Cold Hearted: A Yancy Lazarus Novel (Episode Two) (36 page)

That meant it also had the power to take me right back into Old Man Winter’s lair, which meant getting us back in would be easy peasy. No train rides, no dangerous treks, no navigating the labyrinth tunnels beneath Thurak-Tir. The only problem was that meant I had to use the crook and the more power I drew from the crook, the more its corrupting influence could spread.

Nothing to be done about it, though. Sometimes it’s a choice between bad options or no options. In that case, bad options are always preferable.

Ferraro stepped into the armory, looking surprisingly well kept and put together for literally just rolling out of bed.

“James came through?” she asked, sounding more excited than I’d heard her in a while.

“Yeah,” I said. “Looks like we’re gonna have to take a dip back in the deep end of weird—you up for a trip into Fairy Land?” I asked her.

“Fairy Land?” She shook her head and pinched the bridge of her nose. “Always something new with you. Yes. Yes—if Fairy Land is where we have to go to apprehend Shelton, then I’m on board. Though, I swear, if we run into a unicorn I’m done.”

“Me too,” I said. “Unicorns are the worst. Half of ‘em are downright evil sons of bitches and the other half are all cynical jackasses.”

“Seriously?” she asked.

“When do I ever joke?” I said. “Now let’s get moving.”

We took the time to shower—and no, not together, unfortunately—and grab some breakfast before we headed back to the armory. Nothing worse than showing up to a life-or-death grudge match smelling like a bag of ass with terrible morning breath.

I gave her a brief on Thurak-Tir, Old Man Winter, and what we’d likely expect upon arrival: ice gnomes, abominable snowmen, and maybe worse things besides. Then we geared up. I grabbed a pair of snug fitting leather gloves, then slid my biker gloves of fae destruction—leather, steel plating, and silver spiked studs—on over the top. I wore my jacket, of course, but also opted for a heavy-duty ring mail shirt. It wouldn’t stop bullets, but if one of those abominables tried bear hugging me, the cold iron would offer a nasty surprise. I took my K-Bar and my gun for good measure—though I was doubtful about its effectiveness in the arctic underground.

Ferraro, likewise, shrugged her way into a shirt of chainmail and opted for a heavy-duty winter coat, but her weaponry ranged more on the badass military spectrum than the supernatural. She brought her Glock, but I supplied her with some specialty bullets: rounds with a core of lead and powdered iron, encased in a steel jacket. Much more effective against creatures of the Endless Wood, even if not deadly.

She also snagged a pair of flashbangs, a retractable steel baton, and an eight-shot, twelve-gauge, Mossberg loaded with Dragon’s Breath rounds—cartridges that literally turned your Plain-Jane shottie, into an impromptu flame thrower. She also grabbed a drop pouch filled with extra shells, a pair of cold steel brass knuckles (they’d really pack a punch,
zing
), and a can of military grade OC spray—the shit can put down a bear.

I gave Ferraro a quick once-over—she looked as fierce as an armor-plated lioness with opposable thumbs and a shotgun. Downright vicious. “Okay,” I said, “just one last thing before we get this show on the road. I’m gonna need to use a powerful artifact of questionable moral influence.” I turned my back and stalked over to the safe, undoing the locks and wards, and gingerly removing the crook—pushing aside the sudden wave of nauseous emotion and a flood of images, some heinous, others delicious.

“This,” I croaked, “is the Crook of Winter and it is bad. I’m gonna need to use this to hand Shelton and the Lich their respective asses … but even if I win … we might lose. I’m not a good man, Ferraro, and this trinket brings out the worst in people. In me. Look, I guess what I’m trying to say in this: if, after taking care of Randy, I turn into an evil super villain bent on world domination … well, you know what to do.”

She walked up to me, leaned over, and kissed my cheek. “Remember what Sir Gal told you, idiot—you’re really not as bad as you think. It won’t turn out that way.” She offered a small flash of teeth. Then, because Ferraro is Ferraro, she patted her Glock and said, “But if you go bad, you can count on me to do what needs doing.” She might’ve been a lovely flower on the outside, but she was all steel underneath.

“One more thing … on the off chance that Randy gets a hold of this”—I held up the crook—“I need you to blast the shit out of the staff. Use the shottie and the Dragon’s Breath rounds. Don’t target Shelton—target the crook, tracking?”

