Savage Prophet: A Yancy Lazarus Novel (Episode 4) (17 page)

He folded his hands as though in prayer and dropped his eyes, refusing to look at us.

“Nearly one hundred million people—the entire population of the world when Ong took the Seal—perished during your two world wars. Another forty-five million died under Mao Zedong. Mao did that in four years.” The abbot looked up, holding out a hand, thumb down. “Four. Only five thousand people were killed during the Spanish Inquisition, and that lasted three hundred and fifty years. So, so much death. So, so much murder. And that doesn’t account for the countless genocides, the hundreds of other official and unofficial wars, or the never-ending stream of murders.

“All of that killing, all of that senseless death, took a terrible toll,” he said, voice a sad whisper. “Buné grew impossibly strong. Impossibly powerful, even for one as steadfast and stalwart as Ong. My master fought the demon, of course, but the battle … A hopeless endeavor. Impossible. After twenty-five hundred years, Ong fell, his mind obliterated, or at least captured, by the demon.

“Ten years ago, that was. Only ten, though it seems a lifetime to me. I do not know if anything of my old friend remains—often I find myself praying there
is
nothing
left, since he would so abhor what he has become. These days, what was once Ong goes by a different name: Baron Samedi. I have not seen him since his fall, but I know where he last was. Cité Soleil, Haiti. He’s set up shop there, turned it into the seat of his own mini-empire.”

My eyes widened in surprise, and goosebumps broke out across my skin like someone had just doused me with a bucket of ice water. The air in the room seemed a little too thin, and my stomach ached from the shock.

Holy shit, this guy was dropping some friggin’ bombs. First, the Savage Prophet, now
Haiti.
It felt like I’d just been sucker punched in the teeth with a pair of brass knuckles. I cleared my throat and ran a hand through my hair. “Haiti,” I croaked. “Cité Soleil
.”

The monk nodded, solemn.

“Does it mean something to you?” Ferraro asked, giving me a sidelong glance.

I dry washed my hands, an anxious frown growing on my face. “It’s. Well, complicated.”

And it was complicated. The mention of Cité Soleil
made me … let’s go with
edgy
, since that sounds way better than
piss-your-bed-terrified
.

I’d been to Haiti once before, back in ’76. One of my earliest missions with the Fist.

James Sullivan and I went down there to put the kibosh on a group of rogue necromancers looking to carve out their own kingdom in—yep, you guessed it—Cité Soleil. Extortion, dark voodoo, murder, ritual sacrifice. Ugly, ugly business. Still gave me the chills to think about. The guy runnin’ that shit-show was this cat named Pa Beauvoir, everyone called him the Voodoo Daddy. Son of a bitch was powerful, secretive, and charismatic as all get out. He was also nasty, vindictive, and evil. Like really, genuinely evil, which is not a term I sling around all willy-nilly.

I tend to see things more in shades of gray than black and white, but Beauvoir was black, all the way down to his soul. Assuming that bastard had a soul. He and his network of Bokors—dark, voodoo sorcerers—could do things no mage could do. Dark things I still didn’t understand.

In the end, I’d buried that hoodoo dickhead, but let’s just say I’m not well-loved in Haiti, nor is Haiti a place I would ever willingly go again.

Even more disconcerting, though, was something James Sullivan had said to me not so long ago. That arrogant, know-it-all douchenozzle had betrayed me during a deadly knock-down-drag-out with a greater Wendigo. Asshole had stabbed me in the back … Well, not literally, but in principle. But, he’d also said something in that moment: “This makes us even for Haiti, back in ’76.”

Those had been his words. His exact words.

It couldn’t possibly be a coincidence, could it?

In my line of work coincidences were few and far between, especially since my boss was Lady Luck. Was it possible he’d been trying to drop me a clue, some tidbit he’d stumbled on that the bad guys didn’t know? I couldn’t be certain, but it stank like a fish market in the noonday sun.

And, if that was the case, what did that mean about James?

