Cold Hearted: A Yancy Lazarus Novel (Episode Two) (24 page)

I settled and waited for a few minutes while Ferraro finished doing whatever the hell she was doing with the horse. After a while she joined me by the fire, sans goggles and breather. She pulled out a small travel blanket and a couple of brown-packaged MREs—meals ready to eat, the new C-Rats of the military—from her pack, before handing me some chow … I got pot roast and mashed potatoes, which wasn’t so bad even if not exactly good. Ferraro had meatloaf, so I got the feeling that she’d done me a real solid.

She bit in to the congealed meat and chewed for a moment, staring at the fire. “You know, I was only kind of kidding with Fortuna,” she said. “I really do think I got into the wrong line of work. No, not the wrong line—I love catching bad guys—but maybe I joined with the wrong branch. Back in interrogation, you told me you were like me. You said you were a cop, kept regular people safe from monsters. Who’d you work for? How did you get involved in all this in the first place?”

I ate for another minute, taking a plastic spoonful of mostly tasteless mashed potatoes. “Once upon a time,” I said, “I worked for the Guild of the Staff. It’s the mage ruling body. It’s sorta like the mage ‘government’ I guess, if there is such a thing. If you’re a member you belong to the Guild, to the nation, and you have certain rights and privileges. You’re also supposed to have a certain degree of protection. If some supernatural monster or one of the other supernatural nations knocks you off, the whole Guild is responsible for avenging you.”

“So is everyone in the Guild a supernatural cop?” she asked.

“No. Every member is responsible to the Guild, and yes, technically, every member is expected to defend the Guild from its enemies if necessary. But in reality? There aren’t very many actual enforcers. Inside the Guild there’s a group, the judges. They’re, I dunno, a combination of cops and military infantry, I guess. There’s not a lot of them—maybe two hundred all across the globe. Mostly, they handle routine affairs: monitor potentially dangerous practitioners, enforce rules, take care of low-level problems, handle most investigations, that kind of thing.”

“Okay,” she nodded in understanding. “So you were a judge.”

I dipped my head
yes
and took another bit of pot roast—even warm, the meat was squishy and unappetizing. Southern-style ribs this was not. “Yeah … well, sorta,” I said through a mouthful of packaged meat. “It’s complicated. See, inside the Judge’s Office, there’s another group, a group of five, called the Fist of the Staff. They’re the wet-works department. The friggin’ secret police is what they really are … hunt down the worst of the worst, kill at will, have a blank check to break any rules they need to, and they report only to the Arch-Mage of the Guild.”

I picked up a nearby stick and poked at the fire, watching a few loose embers kick up into the night air, swirl for a moment and then die. Usually I didn’t talk about the Guild, didn’t talk about the Five—everyone who knew me, really knew me, knew those were off-limits topics of conversation. But Ferraro didn’t know any better, she was new to this crazy world and couldn’t possibly be aware of all the history I had. She didn’t know me, but she deserved some answers. She’d proven herself gutsy and good. She’d stuck her neck out for me when she didn’t have to, had stitched up my wounds, and traveled to the dark heart of a different world.

“Used to be I was one of the five, the junior member. Officially, I still am, even though I gave them my notice of resignation years ago. They appointed a temporary stand-in for me, but I still have the title. Hand of the Fist. They use to call me The Fixer, ‘cause I got called out to fix the worst cases … Most of the Elder Council still thinks I’ll come back eventually, thinks that with enough time I’ll get my head on straight. Magi live a long time, so a few years isn’t so much to these folks. They think it’s just the “hot-headedness of youth.” But I’m not going back. Never. Whole Guild can go fuck themselves sideways.”

The firelight flickered, casting shadows that danced against the ring of sage surrounding us.

“They recruited me after I got out of the Marine Corps,” I said. “I served in Nam, you know.”

“You were a Marine?” She sounded like she was about to raise the bullshit flag right to the top of the pole. “In Nam? How old are you?”

“Sixty-six.”

“Sixty-six.” She looked at me with appraising eyes, weighing and measuring, parceling me away. “You seem spry for an old guy.”

“Hey, what can I say, one of the perks of being a mage—we age well, just like good Scotch. Like good Scotch, we also get more potent with time.” I arched an eyebrow at her, which earned me a scowl in return.

