The Green Lama: Scions (The Green Lama Legacy Book 1) (14 page)

“Lieutenant, is everything all right?” he called ahead, his voice echoing in the damp space. When the lieutenant didn’t respond Gary took a half step toward him and felt the air chill around them. “Lieutenant?”

“Keystone…” he replied, his voice watery, his face hidden from view.

“What did he say?” Jean whispered, gun in hand.

Gary shook his head. “Something about a keystone.”

Jean’s mouth fell open. “I’ve heard that before…”

“John?” Gary suddenly felt as if everything had gone right up shit’s creek and here he was, knee deep in the swirling tide. “You… You okay?”

“Don’t you hear us?” the lieutenant asked surreptitiously as he slowly walked toward them, his face hidden in shadow. “Don’t you hear us calling for you?”

Gary swallowed the lump in his throat. “Calling for who?” he asked as evenly as he could manage.

Caraway rushed forward and grabbed Jean by the throat, his eyes black. “The Keystone…”

• • •

Betty cupped her hand over her face as she attempted to find another way to breathe without using her mouth or nose. Ahead of her Frankie sloshed through the filth with uninhibited resolve. It was disconcerting watching him fight his way through the sewers. He wasn’t masked, cowled, or caped, nor was he seemingly defined by some childhood trauma or strange journey to a distant land. He was just a good man driven not by some great cause for justice or the law, but by simple human decency. And yet, it felt strange. Costumed vigilantes had become so normal, so expected, it felt as if the world had turned into a cheaply written dime novel, conjured up in stark blacks and whites, when it was only full of grey.

As they approached a lighted turn in the sewers Frankie turned to her and pressed a finger to his lips. “There’s someone up ahead,” he said under his breath.

Betty strained her ears and thought she heard whimpering, the scent of ash noticeable beneath the stink. “Are you sure?”

Frankie nodded silently and led her forward. Betty felt something grow cold inside her, as if her heart had suddenly become numb. She was far from a superstitious person, she couldn’t even remember the last time she had been to church, let alone prayed to God. The world was a gritty and harsh place, where the only fate you made was your own. But here, deep below the dirt covered streets of New York, she felt as if she were approaching the divine. Not the Glory that inspired cathedrals and illuminations, but something older, darker, and other. Men dressed up in capes and cowls tried to divine good and evil, and here was Betty Dale, ankle deep in shit, approaching the latter.

They turned the corner to find a small chamber partially buried under smoldering brick and metal. The walls were cracked open, exposing the manmade skeleton of the city while dim light banded through the ash and smoke. An expanding pool of black and crimson leaked out from beneath the rubble. The smell of burned flesh filled the air.

“Looks like we just missed the party,” she said cynically when something moved beneath the rubble. She instinctually moved for her gun hidden in her purse when that all too familiar face appeared from the debris. “Dumont…” she breathed.

Broken bits of brick tumbled off him as he climbed free, seemingly unharmed. The front of his shirt was burnt off, his right sleeve hanging by a thread off his cuff, reminding Betty of those tawdry romance pulp magazines they sold on newsstands. His fists were clenched, his back arched. Even his eyes seemed to glow. But it was his face that took Betty back. For a moment, Dumont didn’t look like the suave, overly confident boy she had met at the Cafe Society last night.

He looked like a god.

“It took me so long to get in touch with you, Mr. Dumont, it figures I’d find you down here,” she said, sounding braver than she felt.

Dumont’s shoulders instantly slumped forward as his face relaxed. “Miss Dale, you seem to have found me in a bit of a compromising position,” he said with an embarrassed smile as he pulled the scorched ends of his shirt together.

“It seems I have.” Betty carefully footed her way through the rubble. “Though I am keen to know how you survived, seeing as you’re at the center of this mess.”

Dumont subtly arched an eyebrow. “I’m afraid that would take some time to explain.”

“Mr. Dumont,” she said, quietly handing him the vial of radioactive salts.

He wrapped his fingers around the vial and met her gaze, the facade once again falling away. “Well, I suppose this will make for a very interesting article, won’t it, Miss Dale?”

A crooked smile tugged at the corner of her lips. “I suppose it will.”

