Lazarus 6 - EIGHT: The Lonely Mountain

Lugh’s portal dropped us in a cramped alleyway, the air filled with a sour stink, the ground littered with garbage of a questionable origin and variety. There were dirty diapers, old tires, a spattering of used syringes, and enough broken glass to fill a friggin’ bathtub. Things scurried and scampered just out of sight, rustling balled up newsprint in their passing. Likely Hub-roaches, which infested just about every nook and cranny in the Inbetween city. Nasty, hissing brown things, half a foot in length, strangely intelligent, and malicious. 

You had to be careful in the back alleys, since those sons of bitches could get awfully aggressive if you encroached on their nests. And you did not want to tangle with a single Hub-roach, let alone of swarm of the nasty bastards.

“Come on,” I said, once everyone was through and the shimmering doorway from Tír na nÓg had vanished. Good riddance, as far as I was concerned

We headed out onto a busy thoroughfare running in front of the notoriously ill-reputed bar and degenerate dumping ground. The Lonely Mountain boasted a list of clientele that read like the horror shelf at the local bookstore. Everything from the Kobocks of the Deep Downs to the serpent face Little Brothers of the Blade were welcome here.

The building was a hulking structure made of craggy gray stone, which might’ve been transported out of the Arthurian era—part mountain, part castle, all badass. Jagged merlons ran along the top parapet, while narrow windows bled orange light into the gloomy haze of twilight. It was always twilight in the Hub. This place was a pocket dimension, not Inworld but not quite Outworld, which never had true day or true night. 

The bar also doubled as a high-class brothel and often otherworldly moans and orgasmic groans of both pain and pleasure could be heard drifting from those windows. Not now, though. I’d spent more time than I’d care to admit slumming around the Lonely Mountain—though I avoided the brothel portion like a plague for a thousand different reasons. For morals reasons, true, but also because at least a few of the guests likely had the literal plague. In all the time spent here, I’d never heard it this quite before, which probably was a bad sign. My stomach was clenched into a knot as I steeled myself and marched through the open portcullis with the others following in my wake.

I faltered at the pair of frosted double doors. Across the front was The Lonely Mountain in gilt gold lettering. Beneath was a stern warning, No Fighting, No Trouble, Violators will be Incinerated. 

The Lonely Mountain was such a popular and happening joint due, in large part, to the fact that Firroth the Red did not dick around with people who made problems in his joint. Like most dragons, Firroth was ferociously jealous of his treasure, which happened to be his bar and brothel, and would, literally, incinerate anyone who threatened its safety. It made the Lonely Mountain a great place for business meets, though, since no one wanted to put a toe on the wrong side of the line where Firroth was concerned. It also made it an absolutely fantastic spot to get fall-down wasted, since no one would murder you outright—at least not if you remained in the bar proper.

The problem was the Morrigan and the Savage Prophet weren’t like the murderous halfies and other horrors that stalked the highways and byways of the Hub. They were throwing around god-tier power and as tough as Firroth was—and I had no doubt he was a mean ol’ lizard—those two would wreck him. And I’m not talking about a few busted ribs and a nasty shiner, I’m taking decapitation and flayed alive. Obviously not in that order. I didn’t want to pick a fight with the man. I mean, we weren’t friends exactly, but he’d always been kinder than most of the things that haunted the Hub.

Which meant it was up to me to save his ass. Him and Dagda’s Scion. 

I took a single deep breath, double checked my revolver, then pushed through the door, which let out a shrill brass jangle at my passing. 

I was expecting the place to be empty but was surprised when I heard a guitar rift and the tinkle of piano keys, accompanied by the muted clink of glasses and the low murmur of voices. 

Up on stage was an age-beaten halfie, his skin fire engine red, which probably meant his father had been a fir darrig out of the Spring Court. Not especially good looking, were fir darrig. About five and a half feet tall, all lean muscles, and burnt red hides. Looks weren’t everything, though, because this guy could make his guitar sing and squeal in all the right ways, laying down a fiery version of B.B. King’s The Thrill is Gone that hit me right in the soul. And his partner, a blonde bombshell with fluttering fairy wings, could not only play the piano, but she had a set of pipes that reminded me of a young Aretha Franklin.

