Brimstone Blues: A Yancy Lazarus Novel (Yancy Lazarus Series Book 5) Read online

  Contents

  Summary

  James Hunter's Mailing List

  ONE: Wake-up Call

  TWO: Pandæmonium

  THREE: Foot Race

  FOUR: Flesh Eaters

  FIVE: Wanted

  SIX: Infernal Politics

  SEVEN: Blood Pit

  EIGHT: Shit-Kickery

  NINE: Crossroad Saloon

  TEN: All Hail the Queen

  ELEVEN: The Cobalt Lily Rollers

  TWELVE: Follow the Leader

  THIRTEEN: Lost City

  FOURTEEN: Helping Hand

  FIFTEEN: Jackpot

  SIXTEEN: Unholy Exorcism

  SEVENTEEN: Ambush

  EIGHTEEN: Escape and Evade

  NINETEEN: Ultimate Derby

  TWENTY: Powerhouse

  TWENTY-ONE: Shootin’ the Shit

  TWENTY-TWO: Infernal Company

  TWENTY-THREE: Game Plan

  TWENTY-FOUR: Sleep Well, Sweet Dreams

  TWENTY-FIVE: Rise and Shine

  TWENTY-SIX: Floating Market

  TWENTY-SEVEN: Locked Doors

  TWENTY-EIGHT: Nekropolis

  TWENTY-NINE: Bone Collector

  THIRTY: Rigged to Blow

  THIRTY-ONE: Flesh Palace

  THIRTY-TWO: Colosseum

  THIRTY-THREE: Tree-Rexes

  THIRTY-FOUR: Distraction

  THIRTY-FIVE: Death Shot

  THIRTY-SIX: Welcome Home

  Books, Mailing List, and Reviews

  Yancy Lazarus Reading Order

  Other Works by James A. Hunter

  About the Author

  Dedication

  Special Thanks

  Copyright

  Summary

  Yancy Lazarus—mage, bluesman, and demon-souled—is having the worst hangover of his life.

  He just woke up in a dingy hotel in literal Hell with one eye missing, an arm covered in swirling golden tattoos, and no recollection of the past six months.

  All he wants is to figure out how he ended up in the Great Below and whether there’s a way home. But getting out of Hell is no easy feat. Yancy is the most wanted man in the Infernal city of Pandæmonium, and he’s being hunted by demonic cutthroats for a series of high-profile murders he can’t remember committing.

  Now, Lazarus will have to rely on the help of a shapeshifting stranger with a dark past to battle his way past a legion of freakish Hellions and the murderous Derby-Girl Nation to reclaim a weapon capable of killing even immortals. And to escape Hell? Well, he’ll need to pull off the greatest coup the Abyss has seen since the Morning Star took on Heaven. If he fails, not only will the King of Pandæmonium roast his soul for eternity, but his friends will be left to the mercies of the Savage Prophet and the Morrigan, goddess of death.

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  ONE:

  Wake-up Call

  I blinked open a bleary eye, then shook my head, fighting clear of the hazy fog lingering inside my skull. What in the hell happened? Where am I?

  I hunched forward, forearms resting on my thighs, and heaved onto the floor—a stream of rancid black bile, like a combination of hot tar and dirty gasoline, splattered across dull gray stone. I reached down and found the familiar shape of a toilet beneath me. I gripped the bowl, steadying myself just in time for another round of violent vomiting, which ripped past my esophagus, through my nose and mouth, before finally splashing over my black boots, stained with chalky, gray dust.

  For a long beat, I remained doubled over, staring at the pitted floor, fighting to get my breathing under control.

  Slowly, the urge to vomit passed, and I slumped back against the porcelain tank, lazily wiping a stream of bile-laced spittle from my nose and mouth. Gross. Though, believe it or not, the sharp stench of bile was actually less disgusting than the smell loitering in the air like a gang of scented street thugs looking to mug my nose: equal parts sulfur, old BO, and literal shit. I pressed my lone eye closed, took a hitching inhale, then ran a hand through sweat-drenched hair, which fell well past my ears in a crazy tangle.

  Strange. The hair, I mean.

