Savage Prophet: A Yancy Lazarus Novel (Episode 4) (13 page)

“You look like shit, Yancy,” she said, giving me a sidelong glance and frown, before picking up a cotton ball and dousing it with a stream of iodine. Working with efficient, dexterous fingers, she took my arm and began dabbing at the wounds. I grimaced, shifting uncomfortably from the pain as orange iodine stained the myriad of lacerations, and she wiped the dried blood away. After a few minutes and a growing pile of used cotton balls, she nodded her approval and stood, then headed over to the kitchen.

She came back a few minutes later with a couple of Vicodin and a bottle of Gentleman Jack. She passed both to me without a word, then picked up the curved needle. Time for stitches. Yay.

I downed the pain pills with a huge gulp of Jack—followed by several more gulps for good measure—then braced myself as she began to work, curved needle dipping down, digging into my flesh, pulling my skin shut. She worked in focused silence for a few minutes before finally speaking.

“Did a bear maul you?” Her tone was stern, serious. I couldn’t tell if she was joking.

I gave the jagged teeth marks a once-over. Honestly, a bear mauling was a pretty good guess. And hell, it was just as likely an explanation as what actually happened, which is always a sure sign your life has jumped the tracks at some point.

“That’s a helluva guess,” I replied through gritted teeth, “but no. Guess what did this in two, and dinner’s on me.”

She paused, bottom lip protruding in a quizzical pout as she thought. “One of those evil unicorns,” she offered at last, still deadly serious, which sounds funny but isn’t.

Whenever I tell people I have night terrors about unicorns they always laugh, but that’s only because they’ve never seen one of those suckers. Bastards are as big as rhinos—all beefy muscle, pebbled hide, and burning eyes, with a single twisted spike of ebony, sharper than a surgeon’s scalpel. Plus, they’re more vicious than a SS Officer on a bender. Smart, too.

I shook my head. “Naw. They have flat teeth. If it was a unicorn, you’d be looking for deep punctures, like a knife attack. That, or tons of blunt force trauma, since they like to get you underfoot, then line dance on your torso.”

She grunted noncommittally, completely involved in her grisly work. After several more minutes of quiet, she exchanged the needle for sections of sterile gauze, which she lightly laid over the wounds, securing them in place with strips of paper tape. “So, not a bear and not a nightmare unicorn. Kraken?” she asked offhandedly. “That’s a real thing, right?”

I snorted, my arm jiggling, which hurt like a punch to the groin. “Most things are real things, but no, this wasn’t that. A Kraken wouldn’t have left enough of me to fill a thimble. This was done by a type of supernatural wolf called a Gwyllgi.” I waved my good hand through the air,
it’s not important
.

“Stop moving,” she said, pinning me in place with a steely-eyed glare. “This is hard enough without you flopping all over the place like a dying fish.” She secured the last bit of tape in place, then snatched up the first aid wrap. “And why, pray tell, was a Gwyllgi munching on your arm?”

“Long story,” I replied, “but we’ll get there.”

She nodded, not pushing me. That’s one of the things I love about her—she knows when to let silence do the talking.

“What about that shoulder?” she asked clinically, finishing up on my forearm. “You fall asleep with a cigarette again? I’ve warned you about smoking in bed.” Her eyebrows were knotted together in concentration, but that had been a weak attempt at humor.

“No,” Darlene’s voice came, “no, that was me. Just a little accident,” she finished, blushing a deep crimson.

Ferraro glanced over to the woman occupying the love seat. “Right. And who are you again? Aside from his supervisor, I mean? As a general rule of thumb, I like to know who I’m getting mixed up with, so maybe you could give me a few details about yourself.”

“I completely understand,” Darlene said, sitting up a bit straighter in her seat, primly adjusting her wrinkled and bloody shirt. “I’m Darlene Drukiski, with the Judges Office. And before we get any further, I just wanted to say thank you so much for allowing us to use your home. It’s been one heck of a night”—her eyes looked a little wild when she said that, as though she could see all the craziness on the horizon—“Gwyllgi. Mermaids. Outworld jungles …” She shivered a little. “Glad that’s behind us. Also, on a completely unrelated note, I just wanted to say you have an absolutely gorgeous home. Really.”