Maybe he wasn’t a traitor. Maybe he really was working some deep cover angle he couldn’t tell me about.

Or maybe I was just making connections that didn’t exist because I didn’t want James to be a traitorous buttweasel.

Still, aside from all of those possible implications …
Cité Soleil.

Shit.

Holy shit.

Holy shit on a cracker.

The monk looked up at the clock, his face tightening. “It is time,” he said, unfolding his crossed legs and smoothly gaining his feet. “I do not know what will happen after this,” he said, holding my eye, “but if you find Ong—or rather, the creature he has become—please help him. Free him. If you can. Release him from the burden of a fate he has fought for twenty-five hundred years. Give him peace.”

“How?” I whispered in a panic, casting a nervous glance over my shoulder.

“Take the Seal,” he said calmly.

I shook my head. “No, there’s got to be some other way. I’ve already got one demon to contend with, I can’t turn my head into a demonic Club Med. There’s got to be another way.”

“There is no other way. You can hold it. You must hold it—”

The door at the end of the hall crashed open, banging against the painted walls, cutting off whatever else the monk was going to say. The garish lights of Little Bangkok silhouetted two figures standing in the entryway.

TWELVE:

The Savage Prophet

Two men strode into the room, menace and confidence oozing from them like the reek of bad cologne. And, I shit you not, the temperature
plummeted
—my breath fogged up, little white wisps escaping through my lips.

The first man was a young buck of maybe twenty-five who stood over six feet; he had broad shoulders and the thick muscle of a gym rat. Despite his obvious youth, the guy had prematurely gray hair, almost silver, fashioned into a douchey faux hawk on top. He also sported a matching silver beard—a gnarly tangle of hair which lent him a wild look. Honestly, he sorta resembled a young, buff version of Old Saint Nick. Instead of a tacky red snowsuit, however, the kid wore black slacks, a black turtleneck, and a shoulder rig holding a compact Beretta.

I’d never seen Bond-Villain-Knockoff before—kinda hard to forget a lean, young, super-spy version of Santa Claus—but something about him sorta tickled at the back of my noggin.

The second guy, lingering behind the cocksure youngster, wore dark brown robes so thick he looked like an amorphous blob covered in a burlap sack. I could tell it was a man—his height and the breadth of his shoulders made that much clear, but that was
all
I could make out. A heavy hood covered his head, and though the front was open, for some reason I couldn’t make out his face. Just a fuzzy, featureless blur cloaked in thick shadow. In fact, everything about the second guy was blurry and indistinct, which meant he was holding some sort of heavy-duty illusion in place.

The first guy didn’t care about being ID’ed, but the second did.

Only one explanation I could think of for that: Bathrobe knew I’d be able to identify him without the illusion in place. Which, in my mind, could only mean one thing. Captain shitnuts in the robe was the Guild traitor—the one calling the shots and pulling the strings. The one responsible for Randy Shelton, for the Wendigo, for attempting to assassinate me. Responsible for this entire shitshow.

Bathrobe was friggin’ Emperor Palpatine.
Darth
Bathrobe, then. Shit.

And that could only mean the bearded youth had to be his diabolic apprentice, Darth Beard, which couldn’t be good news for anyone.

The kid sauntered forward, a lopsided sneer cutting across his face. “Yancy Lazarus and the A-Team,” he said, his voice rich, deep, and cold. Cold as the Alaskan tundra. “Agent Nicole Ferraro and Darlene Drukiski.” He paced left, then right, black boots
click-clacking
on the temple floor. “A washed-up thug, past his prime. A Rube cop. And a glorified Guild receptionist. To think you three are Lady Fate’s frontline defense.”

“Aw shucks, and here I don’t even know your name,” I replied. “How embarrassing.”

“Oh, I think maybe you’ve heard of me,” he said, eyes narrowing to slits. “Some folks call me the Savage Prophet, and though you might not remember—what with my new body—we
have
met before.”

