy. Complete. But it’s wrong.” He shook his head, his hands fixed unwaveringly over the flames. “All the things down here deserve it, but that’s not the point. It’s about me. About my heart. In my heart, I’m a murderer, and I hate that.” He faltered, glancing down to the cavern floor. “I try to stop, but I can’t do it. The AA helps a little. But only a little. Pastor Dave would be mortified if he saw me now.”

  He fell silent, the crackling of the fire and the sizzling of the meat the only sounds to be heard.

  After a time, he withdrew his hands, the disgusting creature now charred black and dripping oily grease as a cloud of steam wafted up. Despite its utterly gross appearance, it smelled amazing. A reminder of how hungry I was. He flexed powerful fingers, breaking the creature’s armored shell with a crack that reminded me of lobster tail. Carefully, he stuck fat digits into the ragged cracks in the tough exoskeleton and pulled free a chunk of white meat, savory and somehow sweet in my nostrils.

  I eyed it suspiciously but begrudgingly accepted the offering, tearing off a bite despite the heat. I expected chicken, but the flavor was closer to crawfish, which came as a pleasant surprise.

  Levi scooted over to the wall adjacent to me and began examining the punctures and lacerations littering his torso, then turned his attention to his badly mutilated right hand, still missing several bratwurst-sized fingers.

  “So, what do you want to know?” he asked while casually smashing off a chunk of rock from the wall. He set the small boulder on the ground and carefully pulverized it into a large pile of loose scree. With that done, he set about systematically packing his gold-soaked wounds with dirt and chunks of broken rock. Just cramming everything in until it formed an ugly brown clot against his gray skin.

  “Where to even start,” I said, eyeing him askew as he shoved his mutilated hand into the remaining pile of rubble and corkscrewed his stumpy nubs into the stone. “I guess, let’s start with what in the hell are you doing? Do you have any idea how unsanitary that is?”

  He looked up, face flat while he continued to mercilessly grind his hand into the rock dust. “I’m healing. Sometimes with wounds like this, it’s just best to start over. Break the old s
cabs open so that things can heal right and proper.”

  “Yeah, but why don’t you just shapeshift new fingers? You tellin’ me you can turn your hand into a meat cleaver, but you can’t regrow a couple of fingers?”

  “It’s complicated,” he offered curtly. “This is my true form.” He gestured at his lumpy, misshapen body with his other hand. “I can alter what’s there, but regrowing parts or healing wounds is tricky work. I need new material to convert.” He picked up a clump of dirt and shoved it into a bullet wound on his leg, which he’d missed during the first pass. “My ichor, it saturates the earth and turns it into clay. Makes it a part of me with enough time. That’s how I heal. How I make new parts.”

  I took another bite of the exotic meat, letting hot juice sluice down my chin and not caring. “Your ichor seems to do just about everything. You can heal people with it. Contain demons.” I paused, glancing back at the cavern entrance. “Even move mountains. So, what’s the deal, huh? I’ve been around the block a time or two, and I’ve never seen anything like that. Your blood seems like borderline magic. Real magic—not the stuff I do.” I took another mouthful of charred meat, feeling a little better with every bite.

  For a time, he didn’t respond.

  He just stared at the fire then at his blocky hands in turn, as though considering whether or not to stick ’em back in the flames. “The ichor is magic, I think,” he finally said. “It makes me what I am. Animates my body. Allows me to shapeshift. All of it. But the real secret is what makes the ichor.”

  He sat up nice and straight, squared his shoulders, and angled his body toward me. Then, he reached up and tapped at his meaty sternum; the clay covering his breastbone wriggled in response, pulling back to reveal a deep cavity. Where his heart should’ve been was an irregular ruby the size of a curled fist, covered in swirling golden lines and pulsing with seedy crimson light.

  My mouth fell open, and a tremble ran through my hands. No way. Impossible.

  “That’s a friggin’ Philosopher Stone,” I said in a harsh whisper, jabbing at the glowing rock with one shaking finger. “You have a Philosopher Stone lodged in your gooey chest hole. I don’t even understand what’s happening right now.”

  His face contorted into a brooding grimace as he nodded and tapped his chest again, flawlessly sealing the hole. “One of only two in existence. The other one is currently inside Doctor Arlen Hogg—the same man who created me in a Nazi bunker just outside of the Buna work camp, back in ’43.

  “Hogg was working as a research scientist for the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei back in those days,” he continued, the words coming slowly, uncertainly. Clearly, this wasn’t a story Levi told often, if ever. “He was part of Hitler’s occult Research and Development unit, the Ahnenerbe, which later became the Thule-Society. He built me with the help of a rabbi by the name of Yitzchak Tov Ganz. Cobbled me together from the remnants of the original Golem of Prague.”

  “No. Get the hell outta here,” I said, setting my roast Hell-critter down, running a hand through my hair, then fishing a cigarette from my crumpled pack of Reds. “Hogg was a Nazi? And he built you in 1943? And, also, he has a no-shit-Philosopher Stone? Holy crap this is heavy.”

  I needed a smoke, now more than ever. I lit up, taking a few deep puffs, staring at Levi through the drifting gray smoke. “That’s the wildest thing I’ve seen in a long, long time—and I just fought my way through a sea of Hellion Derby girls. How does the Stone play into the story?” I asked, genuinely curious.