“Thank you,” Ferraro replied tersely, eyeing the babbling Judge like she was something totally alien and unfamiliar.

“Do you have a cleaning service?” Darlene forged on. “I’ve considered that, but can’t afford it on my salary. I wish I could get my house to look like this, though. I’ve got two kids, twelve and eight, so it seems like no matter how much I do, my house perpetually looks like Godzilla just rampaged through.” She snorted at her own joke.

Ferraro leaned away from me and pinched the bridge of her nose. “Those are not the details I’m looking for. “You’re with the Judges Office, but why are you here? Why does Yancy have a supervisor dogging his heels in the first place?”

“Oh that.” She grimaced and seesawed her head. “Well, I’m here in sort of a support capacity—really to supervise him as one of the conditions of his parole.”

“Parole,” Ferraro said flatly.

“Uh-huh. On account of all the various crimes he’s committed, though obviously he’s been pardoned—”

“What crimes?” Ferraro cut her off, freezing her with an icy glare cold enough to cause frostbite. “Doesn’t he work for you guys? For the Guild?”

“Well,” Darlene continued tentatively, a woman walking on eggshells. “He
did
work for us. But when he left the Guild, he technically became a deserter, so all the assignments he’s conducted since leaving in 1998 are—according to the CCGJ—considered unauthorized acts of vigilantism. And vigilante acts are, obviously, illegal. He was looking at fifty years in prison, but that sentence has been commuted. Instead, he’s going to work off his prison term in the Judges Office.”

“So, let me see if I have this straight,” Ferraro replied, voice a low growl, eyes squinting, fingers now dabbing at my wounded shoulder a tad too forcefully. “He’s been tried for saving innocent lives, because the Guild didn’t first authorize him to save those lives?”

A tense, awkward silence enveloped us.

“Technically? Yes,” Darlene finally squeaked. “But, like I mentioned, he’s been conditionally pardoned in exchange for future services rendered to the Guild. I’ll admit, formally stripping him of his rank was a bit unfair, but the rules are the rules, dontcha know,” she offered with a shrug. “Anyway, that’s where I come in. The arch-mage personally assigned me to oversee this mission.”

“You’re his babysitter,” Ferraro said, the sentence an accusation.

“No, no, not at all,” Darlene said, fingers fidgeting nervously at the crease in her dirty slacks. “Though I guess it might look like that from a certain angle, I suppose.”

Ferraro opened her mouth, and I could tell she was about to lay into Darlene—it was in the lines of her body, the set of her shoulders, the scowl on her face—which wasn’t totally fair. Darlene was a pawn of some higher level bureaucratic bullshit, and she didn’t deserve the blame. Not entirely.

“It’s not her fault,” I said preemptively before Ferraro could rip her to pieces with an ass-chewing of epic proportions. I faltered, aghast that I was actually
defending
a Guild red-tape-warrior. “She’s—she’s just doing her job,” I finished in a disgruntled whisper.

Ferraro’s eyes narrowed in disbelief. “Judge Drukiski,” she said, voice sharp as my K-Bar. “Could you give us a minute in private?”

Confusion flashed across the Judge’s face, but then she nodded and stood, swaying slightly on her feet. “Gosh, I suppose I could do with a splash of water on my face. Where’s the restroom?”

Ferraro jerked a thumb toward a hallway behind her. “First door on the right,” she said.

Darlene gave the FBI agent her most winning, dimple-cheeked smile, then strode off.

Ferraro tended to my wounds in silence until the soft
click
of the bathroom door floated to us. “So three questions,” she said without preamble. “First, what’s the real deal with her?”

I shrugged. Scowled in a flash of pain. “She’s just an office worker who got caught up in something much bigger than her. A goody two-shoes with no field experience. She’s pretty by the book, which is worrisome, but she’s also an alright person. I think we can trust her. She might be a little ditzy, but she understands what’s at stake here. She knows what happens if we fail.”

