The Green Lama: Scions (The Green Lama Legacy Book 1) (15 page)

Unmoved, Jethro tossed Desdemona’s arm to the ground. There was a fire inside him, smoldering through his chest. For all the serenity the Buddha’s teachings had given him, for all the techniques he had learned to overcome the poisonous emotions, he could never truly escape the anger that boiled inside, that so often threatened to consume him. He did his best not to hold on to it, to let it go like smoke to the wind, but now he found himself grasping at the coal, letting it burn. He glanced back at Frankie’s limp form. If this was the price for playing the game of gods, then he was done. Standing over Desdemona’s blackened body, he picked up a fallen brick and raised it over his head. He could end it now, just one little—

“Do it.”

Jethro looked over to Betty, her normally beautiful visage twisted with deadly intent. “They killed Frankie,” she said.

He stared at the brick as if he were seeing it for the first time and let it fall from his hand.
Om! Tare Tuttare Ture Svaha!
What had he almost done? “We have to be better than that.”

“Some people would disagree.”

“And they would be wrong,” he said sharply.

At the edge of his hearing, he heard several pops of gunfire quickly followed by the rush of water. It seemed like Jean had been busy.

Jethro lifted Betty off the floor. “How long can you hold your breath, Miss Dale?”

“What are you—?” she followed Jethro’s gaze and sighed at the sight of the rushing water. “Oh, Jesus. About time you took those radioactive salts, Green Lama?”

“For once, Miss Dale, I will have to agree with you.” He uncorked the vial and swallowed the contents in one quick swig.

“What’s that prayer you always say? Um, many patties?”

“Om! Ma-ni Pad-me Hum”
Dumont replied softly. “It means ’Hail the Jewel of the Lotus Flower.’”

“Yeah… Well, say a couple for me.” She grabbed Jethro’s hand, took a deep breath and closed her eyes.

• • •

Ken blindly tumbled end over end, hitting against walls and piping. There were brief moments when he broke through the water’s surface only to fall back down. The shadowed forms of Gary, Evangl, Jean, and Caraway washed past and he thought he could see five others taken up by the deluge, but that could have been his imagination. Minutes later, he hit a fork in the tunnel, the impact knocking what little air he had left out of his lungs.

“Gary! Gary!” He heard Evangl scream before the current overtook her and the last bit of hope drained out of him. If Evangl could lose Gary, what hope did Ken have? What hope did any of them have? He futilely clawed at the wall before another wave dragged him down. Perhaps this was for the best, he thought, closing his eyes. At least this way he wouldn’t have to pretend anymore.

• • •

Betty climbed out on her hands and knees, coughing up water in violent fits. This was a nightmare, the worst kind of trauma she had endured in all her years. Give her a legion of the living dead or a rampaging ape, anything besides the horrors she had seen today. In every case the monsters she had faced in the past had turned out to be men in masks, scientists bent on some kind of world domination. But the creatures she had seen today were real, brought up from the depths of Hell to tear through everything she once believed incontrovertible.

“Miss Dale, are you all right?” Jethro Dumont, the Green Lama, said softly. They had washed up outside a drainpipe at the tip of the island, the silhouette of the
Bartlett just
within view. How oddly poetic.

“What the hell was that?” she gasped.

“Ne-tso-hbum!” Dumont shouted, running over to an unconscious redhead who had washed up nearby. Sliding to his knees, Dumont carefully cradled the woman in his arms, brushing the fiery strands of her hair off her face. A deep purple five-finger bruise stretched across her neck, her face deathly pale.

Dumont lightly placed a hand on the woman’s chest and held his ear near her mouth until he heard her breathing. Sighing in relief, Dumont closed his eyes and whispered a silent prayer.

“Who is that?” Betty recognized the woman but she couldn’t remember from where.

“The Keystone…” A thousand voices said, growled, screamed, shrieked as one.

Dumont’s face turned grim, anger frothing beneath.

Betty looked behind them. “Oh God,” she whispered, shirking at the black eyes staring back. “Is that Lieutenant Caraway?”

