Savage Prophet: A Yancy Lazarus Novel (Episode 4)

by James A. Hunter

  Tears welled in my eyes hearing the words, and I couldn’t help but look at the unarmed boys, flanked by deadly, brainless killing machines. What kind of monster could do that to anyone, let alone kids? I have no illusions about myself—I’m not a good guy. Over the course of my years, I’d abandoned my family, burned people alive, murdered countless monsters—often in spectacularly bloody fashion—even killed a handful of children, though always in an act of self-defense. Shit, I’d been the Guild’s wet-works man for twenty-five years before finally walking away.

  But even I had my limits.

  What that asshole was describing went beyond morally questionable acts and entered fully into the realm of completely fucking evil. Hitler-level evil. No ifs, ands, or buts about it.

  “All these boys,” Beauvoir continued, “they were strong. They each saved the innocent at great personal expense. They saved their families, even though they never got to see their loved ones again. Then they came to work for me. I am their family now, their father, their master. They would do anything for me. Kill for me. Die for me. Whatever I ask.

  “Tonight, Yancy Lazarus, I’m gonna give you the same choice. If you come down from there and turn yourself over to me, you can save these boys. All of them. Dat would be a good thing to do, I think. The heroic thing, though we both know you are no hero. But maybe. Maybe, you can do a heroic thing.” He nodded his head approvingly. “One heroic thing. One act of redemption.

  “Or you can try to save yourself,” he continued, “but there is a great cost in this. If you do not come down, you will have a front-row seat to watch these boys being torn to pieces, one by one. There are six boys. I know”—he tapped at his gaping, empty eye socket—“dat gun of yours holds six shots. If you are a very good shot, maybe you can kill each one before the suffering begins. But the question is this: can you kill six unarmed boys to save yourself? Even if you can’t pull the trigger, can you watch ’em die horrible deaths to prolong your life by a few moments? If so, I think you will not be sleeping so well after tonight.”

  He was quiet for a moment, then shrugged and folded his hands in front of him. “In the end, life is choice, and this choice is yours. I give you a minute to think about it, but”—he paused again, letting the ominous silence impart its own warning—“don’t take too long.” Then he sat back down on his throne, legs crossed, fingers steepled as he regarded me with a smug smile.

  I wasn’t completely out of juice, but I was damned close and there was no feasible way I could hold off another full-on assault. When they came for me, and they would, they’d take me one way or the other. I considered my pistol, then with a sigh, slipped it back into its holster. I’d killed kids before—certainly not something I was proud of, but a hard truth I couldn’t deny—but I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t watch those kids get torn to pieces if I could stop it. Not in a million years.

  Beauvoir was right about one thing: life is choice.

  Choosing where you’re gonna work. Who you’re gonna love. Where you want to live. It’s about choosing whether to cheat on the test. Whether to return that wallet full of bills you found on the ground. Whether to fight. Whether to walk away. It’s about deciding what you want to live for and, maybe more importantly, what you’re willing to die for. Despite what I’d told Ferraro, there was a better-than-even-money chance that Pa Beauvoir was gonna kill me, and if I didn’t hold my ground, he probably would.

  Or, I could give up, maybe die, and six innocent kids—kids who’d already been forced to murder their families—could live. I nodded. That was a price worth paying.

  “Alright,” I called back. I pulled my bulk over the wall on tired arms, used the little power remaining in me to clear a path in the spiked barrier below, and dropped to the ground. My feet thudded against the dirt, a small dust cloud mushrooming up around me.

  “Just don’t hurt ’em, and I’ll go with you.” I raised my hands into the air, a universal symbol of surrender. “But you need to know, Beauvoir, I am gonna make you pay. And not just for whatever you’ve got planned for me. You’re gonna pay for what you’ve done to these kids. For what you’ve done to the people of this city. You’re gonna pay for every murdered father, mother, brother, sister, aunt, uncle, and child. I swear to God.”

