Cold Hearted: A Yancy Lazarus Novel (Episode Two) (38 page)

I’ve said it before: sometimes the only choices available are bad ones and worse ones. In my book, surrendering to the crook was a bad choice, but sure and certain death was worse by far.

So, being the pragmatist I am, I gave in. Instead of simply pumping power into the crook, I let the energy flow the other way—I let the crook’s power, its sentience, rush into me like a lungful of toxic smoke.

My stomach dropped out beneath me, a freefall from the top of the Empire State Building … cold water filled my veins, my arms and legs swelled, muscles straining against my jeans and jacket, suddenly too tight. A shimmer of pale blue ran along the surface of my skin and froze in place, icy plate mail of winter power. My jaw stretched and expanded with a crack, absolutely necessary to accommodate the pointed fangs filling my mouth. A shaggy beard of hoarfrost sprouted from my face, trailing down toward my now claw-tipped, fingers. I caught just a brief glance of myself in one of the computer monitors. I was still me, more or less, but I eerily resembled a younger version of Old Man Winter.

I brushed at my jacket, trying to shrug my way free—my hand touched the chainmail and sizzled, the scent of burning flesh filling my nose. The crook was a thing of the fae, and with all its power pumping and surging through me, changing me, it seemed I was susceptible to the fae weakness of cold iron.

I watched it all from inside my head—what was happening to me hardly seemed to be me at all now. The crook’s presence was no longer an external force, but a part of me, beating in time with my heart, pumping its power through my veins, wrestling control away from me, restraining me inside my skull. Every second seemed to add more power, but zapped more of my freedom in turn.

And that’s when I realized why Old Man Winter was so old and ragged, why he’d taken Ben’s grandkid in the first place. The crook’s power was transformative and a friggin’ powerhouse of energy, but it was also costly. My body felt like a meteor blazing in the night, I felt unstoppable, indestructible, and I knew that no one could burn so brightly for long. A pack a day had nothing on the life-sapping power of the crook. The human body couldn’t withstand that kind of wear indefinitely.

In that moment, I realized a terrible truth: Old Man Winter had once been a human, he was a type of Lich himself, I was sure of it. Sometime, long, long ago, he’d become a conduit, a vehicle for the power within the crook and, after a time, had become a creature of Fairy. Transformed. But it hadn’t always been so. For Winter, the kidnapping hadn’t just been a revenge ploy—the kid hadn’t just been incidental—he’d probably been part of the agreement. He’d snatched the kid, a young, fresh suit of meat, so he could once more use the full power of the crook. In legends, he was both Jack Frost, a young man, and Old Man Winter, a cyclical course that mirrored winter itself. Birth and death, following one after the other for all eternity.

And I knew that if I wanted it, I could become like him. But that was for later, for now what I wanted was to wipe that smug look off Shelton’s face, all ten of them.

I watched, detached, as my body turned and sniffed the air. Perhaps the illusion could fool the eye, but not the nose. To the nose, the real Shelton was clear as gleaming ice—he smelled like a juicy steak waiting to be devoured. I turned toward the true Lich and leapt forward, the distance between us vanishing in an eye blink.

Yeah, he didn’t look nearly so full of himself as I smashed a fist into his face at lightning speed, caving in one cheek and throwing him back into a wall. I grinned, my jaws opened wide in a snarl, as I leapt forward again, bringing the crook down like a club, battering the downed Lich like a kid going to work on a piñata. Over and over again, snapping bones, rupturing flesh.

He couldn’t stop me. And it felt good. His blood steaming and warm against my flesh before freezing over in splotches of dark brown. He’d tortured Kozlov, killed Harvey—the guy who should’ve been able to retire with his wife. He had this coming in blood-tipped spades.

The Lich was resilient, far tougher than he looked, his chest rose and fell despite my best efforts. That was fine though, he could stand to suffer more.

I was gonna rip his arms and legs off, then flash freeze the wounds shut, so he wouldn’t bleed out. No, that’d be too quick … yeah, I’d rip his arms and legs off and then beat him to death with his own hands.

Boom
. A bright annoying flash of pain flared in my left leg—I turned to find Ferraro behind me. Shotgun barrel smoking from the latest discharge. What was she doing? The clumsy, stupid bitch. She pumped the action of the shotgun, which spat out a spent shell and chambered another. She raised the shotgun and fixed squarely on my chest. Was she aiming at me?