“The Keystone is beautiful, isn’t she?” the creatures inside Caraway asked. “We know how you feel for her, though you try to hide it. You are intertwined, from the beginning to the end. She is your equal, your balance; upon her all worlds pivot. It is why we must drain the blood from her veins, why we must rip the heart from her chest, so that the future may be ours.”

“Take care of her,” Dumont instructed as he carefully shifted the woman’s over to Betty’s waiting arms. “As far as you’re concerned, she’s the most important woman in the world.”

“Ah, so no pressure.”

Dumont slowly stood, his hands curled into fists. Betty could just make out a subtle jade glow emanating from his veins, the air around him crackling with electricity.

“You thought us defeated, Dumont?” Caraway laughed, clawing at the side of his face. A thin trail of blood ran down his neck, soaking into the dirty white of his collar. “As we had the others, so too do we have him. We will destroy his body bit by bit and there is nothing you can do. He is ours, bathed in the eternal.”

Dumont shook his head. “Not John,” he snarled. “I don’t care what you are, I don’t care what you want, but I will not let you take him.”

“And how will you stop us?” Caraway’s wolfish smile broadened as they paced around one another. “A brick to the head?”

Dumont scowled.

“We know what you are, we see the darkness inside you, that which you try so hard to fight.” It drew a bloody triangle within a circle on its forehead. “We see you, Green Lama.”

“And I see you…
Om! Ma-ni Pad-me Hum
!”
Dumont whispered, hinting at the power behind his words.

“Prayer will not help you. No god will save you. We are beyond death! Beyond this realm and all realms!” the creatures inside Caraway shouted as black-laced tears began spilling down his face, mixing with blood. “Do not confuse this form with fragility. We have survived aeons, kings and conquerors. You are nothing. We were, we are, and we shall be. Not in the spaces you know, but between them. We walk serene and primal, undimensioned and unseen. After millennia, our time has come again. The stars shall align and our rule will last until the sky goes dark. This is Midnight, Green Lama! The end of your era.”

“Salutation to the Buddha. In the language of the gods and of the serpent deities, in the language of the
nagas
and of human…” the Green Lama’s voice grew louder with each word until it seemed to shake the walls of the world. His hands began to glow brighter, his eyes steamed with energy. “In all languages that exist, I proclaim the Holy Dharma. …
Om Vajra-sattva
!”
the Green Lama shouted, as he rushed forward, his fists glowing green.
“Om! Ma-ni Pad-me Hum Hri! Svaha
!”

The Green Lama pressed his hands to Caraway’s temples and the world exploded with emerald light. As Betty shielded her eyes she saw the
Bartlett
erupt in flames, shining like a beacon in the dark.

• • •

Jethro could feel the creatures inside Caraway’s mind, hundreds, thousands, perhaps even millions of them, older than the Earth, perhaps older than time. They had no form, no eyes, they were only black, an unending sea of shadow. They showed him flashes of the horror aboard the
Bartlett,
the madness, the violence, and the death. He heard the voices of the dead, screaming for release. He saw Desdemona and Wilfred, imprisoned within their own bodies, denied the pardon of death. And somewhere, at the edge of his perception, Jethro saw a walled city grow around him, smaller on the outside, drowned in the impenetrable crush of the ocean. The creatures sang to him, called to him. They knew his name, all his names, the ones he had been given and the secret names that sat in the center of his being. They knew him and they saw him. They cried for the Jade Tablet and the gods it would deliver them.

So, he gave it to them and set fire to the dark.

• • •

The viridescent inferno tore through Wilfred’s wilted veins, as it did Desdemona and Caraway, burning away the darkness. A million screams rang in Wilfred’s mind as the Other was set aflame, its claw-like grasp on his mind torn away. Pain mixed with pleasure as his body once again became his own. He felt every bullet hole, every burn, and every shattered bone. It was exquisite and terrible, blissful and agonizing all at once. His eyes turned black to grey to white and he could see the stars overhead, moving together but not yet aligned. He was floating, the salt water lapping over his body as he was tugged out to sea. Right back where he started, with Joshua and poor ol’ Drew. The leather corners of his mouth tugged achingly into a smile. For this moment, he was alive.