“Do we need to talk about this?”

“I suppose we do, but I doubt it’s the time.”

Jethro nodded, slipping the vial into his pocket. He looked over at Frankie sifting through the rubble. “Who’s your friend?”

• • •

“Frankie Annor, Jr.,” Frankie replied, wiping his hands clean on his pants before shaking Dumont’s. “Frankie to my friends. You’re Jethro Dumont.”

“At times,” Betty answered for him. “You see, Frankie, despite his pedigree and international notoriety, Mr. Dumont, unlike you, likes to keep to the shadows and who knows how many aliases.”

“Miss Dale…” Dumont said firmly, his voice taking on an unnatural resonance. “We should really—”

Betty ignored the fear bubbling up in her gut and powered forward. The Green Lama never killed, so why would he start now? “You’re absolutely right, Jethro—I can call you Jethro, can’t I, seeing as we know one another so well now? Let’s get to business.” Betty fished her notepad and pen out of her purse. “Jethro, why don’t you tell us what happened here?”

A cryptic smile and knowing gaze shadowed Dumont’s face. “Miss Dale, I’ve seen things you wouldn’t believe.”

Betty reciprocated with an arched eyebrow and a sly grin of her own. “Try me.” Before Dumont could respond, something moved in the rubble. They spun around to the sound and Betty’s teeth began to chatter uncontrollably. “What was that?” she breathed.

Dumont stepped in front of them, softly chanting a prayer under his breath, once again holding the form of the Green Lama. It was such a subtle transformation, a move of his shoulder, the height of his head, the holding of his chest, and Dumont became something larger than himself But his walk, his stride, never changed, as if he couldn’t alter who he fundamentally was; it was his only tell.

She could see something black and red glisten beneath the wreckage, worming its way into the light. A primal part of her mind began to thrash in terror; her heart raced and her lungs seized up. She unconsciously moved behind Frankie and grabbed at his sleeve. “Dumont, what the hell is that?” she hissed, her voice on the edge of panic.

But Dumont kept praying as the creature slid out from the rubble while Betty felt her sanity quickly slip away. It had been a boy once, but what was in front them now was beyond horror. Its skin hung off its shattered body in long, burned strips; its exposed muscles caked in dirt and debris, cracked white bones punching through to the surface. The back of its skull was caved in, red and grey bits of brain leaking out in syrupy clumps. Blood spilled out of its mouth, its jaw hanging loosely from two thin ligaments. It was its eyes, however, that made Betty scream. Inky tears poured out from obsidian globes, down its cheeks in torrents.

Betty fell back against the wall, screaming, her fingernails snapping against the bricks as she clawed for a way out.

“Oh no… Wilfred,” Frankie moaned, rushing forward. “Oh, son, I’m so sorry… I’m so—”

“Stay away from him,” Dumont commanded, holding Frankie back.

The creature’s knees buckled and it rag-dolled to the ground, black ichor pooling around its shattered frame as it struggled to regain its footing.

“That’s Wilfred!” Frankie professed. “He’s just a boy! Please, we have to help him.”

Dumont’s face fell, an expression that revealed the exhaustion and weight behind those blue-grey eyes. “Not anymore.”

Wilfred’s black eyes struggled to stay open, his lids falling to half-mast. He propped himself on one bleeding elbow and reached for Frankie like a desiccated man begging for water in the desert. A low growl emanated from his throat, less a word than it was a roll of a letter. “Rrrr…”

“How the hell is he still alive?” Betty asked hoarsely chucking any sense of propriety to the wind.

“Please, let me go to him,” Frankie begged.

“Dumont, answer my question!” Betty shouted through her teeth. “The back of his head is blown clean off and he’s still breathing! That’s not possible! Green Lama! Answer me! “

“He’s no longer human,” Dumont admitted quietly as if the fault were his alone to bear.

Betty’s mouth opened and closed several times as she tried to comprehend what Dumont had said. “How can he no longer be human?”

“He’s been… possessed,” Dumont whispered painfully, the last word dropping like a brick.

