Lazarus 6 - TEN: Regroup and Rally

It took us two hours to get back to the safe house in the Big Easy with the Scion in tow. She had about a million questions—where were we going? Why was the Morrigan after her? Who was the Savage Prophet?—which Sullivan handled with his usual easy going wit. He could be a colossal asshole, but it was easy to forget how charismatic he could be when he wanted to turn on the charm. And the thing about him was that the charm was genuine. He was a stuck-up prick with his fashion sense frozen in the 1920s, but deep down he also cared about people.

He could be a class act when he wanted to be, especially where rubes were concerned.

When I’d first awakened to my power—this was after going toe to toe with a Leshy back in ’69—Sullivan had been the one to meet me in the naval hospital. I’d lost damn near everyone in my squad after that shitshow of a mission and I was pretty sure I was going insane. Right until he showed up and swept me into the world of the Guild. Into the world of Vis and magic, of monsters lurking in the dark and godlings masquerading in society as men and women. He ushered me through one of the most difficult periods of my life and here he was, doing it again. This time for this poor kid who had the rotten luck to be born as the daughter of Irish deity.

When we got back, Sullivan got her squared away in a room she could call her own, while the rest of us reconvened with the rest of rebellion in the war room. Though this time, we caught up over a well-deserved meal, which was good since it was late and hadn’t eaten in what felt like forever. Unfortunately, we didn’t have the spread that the Fear Gorta had boasted in the unending halls of Tír na nÓg. On the flip side, this food also was actual edible and not filled with maggots or bewitched by Fae magic. Pulled pork, baked beans, a whole mess of sweet corn, and some of the best damned slaw I’d ever tasted—all courtesy of Sir Gal.

Naturally, goody toe shoes could also cook like a friggin’ Michelin star chef, because why not. Sometimes I really hated how good at everything that douche was. Not only was he an immortal knight of the round table—and basically a time cop with Hollywood A-lister good looks and perfect smile—but he was so wholesome it made me sick.

We were all spread around the war room, eating our fill and waiting for Winona to arrive. She, Chris, and Greg had spent the day shaking down leads on the architectural firm the Morrigan was using to build her party spot.

The gentle conversation died off as the door swung open, revealing a twenty-something Native American woman with short cropped black hair, sporting a pair of blue jeans, a loose flannel shirt, and no shoes. I’d never seen her before, I was sure of it, but something about her tickled at the back of my mind.

“Ah, so good of you to join us, Winona,” the Arch-Mage said from behind her hulking desk.

I nearly choked on my pulled pork and did a double take, my eyes bulging. That little slip of a woman was Winona? The fact that no one else was disputing the Arch-Mage’s absurd claim seemed to suggest that was the case, but I just couldn’t get my head around it. Winona was seven feet tall, had sized eighteen feet, and was covered in reddish-brown hair. She was in almost every way the exact opposite of the woman standing in the doorway.

“Nope. No way,” I finally blurted out. “Winona?” My tone was a little harsher than I’d intended, but there was nothing for it.

The Native American woman blushed and glanced down, one hand reaching up to the pink bow holding her hair away from her face. The same pink bow Winona always wore.

“Yes, Yancy,” she said, her voice softer and gentler than I’d remembered, but definitely Winona. She finally glanced up and pulled aside the lapels of her flannel shirt, revealing an ancient looking amulet that radiated power. The collar of the necklace was crafted from rows of carved bone and turquoise beads, while the amulet itself sat at the base of her throat. It looked like a stone medicine wheel with a pair of figurines carved into the face.

“It is a powerful artifact of our people,” she said. “One with transformative properties. Being able to disguise myself as a Little Sister has been helpful. With the breakdown of the Guild, the People of the Forest have taken up more of the slack, defending your kind from the many threats of Outworld.”

I whistled through my teeth. Yeah, I bet that was a useful trick. It was also a firm reminder that the Chiye-tanka—the name they used for themselves—had some seriously badass magic at their disposal.

“And speaking of helpful, I would like to introduce you to my friend, Chris Fuller.” She spoke almost nervously.