A light appeared in the distance, like a tunnel through the sky, warming, drawing him in. Wilfred closed his eyes and let the tide pull him down. Finally, he was free.

• • •

“Evangl?” Gary shouted, desperately searching through the darkness, ignoring the stinging in his chest. The torrent had thrown him onto a grated runoff somewhere beneath the city, the remnants of the flood still trickling beneath his feet. His heart rattled in his throat, while his head swam with panic. He could still feel her hand slipping from his, still hear the sound of her screams as she was washed away. He couldn’t lose her, not now, not when he had lost so much. “Evangl?!”

The toe of Gary’s shoe snagged on the edge of the grate and he fell forward, scraping his palms on the cement ground. He was fumbling his way to his hands and knees when he found himself staring into the lifeless gaze of a longshoreman, head twisted all the way round. Gary inched away when he saw something glint in the corner of his eye. Digging through the sewer scum, he lifted up Evangl’s gun and felt the clouds descend.

“Gary? Mr. Brown, is that you?” Ken Clayton stumbled out from the shadows, a large welt distorting his movie star looks. He looked pallid in the gloom, his distant gaze hinting at a shock of survival.

“Have you seen Evangl?” Gary asked in a hollow tone.

Ken shook his head. “Jean?” Then, off Gary’s expression, “I’m sure they’re fine, maybe they just got—”

For a brief moment the sewers—maybe even the whole world—were filled with a blinding green light, the air coursing with electricity. Gary instinctively covered his eyes, hearing, in the distance, like a whisper in a storm:
“Om! Ma-ni Pad-me Hum
!”
His waterlogged suit began to steam as the light shone hotter when there was a snap, followed by the rush of wind, as if the light was suddenly being retracted to its source.

“Jesus, what was—?” Ken sputtered, massaging his eyes.

“Rrr…”

They spun around to find the scalded remains of a woman crawl toward them. One of her arms had been ripped off, while the twin bones of her remaining forearm protruded out like blades. A few strands of her hair remained, bits of her skull visible beneath blackened chunks of skin. Blood dripped from her mouth, her disfigured face stained with inky tears. Gary knew who it was instantly.

He walked over, crouched down and calmly asked. “Where is she?”

“Rrr…Waaan…”

“I asked you a question,” he said, pressing Evangl’s gun to the woman’s head. “Where. Is. My. Wife?”

“I… waan…”

“Tell me,” Gary begged, his eyes glistening. He shoved the barrel harder into her skull. The woman gave little resistance, almost as if she was leaning into the gun. He pulled back the hammer and grasped at the coal. “Tell me!!!”

“Gary. Don’t.”

Gary looked up to see Evangl standing before him. She was soaked, covered in filth and cradling her right wrist, but even now, she looked like she was glowing. The relief Gary felt failed to calm him, muted by the fire that raged inside him.

“Why not?!” he sobbed through his teeth. “After what she did? What they all did?!”

Evangl knelt down beside him and placed a consoling hand on his. “She has already suffered, don’t make it worse.”

Gary’s lower lip trembled. “She deserves to suffer—!”

Evangl gave him that old loving, reproachful look. “Sweetheart,” she said softly. “She didn’t want this any more than you.”

“Mm—Mama?”

Gary looked down and saw Desdemona for the first time. To survive a nightmare only to suffer a fate as terrible as this… The gun dropped from his hand as tears began to pour down his cheeks.

“I wan my—” Desdemona whimpered, a little girl lost. “I wan—I wan mah mama…”

“I know…” He took Desdemona into his arms and waited with her until it was over. “I know…”

• • •

Jean Farrell woke to the smell of smoke and New York Harbor. A cold wind whipped past; embers that looked like stars drifted by. Her eyes worked to focus on the man holding her. “Jethro?” she choked, her neck excruciatingly sore. “Why are we on a beach?”