Cold Hearted: A Yancy Lazarus Novel (Episode Two) (16 page)

Ferraro’s Nonna had undergone one nasty makeover; the thing at the end of the hall still had Nonna’s face, but everything else had changed. The old woman was something new: her flesh now the pasty white of a maggot’s body, her legs transformed into a fat worm’s tail—long, slick, and segmented, though still partially covered by her nightgown, now solid black. Strangely, she also sported a dusty black stovepipe hat, which didn’t make a damn lick of sense to me. She pulled her body along with oddly shaped arms: too-thick forearms, strangely thin biceps, and clawed hands that belonged on a grizzly bear.
Drag-thump
, Nonna went as she wormed her way forward, rheumy eyes never losing us for a second.

Ferraro fired the remainder of her shots, but the bullets merely plowed in with meaty thuds and disappeared into wormy flesh.

“Run,” Ferraro said, the word tight and controlled. She turned and pushed Harvey and I to get us moving. Trust me, I needed no motivation whatsoever. Generally, heroes don’t run away from the bad guys, shrieking like little girls—and no it was not Ferraro screaming—but as I’ve mentioned a time or two, I’m not a hero. Sometimes running away is the absolute smartest game play there is: like when you’re facing down a crazy worm monster called L’uomo Nero while powerless and handcuffed. Yeah, if you ever find yourself in a similar situation, you just run, I won’t think less of you. Honest.

We bolted toward the adjoining hallway, me unashamedly in the lead, followed by Harvey, with Ferraro bringing up the rear. I slid around the corner—
drag-thump, drag-thump, drag-thump
, the sound pursued us down the hall. Faster and faster the noise came; Grandma Slug was gaining momentum like a freight train of grossness.

Drag-thump.
Closer.
Drag-thump!
Closer still.

I zipped by the observation room on my right, paying it no mind, and headed straight for the interrogation room. I slammed into the door, chest first, thinking it would swing open, but, of course, it was locked up tighter than a bank vault. Despite the fact that I knew I hadn’t shut the door all the way when I’d exited, there it was: locked. Mocking me with its safety, while I leaned against it handcuffed, waiting for some terrible end. Lady Luck, my ass, this had to be one of the crappiest, most unlucky nights of my life.

“Move dammit,” Harvey grunted, elbowing me aside, fumbling for the cardkey attached to his belt.

DRAG-THUMP
—I could practically feel the slug queen’s hot, fetid breath on my neck.

I heard the sound of a magazine reload. “Any day,” Ferraro practically swore, followed shortly by the bark of more fired shots.

DRAG-THUMP!
Finally, Harvey worked the card free from his belt clip and flashed it over the lock read—the door unlatched, and Harvey bowled me through the door in a bid to get to safety. I stumbled forward, tripped, and couldn’t do a thing except crash like a felled tree right onto my face because that jerk Harvey had failed to uncuff me.

DRAG-THU—
the door crashed shut behind Ferraro, all amidst the sound of muffled curses and labored, heavy breathing. But other than that, it was sweet, glorious silence. Slightly creepy silence. Grandma wasn’t banging on the door, the observation window didn’t shake and shudder in its frame. Just a stillness, occasionally broken by the soft moan of the wind. I rolled onto my side, the motion awkward.

“For Pete’s sake, can someone please take these cuffs off?” I asked. “If some slug-body nightmare is gonna make me into lunch, I’d at least like to be able to punch her in the belly a few times.”

“Unlock him,” Ferraro said, stalking back and forth across the length of the room, gun still in hand. She plucked the radio from her hip, “Teams one and two, this is Ferraro, we have contact with the suspect on three. Hold your positions, over. I repeat, hold your positions, and wait for further instructions. Out.” She latched the radio back to her belt.

“Should’ve retired,” Harvey said again, while helping me to sit up. Finally, at long last, he unlatched the cuffs and I was free.

“Why isn’t it trying to get in here?” Ferraro turned, her eyes settling on me like a weight. “You’d better start talking. What the hell was that? I want to know how it was able to look like that—to say those things.”

I propped my back against the wall, and dabbed at my nose, checking for blood, though my hand came up dry. “Finally ready to listen to me?”

Her eyes narrowed, and I thought for a moment that she might start shooting me to get the answers she wanted, but then she sighed and nodded.