  I hadn’t sported long hair since before my Marine Corps days. I shook my head, sweat-matted locks swaying back and forth, slapping at my neck and cheeks.

  Damn, that was trippy.

  A wave of dizziness socked me right in the gut, and I promptly ceased moving. It was the heat—and holy shit, let me tell you, it was hot. The bathroom felt like the inside of an oven. An oven nestled away in a volcano on the surface of the friggin’ sun. Seriously, it had to be pushing 110, easy. Finally, I opened my eye and stole a look around. I was in a cheap bathroom with cement walls, a chipped sink, and a crude shower, but no windows or mirror. The metal fixtures were all tarnished and badly pitted, and a lot of very questionable stains in various hues of mud brown and noxious yellow coated just about everything.

  It looked like someone had set off a stick of dynamite inside a porta-John.

  Aside from the actual shit stains, there was also an obscene amount of graffiti tattooing the gray walls.

  Crudely drawn schlongs and ginormous boobs. Lots of very creative curse words, a few of which I committed to memory for future use—you never know when the phrase butterface-gutter-turd is gonna come in handy. Plus, some odd lines proclaiming things like “HAIL ASMODEUS OR DROWN IN BLOOD,” followed by an equally eloquent rebuttal: “Asmodeus is a butterface-gutter-turd—Long. Live. The Succubus Queen!” Another writer added, “For the best B.J. in Pandæmonium call the Succubus Queen at 1-666-EAT-A-DICK.”

  Cute. Really.

  More graffiti covered the floor around me. But this was different from the crude scrawling on the walls.

  Someone had inscribed a golden circle that took up most of the bathroom floor—looked like a containment ritual, complete with a whole host of complex sigils, detailed Hebraic text, and ancient runes. A few I recognized as demonic containment wards, straight from the Clavicula Salomonis Regis, and a couple more had to do with exorcisms. Most were a mystery, however. I know a thing or two about summoning circles and containment seals, but this thing was leagues beyond my skill set.

  At best, my ritual-craft was workman-like, which is to say functional, but only just.

  Another wave of nausea rolled through me and I hunched back in on myself, groping at my stomach. I noticed for the first time, I was shirtless. Even stranger still, I felt abs beneath my sweat-slick fingers. Abs, dammit. I’ve never been fat, exactly—my metabolism burns too fast for that—but I’ve always been more of a keg man than a six-pack man in the ol’ belly department. Not anymore. I rubbed one palm over clammy skin, feeling the tight muscles below. I sat up with a grimace and glanced down.

  Yep, abs. And they weren’t the only difference. Somehow, I’d acquired a pair of meaty pecs and jacked arms, which belonged on a man a third my age. And then there were the tattoos.

  Jagged black symbols—Haitian Voodoo markings—decorated my shoulders and chest. Those, I recalled, were compliments of my pal Pa Beauvoir, the Voodoo shitheel who’d carved me up before scooping out my left eye with a melon baller. But those tats had since been augmented with colorful tribal swirls, pulsing neon glyphs, and otherworldly seals of power. My right arm, from shoulder to wrist, was a sleeve of colorful skin art, the symbols unknown to me and burnin
g with a soft golden light.

  There was power in that light, a sort of earthy life that I’d never felt before, not in all my days as a mage and Fix-It man.

  What in the nine hells had happened to me? How had I gotten here?

  My time in Haiti was still vivid and fresh—unfortunate, since I’d rather forget most of that shitshow. After Haiti, I vaguely recalled paying Lady Fate a visit before storming off to some weird shrine in Thailand. Images of stone creatures rampaging through the night flashed in my aching noggin, then blew away like dust in the wind the moment I focused on ’em. I pushed harder, straining to remember. To churn up some fragment that might tell me how I’d gotten here. Gradually, a muddy picture of Ong, the Fourth Seal bearer, and the great Naga King, took shape in my head:

  First, a glimpse of his towering serpentine body, his scales—polished onyx, blood-red ruby, shimmering gold and copper—gleaming under the light of a purple moon …

  Then, his many heads, each the size of a minivan, swaying and bobbing to some unheard rhythm. Teeth snapping at me as I soared through the air, astride a bulky creature with massive wings …

  Finally, a flash of a dark, spike-lined gullet, swallowing me, drawing me down into Ong’s belly—except I wasn’t bound for his belly. I was after his heart …

  My head throbbed with the memories, and though I could sorta piece together that battle in a half-assed fashion, everything felt jumbled. Distorted. Every picture, every recollection, riddled with holes before blurring and bleeding together on the edges. I pressed my palms into my temples, arms shaking, trying to pull any other memory from the train wreck of my brain. But nothing came. After Ong … Well, everything went black. A yawning cavern in my mind between that last horrific image and this shitty bathroom.