  “Big words,” he said, standing, “but I think that is all they are. Words. Just words.” His tone—dry, flat, slightly amused—showed just how unconcerned he was. “Junior, Emmanuel.” He barked the names off, a drill instructor calling out recruits. “Go retrieve our guest.” The two boys nearest me started forward, their huge, distant eyes hardly registering what had just happened. “The rest of you,” Pa Beauvoir said, “get the coffin.”

  A coldness blew through my chest like an arctic gale at the word coffin, but I forced the sudden fear from my mind as the first boy drew up to me.

  I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I wasn’t ready when he lifted a gloved hand, almost in greeting, then blew a small cloud of chalky yellow powder directly into my face. The shit—harsh and acidic with a pungent scent like rotten fish—swirled into my open eyes, temporarily blinding me. It hit my skin like flour and stuck fast against my cheeks and sweaty brow. I blinked frantically against the substance, which felt like having shards of fine glass scratching at my eyes, then swiped at my face with one hand, trying to clear the dust away.

  “What the hell?” I sputtered, then shook my head, once more rubbing at my eyes with the back of my hand. I stumbled back a step, then two, before reeling left, desperately trying to regain my balance, which had apparently abandoned me. My head became unbearably heavy, bobbing up and down, my lips and face growing numb and useless. “The hell was that stuff?” I slurred, stumbling left and right, back and forth, a stone-cold drunk fighting to keep his feet at all costs.

  The kid didn’t answer.

  Instead he stared at me with placid, far-seeing eyes. The eyes of a combat-hardened solider who no longer saw the violence of his hands.

  My foot hit a rock or maybe a large fragment of skull, and I finally lost the battle to stay upright. My legs collapsed and my body fell like a boneless rag doll, crumpling to the ground. My head came down hard, colliding with something sharp littering the ground, and pinpricks of light exploded in my vision. The blow was a nasty one—split my scalp—and I knew it wouldn’t be long before I lost consciousness, either as a result of the head trauma or as a result of whatever drug the kid had hit me with.

  Things started to fade, but not before I saw the other four boys make their way toward me, carrying a heavy coffin fashioned of polished black wood. “Get him in,” came Beauvoir’s voice from somewhere out of view. “It is time to begin the games.” The breath caught in my chest and I wanted to scream. To kick and bite, to run and hide. But I couldn’t do anything. My eyes were, glued wide open, but the rest of my body was entirely unresponsive. I still had sensation throughout my body—could feel the rocks and sharp bone chips beneath me—but I couldn’t do anything.

  Couldn’t even blink.

  One boy slid behind me, wiggling and wedging his hands beneath my armpits while another kid—the one who doused me—roughly grabbed my ankles. “Un. Deux. Trois,” the boy behind me counted, and then they hoisted me up like a bulky, awkward sack of potatoes and manhandled me toward the coffin, which had been set down a few feet away. It took ’em only a handful of seconds to get my body suspended above the box and, after another three count in French, they unceremoniously dropped me in, my head thumping down, this time against the thin silk liner inside.

  Beauvoir loomed above me like a scarecrow, his face twisted in a cruel smile. “Give me that,” he snapped at a boy out of view. He reached for something: a jar, which he brought into view. The jar wasn’t anything exceptional. A plain glass container with a metal lid screwed on the top—like the kinda jar old church ladies used to preserve jam. It was filled halfway with something brown. Then I noticed that the contents of the jar moved. A steady wriggle, followed by a flash of buggy legs.

/>   “It’s gonna be dark for a little while,” Pa Beauvoir said with a knowing grin, “but I don’t want you to be lonely, so I brought you some friends.” He unscrewed the container—slowly, methodically—then casually upended the container on my chest. A small host of bugs crawled free. A pair of scuttling cockroaches, several slithering giant centipedes, and a creeping, long-legged tarantula. “Have a nice trip,” Pa Beauvoir said, before slamming the coffin lid closed with a snap-bang, leaving me paralyzed, in utter darkness, with bugs burrowing into my clothes.