Smoke, both the tangy aroma of tobacco and the musky, sulfurous stink always hanging around dragons, loitered in the air. Muted red, orange, and amber illuminated the cavernous interior with pockets of seedy light, though overall the bar remained a dark and foreboding place. A cave dimly seen. Hanging stalactites and jutting stalagmites littered the space, each filled with the ever-shifting light of enslaved, winged creatures. Pixies. The crowd was sparse tonight, though. Usually I had to elbow my way through the press of bodies, but this time around most of the booths were empty and only the most die-hard regulars milled around the bar, drinking from dirty mugs. 

The hair stood up on the back of my neck and the atmosphere instantly set my teeth on edge. There was a sense of foreboding unease that permeated everything—that calm lingering in the breeze right before a brutal storm descends. 

“Spread out,” I growled over my shoulder. 

We broke into a wedge formation, Levi taking up a post to my right, Sullivan on my left, Ferraro tucked away behind us with her tactical shottie in hand. The tension ratcheted up another notch, like a string wound to its breaking point, and every eye in the bar darted toward us. A quiet murmur circulated through the room, inhuman eyes growing wide in shock as they recognized who I was. Who Sullivan was. It didn’t take long before a spattering of patrons excused themselves from tables, trickling out first in a fits and starts and then in a rush like rats abandoning a sinking ship. 

Except the musicians. They kept right on playing like the house band of the Titanic, manning their posts even as the ocean swallowed the doom vessel.

As a mage and a former member of the Hand of the Fist—the Guild’s hit squad—I’d never exactly been a nobody, but I’d certainly never caused a reaction like this before either. But everything was different now, I reminded myself. The world was in upheaval. The Guild of the Staff, broken. The Morrigan was busy reorganizing the entirety of the supernatural world and I was her number one enemy. Not to mention the fact that I’d spent the better part of a year in Hell, on an epic murder spree against some of the most powerful Immortal Demons in Pandæmonium. Shit, I’d assassinated Asmodeus, one of the Nine Kings of Hell, and word about things like that had a certain way of traveling. 

A pair of batwing doors behind the bar swung open with a whoosh and out walked the man we’d come looking for. Though Firroth was a dragon’s dragon from every account I’d ever heard, he wore the guise of a man—or, at lease, a huge and dragon-ish looking man. Guy must’ve stood eight feet tall and had a swath of fiery-red hair, which shimmered gold and orange in the light. He had intricate tribal tattoos in blues and blacks snaking up around his tree-trunk arms. Jutting out of the corner of his mouth was a fat cigar, the cherry always burning but never diminishing. 

He effortlessly slid over the bar top and nodded toward the musicians on the stage, just a curt bob of the head. “Magnus, Georgina. How’s about you see yourselves out.” 

The pair didn’t need to be asked twice. The fire-engine red halfie grabbed his guitar and bolted from the stage, giving us a very wide berth as he and his blonde partner in crime hustled out the front door. 

The dragon in human flesh strutted forward slowly until he was in dead in front of us, about fifteen feet away. 

“Lazarus,” he said casually, puffing at his cigar. “You shouldn’t have come here. I always did have a soft spot for you—seemed like you got the shit end of the stick more than you deserved. But coming here? Bad idea.” He shook his head slowly. “This only ends poorly for you and your friends.” He waved a claw-tipped hand toward the others. 

“Doesn’t have to go that way,” I said, keeping cool. I’d shit talked more than my fair share of supernatural deities, but I honestly didn’t want to throw down with Firroth, not if it could be avoided. He was hardnosed, no nonsense kinda guy, but he was just trying to do the right thing here. Do a favor for a friend and protect some poor kid from a bunch of shitheels in the process. He couldn’t know exactly how outclassed he was by the opposition. And even if he did, he’d never admit it. 

Dragons weren’t exactly known for their humility or willingness to be vulnerable. 

“We’re not here for you,” I said. “We’re here for the Scion. Dagda sent us. Straight from the Throne room itself.” 

Firroth grunted, squinted, a plume of acrid smoke curling from his nostrils. 

“Even if Dagda was here, standing in front of me, I wouldn’t give the kid to you. You might not know this, but Dagda, he and I go way back. He saved me from a Dragon Slayer once upon a time. Back in the days of Pendragon’s day. So I owe him. And the kid, Candace? She’s my god-daughter. Chances are, you’re working with the Morrigan.” He paused, shrugged. “But even if you’re not, she ain’t going with you. Where you go, destruction follows. I won’t let her get mixed up in that.” 

“We can protect her better than you ever could,” I said, refusing to flinch or look away. “I can keep her safe.” 