With one dainty hand, she ushered in a man who reeked of small-town cop. Slim and lanky with a clean-shaven face, sandy brown hair, and muddy brown eyes. He wore cowboy boots, heavy jeans, and a plain white button down, covered up by a nondescript brown suit jacket which barely concealed the bulged of a gun beneath his left arm. Definitely a cop. Might as well walk around with a sign over his head that read The Fuzz. Even at a glance, I could tell he was a Rube—though the fact that he was here meant he’d probably waded through a kiddie pool full of supernatural bullshit.

“Detective Chris Fuller with the Missoula Sheriff’s Department,” he said with a twang. He crossed the room on lanky legs and extended a sun-tanned hand. “You must be Yancy Lazarus. Winona’s told me all about you.” I took his offered hand and gave it a quick shake.

“Good to meet ya’. So you with the Venántium or what?” I asked, cocking an eyebrow.

“No, not officially,” he said as he withdrew his hand and tucked his thumb into the edge of his pants. “Been working with them on and off for the past few months, but mostly a freelancer, I suppose you could call me.”

“He helped me solve several brutal murders outside of Missoula,” Winona offered, taking up a spot in the corner. “Yes, he is frail-looking,” she said unprompted, as though I were second-guessing his qualifications, “but he helped me to defeat Anukite Sharp-Elbows, the Double-Faced Woman, and has even traveled past Earrach-Tir all the way to the very edges of Outworld, where Mictlan looms.”

Huh. Not many Rubes made it to Outworld, and those that did rarely made it back. Traveling past Outworld, to any of the nether realms was one helluva impressive feat. Only bad, bad things lay out beyond the realm of the Fae. Mostly living nightmares and walking gods that didn’t bear screwing around with. Some small part of me wanted to know what in the hell they’d been doing tooling around in Mictlan, the Aztec land of the dead, but I figured that was a story for another time.

“We’ll if Winona vouches for you, I’m sure you’re good to go. Now, unless we’re waiting on anyone else, I think it’s high time we get down to business.”

“Does that mean things went well?” Winona asked hopefully.

“Well, it depends on how you define well,” I said. “We had to ice a Fear Gorta, fight an army of undead, and tangle with a Red Dragon. Also, I’m not ever allowed to return to the Lonely Mountain, so there’s that.”

“In all fairness,” Sullivan chipped in, “none of us are allowed to return to the Lonely Mountain on pain of death.”

“Firroth did not take kindly to us pinning his wings to the floor with those stalagmites,” Levi muttered. Like Winona, he was hiding his true self—back in his unassuming, mustached humanoid form.

“Yes, there were several obstacles to overcome,” Ferraro said, ever the professional, “but the important thing is we managed to secure the Scion, who is here, safe, and currently resting. We also got a hint about why the Scions are important and what the Morrigan might be using them for.” While the rest of us ate, she filled in the others on our trip through the halls of the Tuatha De Danann, our conversation with Lugh and Dagda, and our eventual throw down with Firroth.

“So that was our day,” I said, as Ferraro finally wrapped up her summary. “How about you guys? Any big breaks?”

“The long and short of it is, no,” Greg said, arms crossed. He seemed grumpy. Not making progress had a way of doing that to him.

“It is true,” Winona said with a sigh.

Chris cleared his throat. “If I may.” He raised a hand, like he was a school kid that need permission to talk. “We barely made it past reception. I tried to apply pressure as a Police Officer, but surprise, surprise, the security guards manning the desk didn’t seem particularly impressed or intimidated by a Detective from Missoula who was well out of jurisdiction. I was hoping to bluff our way through, but the guys working the desk were sharp.”

“Ten-four on that,” Greg grunted. “These weren’t regular security types, Yancy. No college kids or retirees looking to make some extra change on the weekends. These boys looked like pros. Big, well-coordinated, and packing heat. Mighta been tied to the Blackrock crew. Or something along those lines. They saw through us in about four seconds flat.”

“When applying pressure didn’t work,” Chris continue, “we made a bit of a commotion. They tried to throw us out as a result, with an emphasis on try. Winona got in their way—no violence or anything, she just refused to move. So they tried to move her, and couldn’t even budge her an inch.” He grinned and shot Winona a wink and a finger gun. “Believe you me, it’s never a good look when a bunch of para-military guys built like football players try to rough up a young woman.”