Ferraro nodded, clearly not happy but seemingly mollified by my answer. Then her faced softened. “That’s a load of BS,” she said, “the way they busted you down like that. You’re too good for them.” She patted my cheek fondly. “I’m not sure how to phrase my second question.” She leaned away, staring at me in a moment of thoughtful silence.

“You look awful,” she finally said, motioning toward the ferocious punctures in my arm—“but you should look worse. I know wounds, and these? They look a week old instead of a few hours old. What’s going on?”

She knew about Azazel’s presence in my head, and knew there were dangers associated with being a Seal Bearer. Her question, though delivered without accusation, held the faint ring of indictment.
Are you still in there, Yancy?
it seemed to ask.
Are you still you?

“I don’t have an answer for you,” I replied, refusing to meet her gaze, “but I think it’s the demon. Me and Cassius are doing every conceivable thing I can think of to keep him contained, but his essence is still seeping out. Kong told me something like this could happen. The demons are bound to try and preserve the life of their hosts. Even though we have Azazel’s influence down to a trickle, I think he’s using that trickle to heal me. Which is awesome, right up until he breaks free and takes control of my body. Turns me into a friggin’ meat-puppet, which, trust me, I am not lookin’ forward to.”

She pursed her lips into a thin line, worry creasing her forehead, then nodded. “Always more complications,” she said after a beat. “We’ll figure something out. Last question. What in the hell have you gotten yourself into now? I assume this has to do with the Seals? But the Guild? How do they fit in?”

I began to fill her in on the nitty-gritties.

First, I recounted my trial before the Guild, then launched into the scant details on the Fourth Seal, before breezing through the assassination attempt and our narrow escape through the Chamber of Doors. And, because Ferraro was a helluva FBI agent and a damn better investigator than I could ever hope to be, she stopped me every now and again to ask questions or dig out information that I’d thought too irrelevant to share.

She was so competent, so cool and efficient, that I found myself counting my lucky stars she was on my side. Hadn’t always been that way—before teaming up in a dynamic duo of badassery, she’d hunted me relentlessly for the better part of four years, before finally cornering me in an interrogation room in Wyoming. That’d been our first real job together. Glad those days were behind us.

“Well,” she said as I finally fell silent, “we need to get to the arch-mage’s contact before someone kills him and the trail goes cold.” She exhaled, blowing out her cheeks, then ran a hand through her sleep-tousled hair. “That’s the only thing to do. But you and Darlene need a few hours to rest, first. To recover. You’ll be effectively useless in the state you’re in now.

“So, go shower”—she sniffed at me, her lips curling in distaste—“then head into my room and try to sleep. Oh, and keep that bandaging dry—I don’t want to redo it if I don’t have to. In the meantime, I’ll brief Darlene, get her settled down, then I’ll make a few calls and get a go-bag ready.”

“Whoa there, lady-pants,” I replied, grabbing her hand in mine. “I think maybe you should sit this one out. This attack inside Guild headquarters can only mean the traitor is either getting more desperate or they’re preparing to move openly. That’s bad news no matter how you look at it. Things are gonna get more dangerous, not less.”

Instead of softening, her face hardened with resolve, her eyes transforming into angry thunderclouds, threatening fierce and terrible destruction.

“Listen to me, Yancy. Samuel. Lazarus.” She said my name like she was laying charges out against me. “I don’t need protecting. Do you understand that? I know the dangers ahead of us. I know we may not make it back. I know what the stakes are—and knowing what those stakes are, how could you possibly expect me to sit it out? To do nothing? Mark me, one way or another, I’m in this until the end. I’m not going to watch you march off to battle with an untrained rookie at your six. Now go get some sleep, you knuckle-dragger. It’s going to be a long couple of days.”

I gave her a halfhearted grin, devoid of any real life or warmth. Deep down, my guts rolled in worry.

Way back in the day, when I’d still been a young buck fresh out of Nam, I’d left my family, abandoned my wife and my boys. I’d just come back from combat. Just come home from watching my friends die at the hands of an ancient godling. I’d just come home with strange abilities, with the Vis pumping through my blood, threatening to kill everyone I loved if I didn’t get my power under control. So, on the advice of the Guild, I’d left ’em.