  I don’t know if tears leaked from my eyes or not, what with being paralyzed and all, but I think they did. Then, whether from head trauma or from sheer fear and panic, I fainted, the darkness stealing in from the edges and overwhelming me, dragging me down into an uneasy sleep. I’ve never in my whole life been so relieved to pass out.

  TWENTY-ONE:

  Meeting of the Minds

  My mind slipped into darkness, but the increasingly familiar sight of the vaulted prison housing Azazel resolved out of that thick gloom.

  One moment the coffin lid clicked closed, blanketing me in thick, suffocating black, and the next the metal-plated dome loomed before me, obscured only by the chain-linked fence with its looping curls of razor-sharp C-wire. Sleeping, then. I turned without really paying the prison much mind, surveying the murky swampland. A marsh filled with poisonous bugs. Like cockroaches and centipedes and spiders and a thousand other nasty things with too many legs.

  I vomited a little in my mouth.

  To think my physical body was literally lying in a box full of scurrying creepy crawlies. Gross, gross, gross. If I made it out of my current predicament, I was gonna burn every stitch of clothing I had on and take a bath in boiling Listerine for a week straight. Would that hurt? Oh hell yeah. But the only other option was to literally flay my skin off.

  I caught a glimmer of the bright lights of Bourbon Street off in the distance and let out a sad sigh.

  God, what I wouldn’t give to be in the real Big Easy right now, taking a few long slugs from a beer or throwing back a couple of shots while I gnawed on a plate of barbeque-slathered ribs. My stomach gurgled. Shit, it’d been ages since I’d had a proper meal and right now I’d kill someone outright for something hot, greasy, and slathered in barbeque sauce. Yep, all I wanted was a plate of ribs, a cold beer, some dirty blues music, and a friggin’ cigarette.

  Was that really too much to hope for in life?

  It’s not like I was asking for the crown jewels or world peace. There were a hundred dives in New Orleans that could serve up my heart’s fondest desire for a crumpled twenty.

  But no. Not me. Not Yancy-Stupid-Ass-Lazarus. Nope.

  I had to save the friggin’ world because I was a gullible, bleeding-heart mook who couldn’t say no and couldn’t seem to leave well enough alone. Dammit. If I didn’t save the world that would also mean the end to Southern-style barbeque, and that was a travesty I couldn’t possibly tolerate. An evil too unthinkable to consider. Was a world without tangy ribs, fall-apart brisket, and frosty beer even worth living in? The answer to that was a resounding no, so I had to stay the course and make sure the Big Easy wasn’t blown away in a supernatural holocaust.

  With a muttered growl I turned toward the dome, searching for that asshole Cassius. The breath caught in my throat as I got my first good view of Azazel’s prison.

  Holy shit-balls.

  It’d only been a day since I’d last done my rounds, and things had changed a whole helluva lot around these parts. Not in a good way.

  The brass and silver placards dotting the outer fence, protecting the structure with their potent containment wards, were now tarnished, the metal pitted and corroded. The glimmering sigils were still intact for the time being, but even a cursory glance told me they wouldn’t hold for much longer. The guard towers, likewise, still stood, but were in a sad, shabby state of disrepair. Their beaming spotlights were dim and foggy, the glass cracked or broken. The stone, brick, and concrete were also crumbling as the swamp surrounding us encroached, slowly reclaiming the structures.

  The prison itself, which had once resembled a steel golf ball protruding from the ground, was in even worse shape. Only a handful of the neon-green containment sigils remained visible—those were faded, dull—and there were now more rocky protrusions than metal siding. The whole thing resembled a giant, ferocious stone porcupine with volcanic quills stabbing up in every direction. The ginormous bank-vault door—the only way in or out—stood, but even it had a huge, jagged fissure running down its front like a fresh scar.

  Holy. Shit. Balls.

  I cupped one hand around my mouth. “Cassius?!” I called out, voice carrying only a handful of yards before the swamp ate the sound entirely. “Where in the hell are you?” I shouted again. There was no response.

  What the hell had happened here?

  How had Azazel managed to wreak such havoc in such a short span of time?

  That thought died before it’d even gotten its ass in gear. I’d done this. Me.

