Cold Hearted: A Yancy Lazarus Novel (Episode Two) (15 page)

“You done?” she asked, folding her arms under her breasts, clearly unamused.

I just nodded.

“Good. Now, here’s what you need to know. The people in this room aren’t a bunch of stupid, drunk college-kids in some B-horror movie. We are law enforcement officers—sworn to uphold the laws of this country and dedicated to protecting its citizens even if it’s costly. There are killers out there somewhere—killers who could escape and murder more innocent people. So we don’t have the luxury of ‘hunkering down’ and playing it safe. Now, if you’ll stow it so we can get to work.”

Whew, that was one gutsy gal. I’ve run into trouble more times than I can count, but it’s always as a last resort—I’ll be the first to admit I’m no hero. Sometimes I act against my better judgment and do ridiculously irresponsible and dangerous things that
some
might consider heroic. At the end of the day, though, I’m a pragmatist, who’d much rather steer clear of gunfights, monsters, murderers, or life-threatening situations of any sort. That shit’s for the birds.

Ferraro, though, was a friggin’ Amazonian warrior princess and it elevated her in my book. She wasn’t just a cop hounding my trail, she was a genuinely good person—maybe a little rough around the edges and kind of unlikeable, but genuinely good nonetheless—trying to make the world a better place. I’m not one of those people, but the world would sure be a better place if there were more people like her in it.

“Everyone switch to channel two,” Ferraro commanded, followed by a flurry of movement as officers adjusted radios at their hips. “Team leaders, I want radio checks every ten minutes. Everyone stick together—no one had better take a piss without battle buddies present. Check?”

Everyone nodded.

“If you spot a perp, I want a radio call, ASAP—call for backup, no one play at being a hero here. I want to see every one of you walk out of here alive. All right, let’s move people.”

The groups split up, squads one and two moving out to check for the breakers, while our team headed up. Ferraro in the lead, me in the middle—still cuffed, of course—and Harvey bringing up the rear, one hand holding his weapon, the other holding the cuffs securely behind my back.

Bang
, Ferraro kicked open the door into the stairwell, ducking through—in one arm she held a flash light, in the other she had her Glock. She pivoted at the hips: right, up, left, flashlight beam cutting a swath across the poorly lit stair shaft, her gun muzzle following her eyes. She sidestepped, batted at the door, and cleared the backside. The whole process took seconds, her movements were natural and well rehearsed—would’ve made any Jarhead combat instructor beam with fierce joy.

“Clear,” she called. Harvey nudged me forward, and shut the door behind us. We climbed a couple of flights of stairs and exited into the office space where Pig-Face McGee and I had tangled. Ferraro cleared this room too before ushering us in. It was cold as hell in here; snow had piled into a small bank in front of the busted out window where I’d given the Butcher his impromptu flying lessons. The temperature in the room had easily dropped fifteen degrees since the last time I’d been in here. I just stood there and shivered as Ferraro glanced around, surveying the scene with a meticulous and well-trained eye, seeming to note and file every detail.

“Harvey,” she spoke softly as she moved around the room. “What else can you tell me about the suspect?”

Harvey shifted behind me. “I told you everything.”

“No you didn’t—I’ve been in this business long enough to know when someone isn’t being honest with me. What’d you leave out?”

Harvey hesitated for a second, which told me Ferraro had hit on something.

“It’s nothing relevant to the case, but the get-up he was wearing … we’ve got a local legend around here. An old urban legend about a guy that used to have a farm around about these parts—years and years ago, mind you—who dressed like that and would hunt down unruly kids. He’d catch ‘em, butcher ‘em, and hang their bodies in his barn. My older brother used to scare the pants off me with those yarns. But it’s coincidence. That was ages ago, and as far as I’ve found, no such man ever really existed. Just an urban legend. Probably every county in America has a story like that one.”

Shit, that might not have meant much to Ferraro, but it sure as hell meant something to me.

“You said there were two perps. Why?” I asked, the cogs twirling away in my head. “Did someone see something downstairs, something that didn’t look anything like the Butcher?”

We moved from the office into the adjoining hallway—Ferraro pulled open the door, and made a quick sweep before stepping through.