  Dammit.

  I opened my eye and stood. Time to get this show on the road.

  For a moment, I just stood there, swaying listlessly as blood rushed to my head and my legs tingled—asleep from sitting so long on the crapper. What I needed was a gulp of fresh air and a breeze to dispel the awful heat beating down on me like a hammer.

  After that?

  After that, I could figure out where I was. Might be, I could piece more of this nightmare together and come up with a proper game plan. I took a few uncertain steps, cautiously testing my legs. Satisfied that they’d hold me up, I headed for the door, only to smash face-first into … nothing. I stumbled back as a wall of golden light flared around me in a full circle, emanating from the containment ward so painstakingly scrawled on the floor.

  The hell?

  I inched forward, pressing my fingers against the golden wall of light, feeling the steady thrum of arcane power. Not Vis, not exactly. But not Nox, either. Something else. Something different. New. The earthy power thrumming through the fancy tattoos along my right arm resonated with the golden light like one kindred soul recognizing another.

  A rusted doorknob rattled, and I shuffled back until my calves bumped against the toilet.

  The steel door swung inward, admitting a dumpy bespectacled man in his mid-forties with terrible posture and a pooching potbelly. He was mostly bald and had a creepy red molester ’stache above too-thin lips; he sported thick denim pants, a plaid button up, and a beige Carhartt jacket despite the god-awful heat. The newcomer stared at me, his brow furrowed, anger and hate smoldering in his muddy gaze. Despite his mundane appearance, he looked like the kind of guy you crossed the street to avoid. A weirdo. The serial killer kind.

  After a long moment of deep scrutiny, Molester ’Stache nodded his egg-shaped head, wrinkled his nose, and let the door swing shut with a soft whoosh. “You remember who you are yet?” he asked, voice a dull monotone—almost bored, like we’d done this dance before.

  “Yeah, asshole, I know who the hell I am. How’s about you tell me who you are.”

  “Say it,” he said, ignoring my demand. “Your name, I mean. I want you to say it.”

  I hesitated. What game was this psycho playing? “Yancy Lazarus,” I finally replied.

  “Lazarus,” he said with a short, satisfied nod. “Good. That’s good. And how much do you remember?” he asked. “Do you remember where you are or how you got here? Do you remember Asmodeus or the assassinations?” His eyes narrowed into thin suspicious slits. “Anything after Ong?”

  I paused, on the verge of saying something vaguely threatening like how’s about you tell me what’s going on before I set you on fire, but instead, I offered an inarticulate, “Uh, what?”

  He frowned and rubbed his hands together—a nervous tic maybe. He looked like he wanted to say something more, but froze instead, coming to an unnatural stillness as he canted his head to one side, listening.

  “Everything alright, pal?” I asked, folding my too-big arms across my too-big chest. All these newfangled muscles were definitely gonna take some getting used to.

  “Quiet.” He held up a hand as though to physically stop me from speaking, then squatted down, fingers tracing over the floor. He caressed the stone with an odd, familiar fondness, and a flash of worry sprinted across his plain face before vanishing, replaced by cool neutrality. “No time,” he mumbled more to himself than to me. “They’re coming. Near now. Closing in. They’ve got the scent. We need to go.”

  He scooted forward and dropped to a knee near the golden circle scrawled on the floor. Carefully, meticulously, he smudged a blocky line of Hebrew script running along the top of the containment circle—the golden wall wavered, danced, flickered, then died with a pop as the pent-up energy fizzled and dispersed into the drab concrete walls.

