Cold Hearted: A Yancy Lazarus Novel (Episode Two) (30 page)

He stood up, edged away from the chain, and stretched his arms out with a groan.

“Quite the improvement,” he said. “I cannot thank you both enough. Really. Fast Hands had me chained up there for weeks … speaking of which, I need to see a man about a horse. Desperately … Just, give me a moment, please.”

He trotted over behind the bar, turned his back toward us, and relieved himself—he wasn’t joking, the guy seriously had to go. While the knight busied himself with a makeshift urinal, I strolled over and collected my pistol—wouldn’t want to forget that—slid it into its holster, and headed back over toward Ferraro.

After a minute Sir Galahad joined us again.

“Ahh,” he breathed out, “loads better. That chain completely incapacitates the body—locked me up in stasis. Like I was saying, thanks a bundle.”

“You’re welcome, I guess. I’m Yancy—”

“Lazarus,” he finished for me. “Yes, I know. And you are Special Agent Ferraro with the FBI.” He cast a devilish and charming smile at her, which really made me want to punch him in his stupid perfect teeth. “I’ve worked with both of you in other alternate futures. I’m Gal,” he stuck out a filthy, dirt-caked hand.

Since my hand was similarly filthy, and he didn’t seem to mind, I took his hand and pumped it a couple of times.

“Gal’s a girl’s name,” I said because the guy was so unnaturally wholesome that I needed to knock him down a peg on general principle.

He just laughed it off. “That’s what you say every time I meet you. Well ... I know you have places to be, agent of Fate and all that. So if I could just take the Grail.” He held out a hand.

“Right. The Grail.” I carefully pulled it from my pocket and toyed with the lid just a little, before finally placing it in his hand. It was actually hard to let the trinket go. Now don’t get me wrong, I have absolutely
zero
desire to walk through time as the Grail Bearer, but holding the little flask made me feel good. Both physically well, but also complete somehow.
Though I’d held it for a few minutes tops, there was a part of me that
wanted
it. To keep it. To own it. Having it there near me was so … right.

“That’s some awfully good shit,” I said.

He smiled in a knowing way. “Don’t I know. It’s not blood, you know. This thing was a cup once and it did catch His blood.” He motioned toward the ceiling. “Now, though, now it holds living water, the stuff flows right from the throne of God. The very essence of life.” His smile widened.

I didn’t quite know what to do with that. I mean, I know the Big Guy exists, just like I know demons and crazy alternate futures exist, but having someone talk so matter-of-factly about Him made me a little uneasy. In my mind, God was big, powerful, and goodish, but mostly He kept His distance—which I was good with. Safer that way.

“Hey.” I paused, looking at the loop of multicolored metal on the floor. “What’s the deal with the friggin’ chain there? Crazy thing made my hand want to fall off.”

The knight regarded the chain on the floor. “Yes, I don’t know how the heck Fast Hands got a hold of that particular item. It is a section from the Great Chain, forged by Hephaestus on behalf of the true God—it is part of the chain meant to hold Lucifer for all eternity.
Very
potent piece of work, that.” He kicked at it, like it might be a living serpent.

“So you’re really a Knight of the Round Table,” Ferraro asked, clearly much more impressed with the guy than I was.

He smiled and nodded.

“Alright,” I said, before Ferraro could invite him out to dinner, “we better get moving, now that the future’s all right as rain.” I pulled out the smooth, rune-carved stone Fortuna had given me back in the Hog’s Head.

“Just one moment.” Gal grabbed my arm, not hard, but with enough force to let me know the guy had real power. “Before you go … I wanted you to know that not everyone can open the Grail. Just holding it offers a certain amount of power, but only a few can open it. Fast Hands never managed the deed—that’s why he kept me alive, thought he’d eventually be able to get the secret out of me. But there really is no secret. The Grail will only open for one with pure and noble intentions, Yancy. It opened for you. So maybe you should show yourself a little grace now and again, yes? I know there’s a lot of brokenness in your life, but you’re not as bad as you think.” He grinned, all his teeth white and even, almost sparkling. Guy should’ve done an ad for Crest.

“Thanks, Dr. Phil,” I said, shaking my arm free of his grip.

He smiled again, even bigger, and rolled his eyes, all good-natured like. Irritated the crap outta me.