Frankie broke free of Dumont’s grasp and fell alongside the boy. “Wilfred…?” He touched a hand to the boy’s face as if he were his own, ignoring the gore dripping off him. “Wilfred, talk to me, son…”

The boy shifted in Frankie’s arms, bits of brain dropping out from the cavity in the back of his skull. His eyes glistened and for a moment, the black drained away, revealing white orbs and the dilated pupils of an injured child. “Rrrrrr….”

“It’ll be okay.” Frankie sobbed. “It’ll be—”

“Rrrun…”

“Mr. Annor,” Dumont said, touching Frankie’s shoulder.

“I’m not leaving him,” Frankie said firmly, shrugging off Dumont’s hand. “I helped him once, I’m going to help him again. You understand me, Mr. Dumont? Whoever— whatever—did this to him, I’m not going to let them hurt him anymore.”

Dumont gave him a subtle nod, but refused to leave the man’s side. The air suddenly grew colder. Betty’s heart hammered in her chest and drummed in her ears. Her stomach began to twist, that old familiar feeling that everything was about to go very wrong, very soon. She began inching toward the exit, pressing her back against the wall in hopes of vanishing into it.

“Pleeeease…. Run!!!” Wilfred shrieked, his eyes wide as he grabbed at Frankie’s coat. “It’s… It’s too… Too…”

Dumont clenched his jaw. “It’s what?”

Wilfred turned to Dumont, a mad smile stretching across his face as his eyes clouded black. “It’s too late!” In a red blur of motion, Wilfred backhanded Dumont away, seized Frankie’s head and twisted, violently snapping the dockworker’s vertebrae in two. “She is ours! The Keystone is ours!”

In a rush of panic, Betty stumbled toward the exit when a bloody hand ripped through the debris and latched onto her ankle. She gazed down in horror as the broken and charred remains of a woman crawled out from the wreckage, the flesh torn from her face, her eyes bleeding black.

All Betty could do was scream.

• • •

Evangl fought to aim her pistol at Caraway’s head, her fingers rattling. “Let her go, John! Don’t think for one second I won’t shoot you!”

Caraway turned to her, a mad smile stretching across his face, his black eyes glistening. “It’s too late!” he laughed in a hundred voices all at once. He lifted Jean off the floor, her face a deep red. “She is ours! The Keystone is ours!”

Gary jumped on Caraway’s back, wrapping his arms around the lieutenant’s neck in a chokehold.

“Baby, I can’t get a clean shot!”

“He’s one of us!” Gary clamored as Caraway twisted wildly.

Ken ran to help when Caraway’s fist connected with his jaw, tossing him across the shaft. With his free hand, Caraway grabbed Evangl’s wrist and screwed it in the wrong direction. Evangl screamed as her bones shattered. Her finger squeezed down on the trigger, sending the bullet millimeters past Caraway’s face and slicing off the top of Gary’s hair.

“You think you can defeat us?! There is no shelter! There is only the darkness! There is only us!” Caraway shrieked as he slammed Gary against the wall. There was an audible crack and Gary cried out in pain as he slipped off, holding a hand over his right side. “We are eternal! We are the Old Ones!”

Evangl rushed over to Gary, her fractured wrist tucked under her arm.

“Hey… Old One,” Jean said through choked breaths, her gun aimed toward the ceiling.

Ken looked to where her gun was aimed. “Oh, shit.”

“Jean…” Evangl said with a cautionary tone as she intuitively hooked her good arm with Gary’s.

A smile grew from Jean’s purple lips as she fired off two shots. “Hope you know… how to… swim.”

Metal screamed as the overhead pipe cracked open and water came rushing down.

Chapter 8

SUBMERGENCE

THE LIFE FADED from Frankie’s eyes as Betty’s screams filled the ruins. Wilfred whipped around, his bloody fingers reaching for Jethro’s throat. Jethro kicked him away brain splattering into the air. He ran over to Betty, wrenched her leg free of Desdemona’s grip, and tore the possessed woman’s arm from its socket. Desdemona screamed, her lipless mouth splitting open in agony. Betty scrambled away and cowered in the corner, cradling her leg.

“You think you can defeat us?! There is no shelter! There is only us!” Wilfred and Desdemona shrieked together. “There is only the darkness! We are eternal! We are the Old Ones!”