  Levi unfolded his legs and pulled his knees into his chest, wrapping his big arms around his shins. Though he didn’t say so outright, clearly this was touchy territory for the MudMan. “That’s how they brought me to life in the first place. Rabbi Yitzchak built my body, but Hogg, he built my heart and soul. The Stone was the only thing powerful enough to imbue an inanimate object with life.” He tapped on his chest again, his voice quiet and mournful.

  “Man. That’s something else,” I said, shaking my head then taking another long drag on my cigarette. “You’re like a lost wonder of the world. A living relic.” I paused, rubbing a hand along my jaw. “Don’t suppose that thing really turns lead into gold?”

  He looked up and offered me a weak, half-hearted grin. “The ichor can turn anything into just about anything else. Lead’s just easiest because it’s cheap and available in large quantities. Anything would do, though, with enough time and ichor.” His grin widened into a goofy, uneven smile. “Just between you and me? I have a crate of gold holed up in my basement, saved for a rainy day. That’s how the Guild found me. They followed the gold.” He shook his head ruefully.

  “Incredible. Seriously.” And I meant it. First, a Hand of Glory, then a friggin’ Philosopher Stone. This day couldn’t get any wonkier.

  Levi’s grin slipped, and he dropped his bald dome, staring at the ground. “It’s only incredible until you hear how Hogg built the damned stone.” He reached down and absently traced lines on the dusty floor with one hand. “Three hundred sixteen,” he mumbled. “That’s the number of Jews Hogg murdered to build it—one for each of the sacred names of God. He butchered people—old men, mothers, little children. He ripped their souls out and bound ’em to the stone. One big battery powered by the dead. Now they all live inside my head. Bits and pieces of ’em, anyway. Memories, mostly.”

  He fell silent, contemplating his beefy knees as the fire crackled, popped, and danced. I stayed quiet, too, because what could I possibly say in the face of that? There were no words for this situation, and anything I had to offer would be trite and hollow.

  “The rabbi, he didn’t know about the butchery,” Levi offered with a noncommittal bob of his head. Like maybe that changed things somehow. “At first, he thought Hogg was a Jewish sympathizer, working to build a weapon against the regime. When he found out, though …” Levi faltered, mouth going suddenly slack as though he saw the events real-time. “When he found out, he went mad.” The words were a guttural whisper.

  “He branded me”—the golden sword on his chest flared—“and used himself as a ritual sacrifice to turn me loose against the Nazis. He ruined Hogg’s plan. Spit right in his eye. I woke up in a mass grave, surrounded by bodies covered in powdered lime—the Nazis, they used the stuff to mask the smell of the dead. I didn’t know who I was or what I was, and for a long time, I just killed. Hunted down every Nazi I could find and murdered them. But then, I started to think.

  “I became aware. Conscious. But I still didn’t know anything about who made me or why. All I had was the brand and the urge to kill. Until I stumbled onto Hogg. He was working with the Kobock Nation, murdering people in the Deep Downs beneath the Hub.” He paused, holding up his mutilated hand, examining the wounds, now caked with brown grime. “That was a few years ago. I stopped him, but the slippery weasel got away, and I’ve been looking for him ever since. If anyone deserves a long, slow, painful death, it’s Hogg, and I plan to see he gets his due.”

  “What was he trying to accomplish? Creating you, I mean?” I asked, needing to know, but not really wanting to. There were scores of old rituals powered by blood sacrifice, and anything that required even a single human sacrifice was about as vile as you got. But a ritual that required three hundred and sixteen human sacrifices? That was a whole new level of evil.

  “Same thing he was trying to accomplish in the Deep Downs with the Kobocks: creating a vessel capable of holding the demonic god he serves. It’s probably also the same reason he’s working with the Morrigan. He’s single-minded in his devotion, and the kind of resources he needs are hard to come by. Someone like the Morrigan, though? She could give him everything. And now that they have access to the Guild Vault?” He paused and tilted his head to one side, beady eyes narrowed in concern. “Well, it’s only a matter of time before he frees Cain from the Outer Darkness. That’s why I came to get you—to stop that from happening.”

  I leaned forward and flicked my spent cigarette butt into the flames and
pushed myself upright. I swayed and wobbled, but already my leg was feeling a helluva lot better. Not good, but better. I hiked up my jacket sleeve and eyed the tattoos scrawled over my skin. Nice and bright again, shining with golden light just like Levi’s crude brand.

  “You should rest longer,” Levi said, eyeballing my blood-caked pants.

  “I can sleep when I’m dead, partner,” I replied, hobbling over to the golem and offering him my hand. “We’ve got work to do.” And suddenly I meant it, as new resolve bloomed in me, hot and fierce. Sure, this mission hadn’t turned out exactly the way we’d planned, but we were alive, there were still people who needed us, and even more people who needed a good swift gunshot to the face. “We aren’t gonna get out of Hell and kill Hogg kicking our heels around down here. Let’s get back topside.”

  Though Levi outweighed me by five hundred pounds, he accepted my hand for what it was—an offer of peace, friendship even—and stood.

  A ghost of a grin graced his lips. “Alright.”

  TWENTY-TWO:

  Infernal Company

  It took us a handful of hours to wind our way through the snaking passages and back to the surface. The trip was slow and tedious—Levi navigating through swooping halls, clambering up rocky cliffs, and inching through claustrophobic niches—but after our excitement with the Roller Nation, I didn’t mind a little downtime. Eventually, we wriggled through a fissure, which let out into the disheveled storage room of a Chinese restaurant on the east side of Pandæmonium called the Hot Wok.