“I never would’ve guessed you were more than thirty-five,” she said after a moment. “Forty, maybe. And it’s not just your looks.” Her lips compressed into a thin line. “You seem …” She paused—the long kind of pause folks use when they’re looking for the most tactful way to say something brutally honest and usually mean. “Less emotionally
mature
,” she finally finished.

“What, you think that just because I qualify for retirement that I should be some sage old man smoking a corncob pipe and dispensing wisdom from my rocking chair?”

“Just an observation—I wasn’t trying to be offensive.”

I snorted, a little piece of gelatinous meat slipped through my teeth and I sucked it back in. “It’s fine, I’m just giving you a hard time. That’s what the rest of my vanilla friends think too—at least the ones who know about what I am and how long I’ve been around. My buddy Greg—he and I go back a long way, served in the Corps together, though he’s a regular mortal like you—even has a theory: since practitioners don’t age properly, he thinks the increase in longevity stunts ‘emotional maturity.’” I air quoted the words.

The flat look on her face told me right away that she wasn’t buying it. “That what you think?” she asked.

I shrugged. “Maybe there’s something too it. As you get older, feel older, see the road getting shorter, I think it changes your perspective a bit. But me? I don’t look old, I don’t feel old, and I’ve got lots of time left … well, theoretically at least.” I held for a beat, thinking.

“Heck, I guess it might be true,” I continued. “I mean I’ve met fae beings a couple of thousand years old and they’re like capricious, teenage shitheads. They get older, more powerful, more cunning, and dangerous. But they don’t really change. They just become more of what they are with time. Maybe using the Vis makes magi the same way to some extent. Shit, I’ve run across a lot of other magi like me—well, no one’s like me, exactly. What I mean is, I’ve met other mages that seem ‘stuck’ in the past. I dunno. Could be.”

I stared at the fire while I pushed the question around in the old noggin. “Mostly, though, I think maturity is more a state of mind than an age. I’ve met thirty-year-old mothers and fathers who are more mature than folks twice their age. I’ve also run into tons of geriatric, shit-caked hobos living out of cardboard boxes who have the emotional maturity of toddlers. Personally, I think I just fall on the shit-caked hobo end of the spectrum. I’m just an old man who never grew up.” I grinned, though I didn’t really feel like it.

“For Pete’s sake,” I said after a second, “I live out of an El Camino. I travel from bar to bar playing music. I gamble for a living. I drink a lot. I smoke like a chimney. These are not things mature adults do. The way I figure it, I’ve spent most of my life doin’ shit I didn’t really want to do—working for people who were all too happy to kick my ass to the curb when I was done being useful. I don’t want to do that anymore. I don’t want to whittle away my life jumping through flaming-hoops like someone’s trained monkey. I’ve been there, done that. Way I figure, I’ve got one life to live—regardless of how long I live—and I don’t want to waste it trying to be something I’m not.”

I fell quiet, my cheeks burning a little—talking about the real me was uncomfortable. Felt awkward as running with two left feet. Don’t get me wrong, I love being around people, I love shootin’ the shit, and I can smoke and joke with the best of ‘em, but few people know my history. It made me itch a little to just lay it out there for Ferraro.

It was quiet for a while, both of us just eating while little night bugs chirped around us. “I served too,” Ferraro said eventually. “I was a logistics officer with the fifteenth MEU, out of Pendleton. Ran a truck company during OIF. Did two tours in Iraq.”

“Get outta here?” I shouldn’t have been surprised, not really. Although I didn’t know much about Ferraro, there was something familiar about her. Her mannerisms. Her attitude. Her unflinching dedication to duty. It made sense that she’d been a Jarhead too, I could just see her standing in front of a platoon of Motor-T drivers, handing out safety briefs or convoy lineups. “Well
Semper Fi
, Devil.
Semper Fi
,” I said. “I should’ve guessed, the way you stared down that metus in the hallway.”

She didn’t respond. Maybe she felt uncomfortable talking about herself too—there was a thought. “So,” she said after a long pause, “you said the Guild recruited you after the Corps? Why?”

She was probing, asking a lot of leading questions, the kind of thing a cop does with a suspect. But I let it go; probably this was just the way she was. Sometimes if you do a thing for long enough—like interrogate criminals—it just gets into you and becomes second nature.