She looked at me, a question in her eyes, but then simply shrugged and nodded.

After gearing up and covering our basic tactical bases, I opened myself to the Vis, pulling in energy. The crook immediately exerted its influence, wrestling with me for the reins, and I found myself drawing in far more power than I’d intended. A sudden raging magma of Vis surged up from the earth and into my body, flashing through my veins like caged lightning. More and more power: the crook was recharging its batteries after being inoperable for a few weeks—hopefully it didn’t kill me in the process. I wobbled on my feet, the sudden influx of energy making me feel lightheaded and woozy.

Ferraro reached out a hand and steadied me. “You okay?” she asked. “For a minute there you didn’t look so good.”

“Fine,” I replied, my voice cold and unyielding. I carefully shrugged her hand off my shoulder. “Better if you don’t touch me,” I said as the image of her naked body streaked through my mind.

I stepped away and let my mind drift out toward the crook, envisioning the throne room of Old Man Winter: thick powdered snow covering the cavernous floor, shimmering and sparkling in ambient cave light. Massive icicles, as thick as building columns, jutting from floor and ceiling, shining in a rainbow riot of color. Old Man Winter’s creepy-ass carved throne, featuring a thousand scenes of inhuman torture.
There
, I thought, pumping the image out to the crook, willing the staff to work its magic and open a door.

The crook responded eagerly, ready and willing to serve, to dig its icy tendrils further into my heart and brain. The crook drew from the power within me, shaping weaves I didn’t know or understand—complex flows of air, water, spirit, and stranger things still … all built upon a twisting frame of magnetic force, surrounded by a patchwork quilt of latent radioactive energy. I felt like this thing was gonna explode and turn Ferraro and I into twisted versions of the Hulk. But after a second, the desperate flows collided together in a jumbled collision of force before snapping into a rigid archway with a semi-translucent sheen of opal over its surface.

On the other side, Old Man Winter sat on his throne seemingly unaware of the breach. “Go time,” I said to Ferraro, waving her onward.

THIRTY-THREE:

Round Two

Ferraro darted forward, pulling free a flashbang and tossing it through the open portal, before diverting her eyes. A loud
pop
followed a moment later, though strangely muted, and then Ferraro was plunging through the portal, shotgun in her shoulder pocket, level and ready to start dishing out a serious ass kicking. Almost as an afterthought, I reached into my well of power and surrounded her in a reddish mist, which rolled and boiled before her—an ambient friction shield that would protect her from any incoming shots.

She ducked left, then swiveled her muzzle right, sweeping the room of other threats before shouting, “Clear.”

I was already on the move, stepping through the portal, ready to blast Old Man Winter into the stratosphere if need be, but it looked like there wasn’t much fight in him. The last time I’d seen him he’d looked
old—
though admittedly, old doesn’t quite do it justice. He’d looked like a geriatric fossil that made the dinosaurs look like fresh-faced college kids. But despite that, he’d been pretty lively and one tough nut to crack. Now, though … he looked like a dried out husk. His chest rose and fell, but each puff was shallow, ragged, and irregular.

Next to him was a crystal orb of pure, pale-blue ice, not terribly dissimilar from my scrying stone. Only it was much bigger, maybe the size of a beach ball, and hanging unsupported in midair, rotating slowly on some unseen axle. Old Man Winter seemed completely absorbed with the orb, his eyes fixed upon its surface, the rest of his body limp and immobile. I noted that his right hand was still MIA from our first bout, though it was no longer a clean cut, but rather a rounded nub that looked decades old instead of weeks old.

Within the surface of the orb, tiny fractals of golden lights shifted and twirled, disappearing and blinking back into life in a pattern I couldn’t even begin to guess at.

The crook pulsed in my hand, and then, suddenly I understood, the information just blooming in the back of my noggin—a TV suddenly flickering to life. The orb
was
like my scrying stone—a specialized foci, but instead of making phone calls, this one was used for manipulating weather. This is how Old Man Winter had been stirring up the snowstorm that’d hit the police station after I’d found Kozlov as a corpse. But messing with the weather on that scale seemed to have taken a hefty toll. Winter barely seemed to notice our arrival, even the flashbang hadn’t brought him out of his stupor, not completely.

Ferraro took a position to the left of the portal, back toward the cavern wall, shotgun held steady and trained on Old Man Winter.