  Before the man could fully stand, I charged him, throwing my body into his hunched form with every bit of strength I could muster. I’m suspicious by nature, and waking up in a disgusting bathroom, lacking a memory, with a mustached weirdo, sends up all kinds of red flags. Since I’m a big fan of not having my organs harvested, I figured a good ask-questions-later policy was the right approach here. My shoulder slammed into his face, a sledgehammer blow that should’ve laid him out right and proper. But no. Instead, my body met unyielding flesh as hard as old cinder blocks.

  The guy didn’t even rock back on his heels.

  I, on the other hand, reeled away like I’d just run headlong into a brick wall, and promptly dropped onto my ass with a thump.

  The balding man stood, eyes narrowed, the slight frown lingering on his lips. “Don’t do that again,” he said evenly. “We don’t have time for any nonsense. Name’s Levi Adams. I’m here to help.” He offered me an awkward, half-hearted smile and extended a nubby-fingered hand. I regarded the limb with supreme suspicion. I wasn’t sure what this creeper’s deal was, but I’d bet my left arm he wasn’t some regular ol’ Rube. No average joe could take a hit like that unfazed.

  Still, after a moment’s hesitation, I accepted his hand and allowed him to pull me back to my feet.

  He didn’t seem to be actively trying to kill me, after all, and you know what they say: any port in a storm.

  “Here’s the deal,” Levi said, pinning me in place with a stare harsh enough to peel paint. “There are creatures headed this way. They intend to capture you. That or kill you. I’m here to see that doesn’t happen. So stay close, keep your mouth shut, and do what I say. If you can follow those rules”—he paused, placing one hand against the stone wall—“well, I think we’ll be alright.” The words weren’t delivered with any particular malice or heat. No cockiness or snark. They were the words of a construction foreman calmly explaining the safety procedures for a work site.

  He turned and slipped through the door, leaving me to follow if I wanted more answers.

  Begrudgingly, I trailed after him because I did want more answers. A metric ass load of ’em.

  The filthy bathroom connected to an equally run-down hotel room illuminated by a single uncovered light bulb in the ceiling. The floors were pitted stone without carpet, and the walls featured stained and bubbled 1950s’ floral wallpaper. A full bed—yellow, heavily staine
d, and sans sheets or bed linens, which looked like it belonged in a Goodwill dumpster—dominated the center of the room. There was a monstrously old television, big and boxy, with a formidable set of bent bunny ears perched on top. There were no pictures. No phone. No hum of air-conditioning. No minibar or fridge.

  I’ve been in some world-class dumps, but this one took the cake. I mean, even in the most down-and-out places, the staff usually tried to polish things a little. But this one? Nope. This turd of a room had been left to fester in the bowl for a good long while.

  A stained black T-shirt, my ever-familiar black leather jacket, and my shoulder holster, complete with monster-killing pistol, lay on the bed. Since I didn’t feel like running around topless, even if I did have some nifty new muscles to showcase, I took a minute and slipped the shirt on, followed by the holster. I hesitated at the jacket—the thought of wearing leather in this heat was sickening—but finally pulled it on, too. I’d rather be hot than dead, and my specialty jacket might keep my alive if things went sideways.

  And considering the current situation, it was really more a matter of when than if.

  Next, I inspected my black steel hand cannon, glad to have its comforting weight in my hand. I raised an eyebrow in surprise as I ran an eye along the barrel, and traced my thumb along a new series of swirls and runic markings etched into the metal. Someone had upgraded my piece, and though I wasn’t sure what purpose these new markings served, I could feel the thrum of potent power buzzing up through my fingertips.

  A quick brass check revealed the bad boy was loaded, which was groovy as all get out, but unfortunately there were no more rounds loitering in my pockets.

  Six shots.

  Well, you work with what you’ve got. Into the holster it went.

  Levi stopped at the front door, palm once more pressed against the wall as if he were feeling for something. Listening. “We need to be quick,” he said over his shoulder, voice carrying a thread of barely suppressed urgency. “We’re going to exit and hang left. Keep your head down. Don’t talk. Don’t look behind you—wouldn’t want someone to spot you before we get to the safe house.” His nostrils flared a bit and he absently pushed his glasses back up to the bridge of his nose. “Understand?”