“What’s it to you?” she asked, still creeping forward, slow and steady without even a backward glance over her shoulder, intent on the hallway intersection coming up before us.

“Look, I know you think I’m full of horse crap from my eyes to my toes, but I’m not making any of this up. I can do magic—those people who went missing were supernatural monsters, real as you or me, and we’ve got another one on our hands right now.”

The radio squawked at Ferraro’s hip:

“This is team one, all accounted for, no sign of the perp. Adams is working on the fuse box—should have power back any minute, over.”

“This is team three, received, out,” Ferraro said. The second team followed suit, reporting in before falling silent.

She glanced at me. “For what it’s worth, Adams swore he saw some kind of werewolf clown—fuzzy face, sharp teeth, long claws—but dressed up in some kind of circus clown outfit.”

To Officer Harvey, the attacker had appeared as a local legend, straight from his nightmares. And if I had a chance to gab with Officers Adams, I’d bet dollars to doughnuts that he had a real childhood fear of both clowns and werewolves. The thing I’d tossed out of the window wasn’t a spirit, nor was it an actual pig-mask-wearing serial killer. It was a metus. You could fit what I knew about the metus onto the back of a restaurant napkin, with plenty of room to spare. But what I knew for sure was this: they could shape shift into your worst nightmare.

The lights went out completely—even the emergency power died—propelling us into darkness.

Something rustled behind us, the sound of fabric flapping in the wind.

FOURTEEN:

Nonna Nicci

A moment later, the lights flickered back to life, team one must’ve gotten the power situation sorted out.

I turned—felt like moving through water, everything was sort of in slow motion, like in a dream or nightmare.

A woman lurked at the end of the hall. Old and crusty with wispy thin hair, so gauzy it seemed almost like silvered spider webs. Tan skin like ancient leather and rheumy brown eyes, which stared at us, seemingly blind. She wore a pale-blue nightgown, stained yellow in spots and dark brown in others. Snow swirled at her back, like a cape of white, blowing around her nightgown.

“Nonna Nicci,” Ferraro exhaled the name from behind me in a whisper. “No, you can’t … can’t be here. Impossible.” She shoved past me, jostling my shoulder as she took a position in front of Harvey and myself. Then she raised her weapon and assumed a shooter’s stance, feet placed about shoulder-width apart, one foot slightly forward, weapon held with both hands, arms extended, but slightly bent at the elbows. If I was right, the woman at the end of the hall was Ferraro’s worst fear, yet there she stood, head on, gun drawn, professional to her toes. Ballsy as all get out. Had to admire that.

Though Harvey still had a hand on my shoulder, he too had his weapon out and at the ready.

“Ferraro,” I whispered, trying to prevent the creature from noticing. “Shooting that thing isn’t gonna do dick, let’s just scoot along, find a thick door to hide behind—maybe a set of thick steel bars.” I didn’t know for sure, but it was a distinct possibility that the metus was a denizen of the Endless Wood, which meant one of the low fae. I wasn’t exactly
sure
about that, but it was kind of a reasonable guess, which meant thick iron bars would keep us safe … then again, if this thing wasn’t fae, we’d be stuck in a teeny-tiny room with no hope of escape. Sometimes the number of good choices to pick from can be a real burden.

Ferraro ignored me completely and continued to stare down the well-weathered invader at the end of the hall.

“You are not my Nonna,
ciuccio
. I don’t know how you’re doing this, but I’m going to make you pay.”

“Come now, my little
mia nipote
, is that any way to talk to your grandmother?”

“Don’t say another word,” Ferraro said, her voice sharp as a knife. “Raise your hands into the air, slowly, and get down flat on your face.” The crone just stood there, beaming with a haggard smile and staring with her watery eyes.

“Harvey,” I said, figuring a change in tactics might better serve me here. “Get these friggin’ handcuffs off—I bailed your ass out of a serious shit creek last time, maybe letting me help out would be a smart move, huh?”

He ignored me too, because I get less respect than the president of the high school comic book club does.

“I don’t know what game you’re playing at,” Ferraro said to the grandmotherly thing at the end of the hall, “but I’m gonna give you to the count of three to put your hands in the air and lay flat on the ground, facedown. I have one dead officer already, so failure to comply will result in your death. I can assure you, I’m not playing any game.”