“I need you to tell me about the thing in the hall,” I said. “The woman, who was she to you? And the whole bit about L’uomo Nero?”

She hesitated for a moment, her gaze seeming to turn inward to some buried, long-dead thing inside herself. “My Grandmother Nicci,” she finally said, “from my mother’s side. We all called her Nonna Nicci. She always scared me as a little girl … so old and fragile. Like a skeleton. Her breath smelled like beans and rotten vegetables. She was strict—old school, ultra-conservative Catholic. And superstitious. Always told me stories about L’uomo Nero—he’s Italy’s version of the boogeyman. She would pinch my cheeks whenever she would come to visit—pinch my cheeks and sit at my bedside with her rancid breath. Telling me how L’uomo Nero would come for bad little girls …”

“Jeez,” I said.

“When I was fourteen,” she said after a pause, “Nonna came to visit. I wanted her to die, I wished for it. A terrible thing to wish for, but I was just a child. The next morning my mother sent me into her room to wake her for breakfast. She was dead. I found her in bed, her middle bloated, her legs swollen, her face pale and thin. For
years
I blamed myself, I thought that maybe something had heard my wish, my prayer. That maybe L’uomo Nero had come for her. I’ve never forgotten the way she looked that morning.”

“That’s enough,” I said softly. “I just needed to confirm a suspicion. I’m pretty sure we have a metus on our hands. If you’re ready to listen, I think we can kill this son of a bitch, and send it back to wherever the hell it came from. I’m gonna need your help, though—I’m gonna need everyone’s help.” I looked at Harvey. “So are you ready to play ball or what?”

“Seeing is believing, in my book,” Harvey said, shaking his head slightly as though he couldn’t
really
believe what he was saying.

Ferraro looked at me, her eyebrows dropping low, a frown creasing her mouth. She twirled a long finger in a curt,
okay, move it along
gesture.

“Right now, the metus is probably gathering strength to make its final play.”

“You keep using that word,
metus.
What does that mean?” Ferraro asked, annoyed and angry.

“Metus—the freak show from the hall—it’s a type of fae creature, I think. Basically, an evil fairy, sent here by the guy who actually killed Kozlov.”

“An evil fairy.” She crossed her arms beneath her breasts.

I grimaced, fully aware of how ridiculous this would sound to an outsider. “Yes, an evil fairy. Well, maybe. But it definitely feeds off fear and death—the more fear, the more killing, the stronger it’ll grow. It expected me to be an easy meal … but things didn’t turn out so well, so it’s probably biding its time, gaining strength until it’s sure it can take me out. It’s playing a conservative game, it’ll want to wait until it has a sure thing, but I think we can use that against it.”

“I literally can’t believe what I’m hearing. Can’t believe I’m falling for this.” She shook her head in disgust then ran a hand through her hair. “Okay. Fine. So how do we beat the evil fairy?”

“Well, you’re certainly not gonna beat it with that bad attitude,” I said before pausing to think. I rubbed at my chin. “Okay. You’ve got my gun here right?”

Ferraro looked to Harvey.

“Yeah, we got it secured in an evidence bag down in booking.”

“And my El Camino?” And before you ask, yes, I drive an El Camino. An El Camino with a camper shell attached to the truck bed. The Camino is badass squared—part car, part home, part mobile armory, and all kinds of sexy. Plus, it’s the only real home I have, so tread lightly ye of the sassy commentary.

Harvey nodded. “Out back in the parking lot with the cruisers.”

“Good, good,” I rubbed my hands together. “Ferraro, we need to assemble the rest of the super friends—round up the crew—and get my pistol and some supplies out of the Camino.”

She hesitated for a good long while, chewing on her lip as she thought. “Fine, okay,” she said at last, sounding tired for the first time that night. She grabbed the radio off her belt, “team one, team two, this is Ferraro, report, over.”

The radio hissed: “This is Adams, team one, all accounted for, over.”

“Gorski, team two, all accounted for, over.”

“Good, everyone rendezvous on three in the interrogation room. The perp is still out there and is extremely dangerous—shoot on sight. Copy that?”

“Copy that,” came Adam’s voice, followed shortly by Gorski repeating the phrase.

“Good. Get to three and stay frosty. Ferraro, out.”