I poked the fire some more, watching it spit up more tongues of flame. “There are three types of people,” I said by way of an introduction. “There are folks who won’t ever be able to touch the Vis, the energy undergirding all of Creation. The vast majority of humanity falls into that category. Then there are a few who have the right bent”—I canted one hand—“the right inclination. Folks who can learn through study and practice to touch the Vis. People who can learn, range in ability from those who can barely light a candle to full-fledged magi on the Guild. Heck, most of the magi in the Guild learned. They weren’t born with the talent.”

I set the stick down, pushed more pot roast out of its plastic sleeve, and took off another mouthful while I thought. Ferraro seemed to pick up my unease and didn’t push, but rather took a bite of her own meal. Giving me some space.

“A few people are inborn with the ability to use the Vis. They
will
use it at some point—it’s in their blood. Most people with the gift come from the union of two serious practitioners, but once in a while … someone is born with the gift, and grows up without ever training. Without ever learning. I was like that. While I was in Nam … well, something happened that triggered my gift. But that’s a whole other story and one not worth talking about—some things are like that, you understand?”

She nodded, her eyes were unfocused and far away, like maybe she was seeing her own unpleasant memories. She’d been in the Corps, had been to an active combat zone, so maybe she did understand.

“And then?” she asked.

I shrugged. “After that, the Guild tracked me down. I had military training, was naturally gifted, and powerful … Put two and two together. They convinced me to abandon my family—I had a wife and a pair of boys. They convinced me to leave ‘em behind. Said they’d be better off without me. Told me I was dangerous to them. And I was. Without proper training, I could’ve accidentally burned my whole house down while I was asleep. They trained me and after a few years offered me a spot with the Fist. The rest is history.”

“They made you leave your family?” Her voice was soft, not filled with anger or outrage. Pity, maybe, which was worse.

“No,” I said shaking my head. “They’re a bunch of shit-covered chickens, but I can’t lay that at their feet. Not entirely. They gave me a helluva sales pitch, but I made that choice. There was a part of me that wanted to go. I was afraid to be a dad, to be a husband. I spent most of my marriage in the Corps. Was gone a lot. It was easy being an absentee husband and dad. But after the Marine Corps was over?” I paused for a minute, not sure how to continue, or even if I wanted to continue.

“I was scared,” I said eventually. “Everything changed. I had all these new responsibilities that I wasn’t ready for. On top of that, my body was going through a change I didn’t understand and I was just getting back from a bad tour. The perfect shitstorm. The Guild offered me a way out. Even offered to set my family up. Provide them with a fat check every month, look in on them to make sure my boys didn’t have the gift. The Guild took advantage of me—I was young, inexperienced, and in a bad place. And they took advantage of me. But at the end of the day I made the choice to go. Me, not them.”

“Is that why you hate the Guild—why you left?” she asked.

“No.” I scrunched my lips into a grimace. “No, this was all years before I left the Guild. Leaving my family is why I hate myself. I have issues with the Guild for another reason.” We were quiet for a time. I shuffled over a few feet, grabbed some more brush and twigs, and feed the whole lot of ‘em to the flames. The crackling and popping of the fire filled up the air with its noise.

“I was married, once,” she offered, “to a Navy lieutenant. This was back in my Marine Corps days. My marriage didn’t outlive the Marine Corps either. Once I left for the FBI things just fell apart. He deployed a lot, and when he wasn’t gone, I was—either training or on assignment. It wasn’t sustainable.”

We finished our respective meals in silence. Afterward, we packed up the trash and tossed the remains into the fire, watching it smoke, burn, then smolder in turn.

“Why didn’t you ever go back to your family?” she asked after maybe ten or fifteen minutes. “I mean after everything. After you left the Guild.”

“I dunno.” I sat for a while, the silence stretching between us, pushing us apart.

“At first,” I finally said, “I planned on going back. I planned on seeing them more. But the longer I waited the harder it was and the more depressed I felt about it. The guiltier I felt, the less I wanted to deal with it—so I’d push it off. Volunteered for Guild assignments, did just anything not to think about it. After a while … I started to think I didn’t deserve to be in their lives. Like I’d given up the right to try and fix things with them. It’s a cycle, you know? Guilt, depression, self-loathing, all that shit. One big, nasty cycle. After four or five years, Lauren married someone else. Seemed like a nice guy, good dad—not like me at all. That kinda put the nail in the coffin.”