“It looks even worse if it fails,” Greg said. “So, since they couldn’t kick us out without looking like a bunch of complete jack asses, they shuffled us off to some middle management type. Short, balding guy that went by the name of Kempf. Kevin Kempf. And the second we started pushing for details on the South African project he buttoned up tighter than a clam.”

“He did give us this, though.” Chris reached into his pocket and pulled out a high gloss business card, plain white, and embossed with boring black letter. “It’s for some high-powered law firm. Mr. Kempf said if we had any further questions, we could contact their lawyers, though I doubt we’ll get anything out of them.”

Damn. Sounded like a bust, overall, but I had to admit I liked Chris. He mighta looked like a country bumpkin rube, but he was sharp. Good instincts.

“Could you find anything about the law firm?” Ferraro asked.

“Oh gosh yes,” Darlene pipped in. “That was the first thing I did when they reported back. I did a little digging, but that didn’t turn up much. It’s an enormous firm based out of New York, which from the surface looks all above board and legitimate. They have all the proper licensing and credentials, and it wasn’t hard to turn up their connections with RavenStar Holding, which is at least one of the shell companies the New Wave is funneling money through. The law firm seems to deal almost exclusively with tech and bi-medical companies, which is odd since Wayland and Smith is an architectural firm. Even stranger, when I dug down a little deeper, I found that the Tomas Wayland—the Wayland of Wayland and Smith—is also a sitting board member at the law firm. Seems like an odd coincidence.”

I grabbed a napkin and dabbed some tangy barbeque sauce from my face, then cleaned my fingers while I thought. The fact that the Morrigan and her flunkies were using a shell company wasn’t surprising, but who was this Tomas Wayland guy and what was his connection to the whole thing?

“Alright,” I said after a beat, balling up the napkin and setting it on my plate. “It’s too late to do anything more tonight. I’m sure the offices are all shut down and the flunkies have packed up shop for the night. Plus, we fought a no-shit dragon, so I think I need to sleep it off a bit. But first thing in the morning we’ll head back to Wayland and Smith—see if we can’t escalate things a bit and get some answers from at least one of the shot callers on site. I can be damned persuasive when I need to be.” I pushed out my chair with a creak and stood with a groan. Everything hurt, I had bruises and more lacerations than I could shake a stick at, and all I wanted was to take a shower and catch a little shuteye before I had to wake up and do it all again.

And I was sure I would have to do it all again. As much as I hated to admit it, taking on Firroth was probably one of the easiest things I was going to do over the next few days.

“Come on,” Ferraro said, standing. “I’m beat too. I’ll show you to your room.”

“Would it be okay if I walked with you—” Winona started to say, at least until Greg put a friendly hand on her shoulder and shook his head.

“Maybe it would be better if you just gave the two of them some space.”

Her cheeks flushed and her eyes widened comically. “Oh. Oh… Of course.”

That made me smile despite the pain and exhaustion. Winona was older than everyone in the room save the Arch-Mage, but Bigfoot aged differently than humans. She was barely out of her teenage years to the Chiye-tanka and it still showed from time to time.

After a few more muttered goodbyes and goodnights, Ferraro ushered us from the war room and into a long hallway lined with rooms. The floors were polished wood and original, which was saying something since this was an old manor house, just a few blocks away from Colosseum Square in the Lower Garden District of the Big Easy. Chances were good, this building had been built sometime before the Civil War and had weathered the worst New Orleans had to offer, including Katrina.

I doubted it was a Guild holding, since bunkering down in an enemy controlled flop house would be suicide. Which meant it probably belonged to the Arch-Mage. The brass wall fixtures, polished to a dull glow and the drab floral wallpaper, peeling slightly at the corners, reminded me of her. Stuffy, oddly formal, and out date. This was definitely the kind of place I could see the Arch-Mage lurking in. Drinking a glass of merlot from a Swarovski crystal champagne flute as she looked down on the plebian masses, too stupid to know what was good for them.

We passed a closed door on the right, then edged by a plush bathroom on the left with a claw-footed tub, before finally halting in front of a plain brown door with a crystal knob.

“This is me,” Ferraro said. She offered me a telling smile and removed a fat brass key from a chain slung around her neck. “I was thinking maybe you could come in. If you wanted too.”

I’d never wanted something more in my whole life. “Maybe just for a minute or two.” I let her pull me into the room and pushed the door shut with the heel of my boot…