“It was a pleasure to meet you,” Ferraro said, a little
too
friendly. She shot me a wink that told me she knew exactly what I was thinking.

I wove a tiny trickle of spirit into the stone and a vertical slit slashed through the air, rotating and stretching until a doorway, seven feet by four feet hung suspended before us. “
Hasta
la nachos
,” I said to the knight before gently taking Ferraro by the hand and leading her through the portal, bound for home.

TWENTY-EIGHT:

The Hag

I’m not sure where exactly I was expecting to step out—maybe L.A. or the Big Easy—but a cave with rough stone walls, lit by sparse torch light, was absolutely not what I’d envisioned. I pulled more Vis into my body, feeling so good to have the power roaring through me again, readying myself for a potential attack, because, let’s face it, that’s the gist of my life: hop from one shitty situation to an even shittier one.

“Oh excellent—Ladies, our guests have arrived.” The voice was matronly and came from behind me. Ferraro and I both spun almost in tandem, me with both hands upraised prepared to unleash a firestorm or a force shield, her with Glock held level. A single woman, stooped with age, wearing a homespun gown and a gauzy veil draped around her head, stood in a … let’s go with
rustic
… living room.

The walls of her room were still rock, but the stone was smooth and polished, a few pieces of needlework hung in yellowing frames. There was a quaint wooden table with a trio of chairs, a well-worn rocking chair in one corner, a closed cupboard, and a great stone fireplace with a tremendous kettle brewing over a green fire. Looked like the
Twilight Zone
version of
Little House on the Prairie
.

“Please take a seat, we’ve been expecting you,” the woman said. “Oh, pardon us, dearies, pardon us, we”—she offered a little curtsy—“are Lady Fate, the Three-Faced-Hag, the Wyrd.”

I glanced at Ferraro, not entirely sure what to do here … even for me, this was sorta outside the realm of usual.

“Please,” she said again, “sit, sit. We’ve got tea on.”

“I’d love some, ma’am,” Ferraro said, breaking the mounting tension, striding forward and pulling out one of the sturdy wooden chairs around the table. I followed suit reluctantly. I’m not particularly inclined to trust supernatural creatures, especially ones that live in creepy caves, and who might have some kind of personality disorder. I mean she used
we
an awful lot for just being one lady. Maybe it was the royal
we
. Still, very odd, though in for a penny in for a pound I guess.

“Good, good,” she busied herself for a moment, shuffling around the
cavernous
(get it cavernous—‘cause she lives in a cavern) house, procuring cups, saucers, and a kettle filled with something that smelled potent enough to burn away my nose hairs. She placed a cup before both Ferraro and I, then poured a dollop of pitch-black liquid into each mug. Ferraro took her cup and sipped—she sputtered, coughed, and wheezed, then set the cup down and carefully pushed it away, before muttering, “Thank you.” Our hostess hardly seemed to care one way or the other.

She turned her veiled face to me. “Now you, Yancy. Refreshments must be offered and accepted, a sign of peace and fellowship between us.” Then she cackled like a deranged Bond villain, which did nothing to boast my overall confidence.

Old-world types could be particular about rules of hospitality though, so I reluctantly lifted the tea and took the smallest sip I could manage—the stuff tasted like rancid hot tar. “
Geelach
.” My faced scrunched up in a grimace. “That’s awful. Really, really awful.”

Lady Fate sniffed in disapproval. “It’s an acquired taste.” Having welcomed us and playing the part of hostess, she moved over to the rocking chair in the corner and sat down with a groan. “Well met, you two. Well met. We are so glad you both made it out alive. Uncertain, aye. But we are pleased. It’s been quite a day. Quite a day.”

She reached up and removed the wispy veil covering her head. Ferraro stifled a gasp. The old woman cackled again, infinitely amused. The creep factor ratcheted up another few notches.

“Oh the honesty of the young and innocent,” she said. “For us old salts, Yancy, there is little that will shock and dismay. But for youth, especially one young to this strange world of ours, everything is so fresh: a bright and endless summer full of sweet roses and hot passions … to be so young again,” she sighed fondly. “To be so naïve. Delicious.” She laughed again, this one a low, throaty gurgle.