I closed the portal behind me, it whisked shut with just a whisper of power. I rapped the crook on the snow-packed floor. “Anyone home?”

His eyes flickered for a second, finally glancing away from the Orb, before fixing on the crook. A look of expectancy flitted across his face, a crooked smile distorting his blade-thin lips.

“The crook,” he said, his voice as thin and wispy as the rest of him, “give it to me. Now. It … belongs to me.”

“Sorry gramps, but you aren’t ever getting your hands—well, hand in your case—on this bad boy again. We’re not here for you old-timer, we’re here for your partner, the Lich. Just give us Shelton and we’ll leave you be.”

“I knew you’d come back, meat monkey,” he said. “The crook belongs to me,
wants
me. I knew it would lead you back,” he sneered, his lips peeling back like a wolf’s, revealing his crystalline shark teeth. “So did the Lich. You were a fool to come here. To bring the crook. A fool.” He cackled, wheezed, and hacked before finally falling silent.

Boom
, the shotgun in Ferraro’s hands roared and belched a gout of flame, which collided with Winter’s rail-thin leg—skin melted away, bone poked through the surface. He wailed and thrashed about, hissing curses as his one frail hand beat at the dying flames.

“Here’s how this is going to go,” Ferraro spoke softly, not yelling or screaming, just a woman discussing the facts with a perp in interrogation. “I’m here to do a job, not listen to your bullshit and empty threats. Though you didn’t directly kill Maxim Kozlov, Officer Larry Ravel, or Officer Ray Harvey, you are certainly an accessory to their murders. So I’m going to offer you a deal—tell us where Shelton is and get out of the way, or I’m going to start playing hardball. I’ve been fully briefed about you and your kind, so I know that I don’t have a chance at killing you. But you seem to feel pain just fine and I have cold iron, more shotgun shells, and a can full of pepper spray. I also have an active imagination and a strong stomach. So with that out of the way, would you kindly care to cooperate?”

Good thing Old Man Winter was nearly incapacitated from working the weather or I think he would’ve tried to turn Ferraro into a frosty meat popsicle right then and there.

“Whore,” he cursed, his body shuddering. “Aye, I’ll cooperate. The Lich has been expecting you”—he turned his neck, his eyes locking on to mine—“and even with the crook you shall not best him, meat monkey. He’ll pry the crook from your stiff fingers and I’ll have my power back … and when I do, you,” he focused on Ferraro, “will see how active
my
imagination—”

Boom.
Another burst of shotgun fire, this one aimed at Old Man Winters other leg. “Like I said,” Ferraro replied, “I’m not interested in listening to your threats. Now where. Is. Shelton?” She pumped the shotgun, ejecting the spent cartridge and simultaneously chambering another. The warning was clear as mountain spring water.

He howled for another moment or two, desperately beating the flames on his lower body down to embers before waving his skeletal hand through the air. On the far side of the chamber a crude set of ice stairs glimmered into life—previously hidden by a masterfully conjured veil—ascending into the darkness beyond.

“Go,” he hissed through clenched teeth. “Go.” As I had done after our first battle, I raised the crook and pushed out a wave of raw unshaped energy, forcing the power into the crook while giving it the roughest idea of what I wanted to do. Thick shackles of black, studded and spiked with icy thorns, burst from the Old Man’s throne and twined about his arms, legs, torso, and head, gluing his ass in place for the near-foreseeable future. I finished off the binding with a gag of black ice, which froze over his sneering lips. Guy had it coming.

I took off for the stairs, crossing the room and ascending the steps slowly, carefully, looking for traps or other signs of nasty surprises. Ferraro stayed close behind me, ghosting along on silent feet.

“Nice negotiating,” I whispered as we climbed, though I probably didn’t need to. It seemed impossible that Randy didn’t know we were here—what with all the shooting and subsequent shrieking. “They teach you that in the FBI?”

“No,” she replied in the same whisper, “I’ve seen cops and other agents work over a suspect once or twice. Never anything like that, but when in Rome …”

We finished our climb in silence—there must’ve been like five stories’ worth of stairs, which had to be a major pain in the ass for Shelton. I bet the guy would get an elevator installed in no time—that sure as shit would’ve been my first order of business. As we approached the top of the stairway, I held up a closed fist, the hand signal to halt, before calling up a burst of Vis and weaving a hasty illusion in place, blurring our shape, allowing us to blend into the dark shadows obscuring the hallway.