FIFTEEN:

Cassius Aquinas

Half an hour later found Ferraro, Harvey, and me in the snow-filled parking lot of the police station, sitting in the back of the El Camino under the camper shell while the engine ran and the heater blasted warm air into the little space. We’d briefed the other six officers and left them clumped together up on three in the interrogation room, behind the locked door with plenty of flashlights and weapons. Hopefully, since I was the metus’s primary target, it would leave the cops in the building alone.

I was sitting on the truck bed and my pistol lay on the floor before me, a small Tupperware container with about two inches of water sat near my left hand. In my right I held a silver penknife.

“You’d better do whatever you’re going to do fast,” Ferraro said. “I’m starting to lose my patience, and my trust is wearing thin.”

“Shit, just hold your damn horses for a second,” I said, bringing the penknife up to my left hand, tracing the blade along my palm—a fat line of red welled up as the blade moved across the surface of my skin and dribbled into the water. Damn that hurt. In TV shows and stuff, people always do this kinda thing all stoically, never flinching, never complaining. Load of crap. It hurts to have your hand cut open, even if the wound isn’t terribly deep.

The blood mixed with the water, curling, rippling, and dancing in swirls, turning everything a soft shade of pink. “Alright,” I said, looking at Ferraro, “get ready for some magic. Cassius Aquinas, Undine of
Glimmer-Tir,
” I intoned. “I call you forth by the power of blood and water, sealed by pact, and bound by Vis.” At first nothing happened, but then after a moment, the water shifted and stirred, twirling and spinning upward, a miniature vortex of water and blood. The vortex slowly resolved into a figure, maybe seven inches tall, made of pink water, who perfectly resembled me. He was my instinct, my subconscious, a living being of sorts, permanently bound by the Vis with a water-elemental from the Endless Wood.

I breathed a sigh of relief—I hadn’t been sure this was going to work. Usually when I needed to chat with my subconscious passenger, I used a tub of water and a Vis construct. But without the ability to access the Vis, the only way to talk was to bring him out. Even though I couldn’t touch the Vis, the power was still in my blood, still a part of my being. So by shedding that blood—all chock-full of power—into the water, and using the undine’s true name to call it forth, it had allowed the little guy to take form. Thank God for small miracles.

Harvey gasped as the little figure looked around the Camino’s camper, Ferraro shifted nervously beside me.

“You look like a bag of ass,” I said to the little figure, and it was true—he could barely hold himself together, almost looked like a melting wax figurine.

“Ditto, dipshit,” he replied. “It’s the poison, it’s affecting me, too. Draining the substance right outta me. You need to fix this train wreck quick or it’ll be both our asses.” He looked down at the bowl of water, than surveyed my slashed hand. “Smart move, using the water and the blood.”

“Thanks. And yeah, I’m working on getting this whole thing straightened out, so just hang in there.”

“Sweet God, what is that?” Ferraro finally said, her voice holding equal parts skepticism, fear, and awe.

“I’m an Undine—water spirit. Look lady, don’t worry about it. Just sit tight for the time being, then do what my boy says”—he nodded at me—“and maybe
, maybe
, everyone left gets outta this alive.”

She looked shocked, and honestly it kinda brightened my mood a little. I liked Ferraro, sort of, she was a strong, smart woman who knew her business and kept a level head in a tight spot. Plus she looked good—hey, I can be a little superficial, looks aren’t everything, but they are
something
. With that said, she’d also been busting my balls all night, so it felt nice giving her a little payback. Petty, sure, but I’m not totally above a little bit of pettiness.

“Now, this guy,” the Undie waved at Harvey with his little G.I. Joe arm made of blood, “he’s alright. Kind of a by-the-book fella, a little uptight maybe, but I’ve got a good feeling about him.”

“Uhh, thanks … I guess,” Harvey muttered before falling silent.

“Business,” I said.

“Business,” he repeated.

“So what’s the deal with the metus?” I asked. “How do I take this B-rated horror flick to the cleaners?”

“First, I think you might be mixing metaphors a little. As to the metus … hold on—we read something about them once.” He froze, motionless, limbs perfectly still and unmoving. “Right,” he said after a handful of seconds. “Okay so the metus are fae, but special sauce-like. Cold iron will only work while they’re hanging around in their true form, but while on Earth they’re almost never in their true form.”

“Okay, so cold iron’s out. What else you got?”