  Maybe I hadn’t done it on purpose, but I’d certainly made it possible. Allowed it to happen. Although I didn’t have to appeal to the Loa for access to the Nox like Pierre-Francois or, presumably, Pa Beauvoir, that power still came from somewhere. It came from friggin’ Azazel, and the more I tapped into it, the more it weakened his prison. And I’d used an aircraft carrier worth of the noxious substance since waking up to find that Gwyllgi preparing to maul my ass.

  And I couldn’t possibly forget my colossal battle against the zombie army. I’d drawn far more Nox than ever before, and the wreckage around my brainscape had to be the result. Had to be. Shit. What if that asshole Azazel had managed to break free? What if he’d done something to Cassius?

  No. I shook my head. If he was free, I wouldn’t be the one in the driver’s seat—that demon dickfart would’ve staged a coup in the time it took to order a cup of joe at Starbucks. No doubt about it.

  “Cassius Aquinas, Undine of Glimmer-Tir,” I intoned, using the full weight of his name as a summoning. “I call you forth, I call you forth, I call you forth—thrice have I called you so, and so bound you are to come.”

  I waited, a nervous tremor running down my back. An unnatural wind moaned around me, rustling the stagnant swamp water, whipping through my hair. A few insects chirped contentedly, but there was no sound from Cassius. No wisecracking smart-assery. No smiling blue-tinged bro-hole bearing me a glass of excellent and endless bourbon—

  A creaky squeak broke through the quiet, the sound of a rusted metal door swiveling open on equally rusted hinges—

  It was the metal viewing window, the one inset into the huge door guarding Azazel’s cozy abode. It was slowly, steadily swinging outward, propelled by some invisible hand. The window came to an abrupt stop, revealing a black hole that reminded me of a giant eye. An empty demon eye, accusing me. You did this. Behold your handiwork. In the same moment, the wind died and the insects ceased their incessant buzzing and chirping, leaving the swamp as motionless and silent as a graveyard at midnight.

  No maniacal cackling followed, no noise of any kind, but that open window was as good as an invitation, beckoning me.

  I swallowed a lump in my throat. Then, because I couldn’t afford to waste any time, I moved. I waved my hand, and the retractable portion of the outer fence began to retreat, the motor grinding and whining in an unhealthy way, a small plume of black smoke trickling up from the gearbox on the left. With a sharp bang the motor gave up the ghost for good, the fence dying in its tracks, only a quarter of the way open. Whatever. A blown engine was the least of my problems right now, and the gate had retracted enough to admit me. If barely.

  I turned sideways and shimmied through, careful to avoid getting tangled in a string of rusted C-wire, then deliberately ambled up to the viewing window. After a few deep calming breaths, I peeked in, but was met by deepest black, completely unbroken.

  “Cassius,” I called into the hole, my voice ring
ing and echoing off the stone and metal within the dome. “You in there, buddy?”

  Nothing.

  “Azazel?” I asked, hesitant, nervous.

  Nothing.

  “Come on, you great big bag of cat turds, I know you’re in there. What the hell have you done to Cassius?”

  More nothing.

  I lingered a moment longer, absently drumming my fingers against the steel door, tat-tat-tat-tat. “Look, asswipe, I’m in a pretty bad spot right now, so if you’re in there and you’re looking to negotiate, now’s your chance. But you’d better speak up now, or I’m gonna let you rot in there until I’m old, gray, and zipping around town on a friggin’ Rascal. You hear me?” That last question rang out like a struck gong.

  “And why would I want to negotiate?” the demon’s voice came, harsh and guttural. “I have subdued your guardian, the one you call Cassius, and soon this shoddy prison will crack and break like an egg, birthing me into your brain. Then, I will have only you to oppose me—you who, knowing the risks of tapping into my power, do not possess the self-control to stop yourself. So, I ask again, why would I gamble when I already have all the chips? When my victory is all but secure?”

  He fell silent, his words, his accusations—truer than I’d care to admit—weighing on me.

  I cleared my throat, then shifted my weight from foot to foot.