“Yancy,” she said, speaking slowly and a little too loudly, as though I might not be able to hear or understand. “You need to stop. You’re”—she paused for a moment—“not yourself. Please step away from Shelton, he’s finished … If you kill him now, it won’t be self-defense, it’ll be murder. No two ways about it.”

Stupid bitch. Who did she think she was, telling me what to do?

I turned and stepped toward her—insolence could be tolerated to a degree, but better to teach her a hard lesson now. Make a brief, brutal example for her, then she’d know where she sat in the pecking order. Then she’d know not to interfere in the affairs of her betters. I wouldn’t kill her—she belonged to me, my prize, my concubine—but she’d learn her role.

She pulled the trigger. I conjured a shield of blue mist, which swallowed the fire, leaving nothing but a flash of steam that immediately froze and fell in a wave of snow. I called up a construct of force, a blast of energy that would lay her out for a good long while. The weaves coalesced in my hand, a rippling sphere of angry blue energy, ready to be unleashed.

Except I couldn’t do it. I mean I
could
do it, it’d be easy, and she couldn’t stop me. But I saw that VC kid in my head, my first kill—the boy who’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time. My finger had been on the trigger, I’d had a clear shot, and though I’d taken the shot, I hadn’t
wanted
to. I’d done what I’d had to do, but no more. I was a killer, couldn’t deny that, but I wasn’t a murderer, and I sure as shit wasn’t the kind of guy who turned on his friends.

The part of me that was still me cried out and snatched at the Vis flowing through my body, struggling weakly against the powerful, beastly thing inside of me. The fight seemed useless—I couldn’t beat the crook, not like this, and I sure as shit couldn’t beat Shelton without its aid. I had a backup plan, but holding the crook was the only way I could guarantee victory. But at what cost? Kill Shelton, but windup destroying Ferraro and myself in the process? No thanks.

With the last bit of will I could muster, I grappled with the force overriding my senses, desperate to regain control of myself even for a moment. The crook was a living force within me, a shadow beast roaming the hallways of my head, wrapping its dark, cold tendrils around my brain, my heart, pulling all the switches and making me dance like some goofy, poorly constructed puppet. My mind was still mine for the time being, but the crook’s sentience was too friggin’ powerful to drive out, not as long as I held the crook.

So there was only one possible option: I needed to get rid of the crook—needed to pitch it away, out of my reach, where its influence would be limited.

I summoned the little strength of will and determination left in me and focused inward, stripping away every distraction vying for my attention, every diversion screaming for me to take note. I needed total focus to win this battle, so I needed to push everything else away.

It was almost like shooting for qualification on the range back in my Marine Corps days. I went there: I imagined myself on the five hundred-yard firing line, the wind blowing gently across the range, my body pressed into the rough gravel and dirt as I lay in the prone. The "B" modified target was just a pinprick of dark color on the horizon, so if I wanted to put a round in the black I would need absolute concentration.

Sharp chunks of gravel and rock gouged into my knees and elbows—Shelton, Ferraro, the Guild—each demanding a share of my attention, but I pushed each of them from my mind in turn. The parade-sling, holding my rifle steady, dug into the meat of my arm, choking the blood flow; uncomfortable, but necessary. I put it out of mind and readjusted the rifle in my shoulder pocket, pushing my cheek against the buttstock, ignoring the sweat beading on my head. I slowed my breathing—in, out—the rifle barrel bobbing with each breath, rising minutely on the inhale and dropping level on the exhale.

I was one with the rifle, one with the target downrange, every thought, feeling, and worry cast into temporary exile. My finger curled around the trigger—slow and steady squeeze, until the rifle bucked. My thought exploded outward like a bullet zipping from the barrel—a single precise command, honed to a scalpel blade’s edge, and aimed at a very specific target.

I watched, a spectator in my own body, as my command hit black and my body responded in kind. My arm shot out and my hand flew open—the crook summersaulted through the air and clattered to the floor five or six feet away. The power and life drained out of me, the staff’s connection and hold on me vanishing in an instant, but taking its raw ass-kicking prowess with it. I tumbled to my knees, my body reverting—jaw shrinking, beard falling away, muscles resuming their normal size. Suddenly weak and empty, used up.