The woman laughed, a raspy, dry sound like the passing of a cool fall breeze through leafless trees. Then she staggered forward a step, just a little shuffle really, but a movement filled with promise:
I’m not gonna stop,
it said
, I’m gonna keep on coming until your blood is in my mouth, until I tear your flesh from your bones
.
I’m not going to stop until you are with me: cold and in the ground, food for worms.

“
One
!” Ferraro shouted. “I’m warning you …
Two
.” The woman took another shuffling step, this one a little surer—then she looked right at us and smiled, her thin mouth filled with rows of barbed needle teeth. Harvey fidgeted beside me, dipping a hand into his pockets and coming out with the handcuff keys.

“
Three!
”

The woman lurched forward, mouth wide, eyes bulging in her head, twig-thin arms extended toward us, yellow claws jutting from the ends of her gnarled fingers.

Ferraro pulled the trigger, and sound filled the hall along with the bright flare of muzzle flashes—bullets rocked Granny back on impact. For a moment, the hag just tottered drunkenly, absently examining her bloody wounds, before she toppled to her back and lay unmoving on the floor, brown eyes staring up at nothing. Harvey let out a sharp breath. “I’m gonna have nightmares for years—the psychiatric treatment is gonna break the bank. Just gonna retire. It’s the only sensible thing to do. Retire, and move someplace where’s it’s sunny all the time. Should’ve listened to my wife.”

“Harvey, I feel for you.
But
in order to retire, we need to survive, so less talky-talk and more unlocky-lock. Kay?”

Harvey seemed to have forgotten what he was about, though, which was too bad, because that old lady wasn’t gonna stay down.

Agent Ferraro took a tentative step forward, weapon still extended, her bearing screaming caution as she moved.

“Dammit, Ferraro. Just stop—please listen to me,” I said, my plea carrying in the hall without any need to shout. “Please, don’t take another step.” Whatever she heard in my voice connected, because she ceased her advance.

A moment later the old woman sat up, mouth still wide and grinning, silvered hair blowing in the breeze. She spat blood from her needle-filled jaws.

“Nicole, dear, that wasn’t very nice at all. I think you’ve been terribly naughty, a very bad little girl, a very, very bad—”

“
Stata zee
,” Ferraro said, brandishing her weapon as though to ward off the unspeakable words.

“A very bad girl,” the old woman continued. “And we both know what happens to bad little girls, don’t we, Nicky … they get snatched up by L’uomo Nero.”

“L’uomo Nero isn’t real. A fairytale boogeyman you tried to scare me with,” Ferraro spat. “You’re not real. This … this isn’t happening. Can’t be.” She said the words, but didn’t lower her gun. Smart move.

Oh, it was happening all right, and boy was Ferraro gonna have a rude awakening when she found out most of the “fairytale” monsters were real, nastier than the books would have you believe, and hanging out all over the world. Probably including her L’uomo Nero—though that wasn’t a name I’d ever come across before.

“Ferraro,” I said again. “Ixnay on the banter business, let’s just get our asses in gear and boogie.”

She never took her eyes from the creature, disguised as her presumably dead Nonna, but she nodded and started slowly walking back toward Harvey and me.

“The interrogation room,” she said, “get there quick—Harvey, stay with the prisoner at all costs.”

“Smartest thing I’ve heard so far, ma’am,” Harvey said, and started pulling me along, still neglecting to unlock the handcuffs.

“‘Bout friggin’ time someone listened to me,” I muttered, gladly letting Harvey maneuver me away from the freaky-ass hag just cooling her heels at the end of the hallway.

Grandma zombie chuckled again. “
Mia Nipote
, L’uomo Nero is not a myth. I thought you learned better than this … a very bad girl.” Her head snapped to the left,
crack
. Right,
crack
. Up,
crack
. Down,
crack
. The movement jerky, sporadic, and each made with bone-shattering speed … over and over, the sound reverberating down the hallway, sounding for all the world like machine gun fire—she fell to her back, body contorting, hands outthrust, yellowed nails beating out an unsteady rhythm on the linoleum hallway floor. Like a scene out of
The Exorcist
. I wanted to just turn and sprint outright, but the horror show was oddly captivating.