“Dragons aren’t known for our sense of humor,” Firroth replied drily, “but even I think that’s rich. You, the guy who killed half the nobles in Pandemonium before staging a riot and breaking out of Hell, are gonna keep her safe. You’ve always lived on your own terms, Lazarus—I respect that about you. But you’re a loose cannon. Always have been. A loose cannon is one thing, but these days you’re more like a rabid dog. I wouldn’t trust you to lock up my bar much less take care of my god daughter.” 

“It isn’t what you think,” Sullivan said from beside me, shooting Firroth a disarming smile. 

“Ah. So first I hear from the rapid dog with a demon infested soul. Now, I get to hear from the piece of shit who’s been working openly with the Morrigan for more than a year. Who’s next, huh? The golem who likes to murder Kobos in the Deep Downs? Maybe I should trust him?” He shot Levi a deadly glare that said in no uncertain terms that he knew all of the MudMan’s secrets. 

“Or how about the powerless human you cart around like a trained hound?” Something rippled beneath the surface of his skin and his eyes began to glow with an angry golden light. “Thing is, I don’t much like to get involved. Your business is your own and I got out of supernatural politics a millennia ago. You brought this trouble into my bar, though. You dropped it like a package on my front door and it’s high time someone put this whole mess to bed for good.”

In a flash he started to swell and change, shedding the guise for the first time in living memory. 

Ferraro, because she isn’t a moron, didn’t wait for him to complete the change. She shouldered her way between me and James, raised her shottie and fired center mass into the bulging figure of muscles and scale. 

Unfortunately, her shot gun worked about as well as a water gun on a forest fire—the dude was a friggin’ dragon not a two-bit burglar—and he shrugged off the lead, silver, and rock salt without even blinking. But in my opinion, she had the right idea. We had about thirty-seconds before Firroth would be ready to rock and roll and that was the time when he’d be must vulnerable to attack. 

“Don’t kill him,” I hollered at the top of my lungs. 

I thrust both hands forward and conjured a column of raw, gale force wind, unleashing it on the still transforming creature. Unseen power blasted into him like an artillery round, batting him across the room and into one of the crystalline stalagmites protruding from the floor. Firroth hit with a bone breaking snap except that it wasn’t his body that broke, but rather the stone pillar. Firroth kept right on changing and from the burning hate in his eyes, I’d say he was more pissed than hurt. 

“Don’t think that’s gonna be a problem.” Levi underwent his own shift, gray flesh swelling outward. “I’m not sure we’ll be able to kill him if we tried.” 

“Good,” Sullivan said, “then I won’t feel bad about taking off the kid gloves.” 

The floor cracked and split as a piece of stone broke free and drifted up into the air. 

Sullivan was floating on top of it. He wasn’t flying, Magi couldn’t do that, but he was a master of magnetism and could repel the rock and hold it aloft with bands of electro-magnetic energy. There was a reason why he’d been Lieutenant Commander of the Fist for longer than I’d been alive. The guy was good. He thrust his silver sword forward and unleashed a searing bolt of lightning, bright enough to temporarily blind me. The blast hit with a thunderous noise, rocks and debris flying up in a plume, smoke swirling in a chaotic cloud. 

My ears rang and a hazy purple afterimage hung across my vision. 

For a long beat we all just stood there, holding our collective breath in anticipation. Waiting to see if Firroth was down for the count. I sure as shit know that if Sullivan had hit me with that combo it would’ve put me out of commission. 

As the smoke cleared and dissipated, I felt a tremor run through the floor. An enormous claw-tipped foot emerged, slamming down with enough force to rattle the teeth in my skull. 

Out of the ash and smoke emerged a creature of legend. 

He was the size of a T. Rex with jaws that could swallow me whole. Firroth had the same golden eyes, bright with intelligence and rage, but everything else had changed. His body was covered in glimmering crimson scales, though plates of gold ran along his neck and belly. His graceful neck connected to a powerfully muscled body with wicked black spikes that ran along the length of his spine. Four semi-translucent wings protruded from just behind his shoulder blades, reminding me of an overgrown dragon fly. A serpentine tail, capped with a skull-sized spiked club, lashed at the air like a cat preparing to pounce on some unwitting prey.

I had a sneaking suspicion that we were the unwitting prey. 

“You are deeply going to regret that,” Firroth said, his voice the sound of a volcano given life. He opened his jaws wide and unleashed a gout of brilliant golden flame.