Ferraro pulled the shotgun trigger again, this time aiming over my head, right where Shelton had been.

THIRTY-FIVE:

Ace in the Hole

I swiveled my head, looking back just in time to see Shelton flick his wrist forward, streams of purple wind, swirling and tainted with fallout-green, swept forward. The construct stopped Ferraro’s shot dead while simultaneously scooping the crook from the floor and floating it into his outstretched hand.

A flash of green, as blinding as a solar flare, rolled through the room, a wave of force and light which drove me down to my back. When my vision finally cleared, Shelton hung suspended in the air, the crook held before him, a look of pure rapture painting his ugly mug.

“The power,” he muttered, more to himself than to us, “it’s so much more than we expected.”

I glanced right. Ferraro was down, though moving.

I pushed myself to my feet, pulling free my hand canon—too tired to do much else—and laid into the monster with everything I had. A wall of blue shimmered before him for a moment, like a sheet of frozen lake ice, then my bullets simply fell from the air, frozen chunks of lead that clattered uselessly on the busted linoleum. The Lich laughed then—and it was a real doozy, guy could’ve qualified for a feature piece in
Evil Villain Cackle Quarterly
. A swirl of blue wrapped around my hand, prying my fingers open—my gun jerked free and floated through the air and into Shelton’s free hand.

“This,” he said, eyeing the weapon, “is a crude and inelegant thing. The tool of a barbarian.” He smiled, a sharp grin, chock-f of wicked intent. “I’ll keep it as a souvenir.” Flows of air lifted me up off my feet and slammed me hard into the wall next to the stairwell opening—thick vines of black ice, spiked with thorns, sprouted from the wall and wrapped around my body, arms, and legs. This is exactly what I’d done to Old Man Winter on more than one occasion and let me tell you, being on the receiving end was about as much fun as a colonoscopy with a weed whacker.

The thorns themselves were as sharp as razors—my arms and torso were protected by the chainmail and my leather jacket, but the spikes slashed through my jeans into the skin of my thighs and calves. Every time I wiggled, the spikes burrowed deeper. To top it off, the little buggers were colder than a witch’s tit—cold enough that they should’ve numbed the wounds after a few minutes, but didn’t. Instead they seemed to burn with a cold heat that simply wouldn’t abate.

Though my wrists were secured to the wall good and tight, I could still access the Vis. I
did
have a backup plan, all I needed was a solid javelin of flame and I could probably, maybe, possibly right this capsizing ship. I summoned the weaves of fire necessary—it was damn tough going, didn’t seem like there was enough ambient heat to get the job done, and I felt like I’d just run a marathon—but at last a wispy ball of shifting orange coalesced into my palm.

It burned for a few seconds tops, then guttered and died. Great.

“Oh no,” the Lich murmured with a shake of his head. The ice-spikes dug deeper into the exposed flesh around my wrist, snaking up around my gloves and slicing into the backs of my hands and fingers. Blood trickled across my palms and dribbled to the floor. Shit-eating vines not only hurt, they sucked the Vis right out of my fire construct. Consuming the minute energy I had left.

Things are never easy. But I still had a backup, backup plan—one ace left in the hole: Ferraro, though she was currently lying on the floor. She
was
stirring, however, and she knew what needed to be done if Randy got a hold of the crook—that was a scenario we’d covered in detail.
But
she’d need a little time to get her head on right if she was gonna pull this thing out of the bag. Time, I could buy her.

“Hey, Shelton,” I said, “I know you’re in there somewhere.”

Now normally, this is the part where I’d tried to appeal to Shelton’s humanity, convince him that he could still make the right choice. That underneath all the bad decisions, beneath the shit, and the heinous murders, he was still a good human being. Instead of doing that, I started insulting him.

“Yeah, I know you’re in there, taking orders like the little bitch you are. Maybe you’ve got your hands on some powerhouse item, but that doesn’t change the fact that underneath you’re still a shithead punk, who just couldn’t cut it. Spineless little limp-dick prick.”

What can I say? People are fickle sons of bitches. Sure,
maybe
an appeal to his humanity would pay dividends, but maybe not. Insults, however, almost always achieve the desired result. At least if the desired result is to royally piss someone off. My ploy certainly seemed to be working just fine—the green in his eyes faded, just a bit, then began to flicker between green and muddy brown.