His face distorted, shifted, elongated as his jaw widened to accommodate an impressive set of fangs. His eyes, a pale blue before, solidified into pinpricks of chipped diamond, and his skin took on an icy cast while his epic beard morphed into hoarfrost. Then, in a blink, it was gone, the young man’s features firmly back in place. “Like I said, I’ve found a new host since the last time we tangled. Gained some new skills, too.” He shot a malicious wink at me.

Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit.

I may not have recognized the young man’s face, but I sure as all hell knew the blue-skinned freak he’d given me a glimpse of. Jack Frost. Old Man Winter. A fae lord. The deposed king of the Winterlands, in point of fact.

His story was an old one. Not much more than a shadow of a legend; told, retold, and practically forgotten hundreds of years before I was even a glimmer in my pop’s eye.

Once upon a time, long, long ago—or so the tale went—Winter had a nasty king, a merciless creature more brutal and dastardly than all of his kin and kith combined. He was a tyrant with a terribly heavy hand. Basically, the king of pricks. One cold day the King of Winter ventured out of his icy lands to visit the Black Lodge, home to Arawn the Horned, Protector of the Unfettered Fae.

While en route, he ran across a gentle and noble spirited
hippalectryon
—part horse, part rooster, all genetics-experiment-gone-wrong—and slew the beast because he was a colossal dick. But in doing so, he pissed off the wrong fairy: Gyre-Carlin, Mistress of the Unfettered and a violently protective wildlife activist. She didn’t take kindly to the Winter King offing ol’ Horsy McRooster-face, so she swore revenge, orchestrated a massive uprising, and eventually drove the evil king into exile, end of story.

Except, I knew that wasn’t the end of the story.

A while back, before Lady Fate had appointed me to be her mortal agent, I’d helped a friend of mine save his kidnapped grandson, who, naturally, had been taken by the deposed fae lord. Old Man Winter had only been the tip of a ginormous iceberg of shit, though, which in many ways—the most important ways—had brought me to this point. To this monastery. To my budding relationship with Ferraro. To having a demon riding shotgun in my head. And now he was back, apparently trucking around in some fresh-faced host.

Which was bad news bears for me, since things had not exactly ended on a positive note between us. I sorta hacked off his hand, stole his magical stick—the Crook of Winter—and flash-froze him to a chair. Also Ferraro had blasted him in the kneecap with an iron-laced shotgun cartridge, so probably he had a smidgen of a grudge against her as well.

“Yeah,” the Prophet said with a nod, “I can see the fear, meat-monkey.” He shed a smug
you-should-be-afraid
smile
,
which made me want to punch him in the friggin’ teeth on general principle. Didn’t help matters one bit that I
was
afraid.

“Nope, not afraid,” I lied with a lazy shrug, “just thinking about what a dumb-ass name ‘Savage Prophet’ is. I mean, that’s a great handle for a pro wrestler—hell, if you had a flamboyant mask you could be an excellent
luchadore—
but it seems it’s sorta melodramatic. Just out of curiosity, why do they call you that anyway? You a big Macho Man Randy Savage fan?” I asked. “Maybe you’re planning to snap into a few Slim Jims in the near future?”

“Keep pushing me and you’ll find out how I earned that title,” he replied, the humor draining from his voice. “Besides, it’s better than the Fixer. Your nickname makes you sound like a drunk handyman living out of the back of a car.” He paused, folded his arms, and scoffed. “Never mind. It’s a perfect fit.”

Damn, that was a pretty solid burn actually, which pissed me off something fierce. I’m supposed to be the one who creatively dumps on the opposition—it’s like my calling card and security blanket all wrapped up into one. Cavalierly insulting terrifying monsters far more powerful than me made those creatures a little less terrifying in my mind. Names are powerful things, and it was far harder to be scared of a being you just nicknamed dicknoodle. Yet here I was on the receiving end, in desperate need of a State Farm agent, ’cause he’d just burned my ass to the ground.