I tried not to appear shocked, because I’d already insulted her tea and it’s even more impolite to throw up when someone shows you their face—but I
totally
understood Ferraro’s response. Lady Fate spoke from a horribly disfigured mouth, lopsided by stroke on one side and haggard, with cracked flesh and an army of wrinkles.

And on either side of her head—where ears should have been—other faces protruded like cancerous growths: one a young woman with creamy skin, high cheekbones, and flawless lips. The other, a middle-aged woman, cheeks too thin and hollow, worry wrinkles sprouting across her forehead, around her eyes, and at the corners of her mouth. None of the faces had eyes, just empty sockets, dark as the grave and murky as the future.

She raised her hands, each wrapped in wispy white gauze, her fingers tipped with black talons. A hovering eye sat in the center of each palm—the irises were the color of shimmering rainbows, shifting from emerald to ruby to cerulean.

“Yancy,” she said, “Lady Fortuna, our handmaiden, is really quite taken with you, you know.” She smiled, which did absolutely nothing to brighten her overall demeanor. “We can see why, oh yes … if we were a younger woman, we might be taken with you too. A rogue, aye, but with a good heart we think… and none too hard on the eyes.” A sickening
pop
, and the old women’s head rotated, the face of the young woman peering out at me with empty eyes.

She fluttered her eyelashes for a moment, and then shot me a sly wink. “We could teach you a great many things, if you’d be bold enough to learn,” the young face said with a voice like silk. “A great many things indeed.” Another wink and her neck popped
and the old woman’s face took center stage again.

Hit on by a three-faced hag, gross to the nth degree.

“And you.” She turned a bit in her rocking chair, looking right at Ferraro as though the younger face hadn’t spoken at all. “It really is a pleasure to meet you dear, so lovely. Your involvement was uncertain, but much appreciated. Putting this whole matter to bed would have been near impossible without your help. But pleasantries aside”—she paused, then sighed as though she lived for the pleasantries—“we really should
talk shop
, as you mortals say.”

“Okay,” I said, “you wanna talk shop—how about the fact that Cannibal Steve and Fast Hands Steve are really the same friggin’ guy. If you wanted to prevent this future from happening why in the world would you involve us? Our involvement with Fast Hands is partly what led to that future in the first place.”

She smiled and rocked back and forth in her chair, longs nails clicking against the wooden armrest. “It would seem that way to you, yes, but Fate is a funny thing, a tricky bit of work. You think we control Fate, but we do not. No, no. We are a servant of Fate—able to see it, yes, to influence it yes, but control it? No, no. To some extent, the intangible Fate, the tapestry of existence, is a Being in its own right, and we are its servant as much as it serves us. Fate—history past, present, and future—is obdurate, as stubborn and unyielding as an old mountain. And the Grail makes it more so. The future is unwritten, the freewill of humankind makes it thus, but some futures are more likely to happen than others. Aye, it is so.”

“Yeah, I got it.
But
if you wanted to prevent the future with Cannibal Steve, then you just should’ve recruited someone else. Or heck, you could’ve just had Lady Luck meet us somewhere other than the Hog’s Head. This doesn’t seem like rocket science here.”

“Aye,” she said, “but it is much more complicated than that. The Grail lends extra weight to whichever reality it stays in … as that reality locks into place, the past will begin to conform in order to fit the future that must be. In order for that future to occur, either you or Ferraro needed to wound Fast Hands, and in order for that to happen, we needed to involve you, and you needed to be at the Hog’s Head. By possessing the Grail, Fast Hands managed to compel us—as a servant of Fate—to involve you, thus bringing about a greater likelihood of that future taking hold.”

I frowned. Her answer made sense in a strange circular logic kind of way, but damn if it didn’t hurt my head. “Fine,” I conceded, “maybe it’s a little more complicated than I gave it credit for.”

She smiled, though only half her face raised—the other lay flat in a grimace. “Yes,” she said in a grandmotherly tone, “it is just a little more complicated than you gave it credit for. We think that is an accurate statement.”

“Since you feel like talking about the future,” I said, “care to tell me who in the hell the Savage Prophet is? Future Fast Hands told me that the Savage Prophet did me in, sure as shit got my attention.”

Lady Fate sat still and silent for a moment, hands moving up and waving through the air, fingers swishing back and forth like she was searching through a library card catalogue.