The Green Lama: Crimson Circle (25 page)

“Oh! You met our Little Metty. Wonderful!” Murdoch said with a chuckle. “Yeah, Metty’s been here for about three years or so. Cat’s got a few screws loose, but he’s harmless. Just don’t ask him what he thinks of the Bolsheviks; he’ll never shut up. But you’re not here to talk about our peanut-sized Russian, are you?”

Valco shook his head and handed Murdoch his folder. “I’ve been doing some experiments with the Delta Liquid Rays recently, after hours mostly—whenever that is—and I
believe
I’ve made a breakthrough.”

Murdoch began leafing through Valco’s report. Here too the words began to blur together, so instead he mimed reading, flipping through the pages at regular intervals. He twirled his forefinger to urge Valco to continue.

“Well, the main problem, it seems, based on the notes you’ve given me on the previous tests, the Substance, for all its miraculous properties, is inherently unstable. Whatever the Substance is, it doesn’t play by the rules, so to speak. The fact that there is no discernable molecular structure is proof of that. That’s why your other tests failed; there was nothing for the chemicals to really latch on to,” he said excitedly.

“No molecules to bond with, you’re saying?”

“Exactly! But, the Delta Liquid Rays stabilize the Substance.”

Murdoch slowly closed the folder, laced his fingers together and looked up at Valco.

“I radiated the Substance with Delta Liquid Rays and the reaction was—Well, the reaction was instantaneous. I’ve never seen anything like it. One moment it was one thing and then the next… It was something else.”

Murdoch furrowed his brow. Perhaps it was the exhaustion, but he was having trouble following what Valco was trying to say. “What do you mean?”

Valco struggled unsuccessfully to fight back the smile of a child trying to hide a secret, grinning ear-to-ear. He reached into his coat pocket and retrieved a small glass vial and placed it carefully on the desk. It was the Substance, there was no doubt in Murdoch’s mind—he could see it move inside the vial—but the obsidian color had been leached away, replaced by a vibrant, phosphorescent green. Murdoch delicately lifted up the vial, his hands shaking. He felt his throat clenched. “How is this possible?”

Valco shook his head. “Wish I could say. There’s no way the two should be even able to bond…”

“Because, chemically speaking, the Substance doesn’t exist,” Murdoch reminded him.

“Right. Suffice to say, they bonded in a way that—again,
chemically speaking
—shouldn’t be possible, it was as if they became one. It’s like watching Mozart’s Symphony come alive. I ran some tests on it, the amount of energy it outputs is off the charts; a single droplet could probably run this facility for weeks. A vial like that could probably power New York for a year.”

“Energy,” Murdoch whispered in fascination. How strange that they had never considered that. He turned over the vial and watched the Substance ooze down.

“What are the next steps?” Murdoch heard Valco ask.

Murdoch sighed. “Next steps?” he mused, the sound of the drill echoing painfully in the back of his mind. “We begin testing it.”

• • •

THE REVOLVER felt heavy and foreign in her hand. Evangl was by no means unaccustomed to guns—you couldn’t work with the Green Lama and not grow acclimated to the feel of them; to the bloody effect of them—but this one belonged to Farrell. A Colt M1917; a relic that had belonged to Farrell’s father during the War, the one they called Great. It was late in the afternoon, the sun already approaching the horizon. Evangl had already been awake for an hour when Farrell and Dumont returned to Dumont’s apartment very early that morning, both of them looking worse for wear. After a long embrace, Farrell had retreated to their bedroom while Dumont stayed awake silently working in his laboratory. Evangl found herself wondering if Dumont ever actually slept—or if he even needed to. Had he simply trained his body to go without it, or had the need been leeched away by his radioactive salts? And if it was the latter, what else had they changed? Did they make him
more
than human? But that wasn’t what bothered her now. It was this gun. If the Green Lama, in all his power, couldn’t protect them, what could this gun do?

“What’s wrong?” Farrell asked.

Evangl unconsciously frowned and shook her head. She played out the scenario of using the M1917 to shoot the shadowed man in the head. Perhaps in the instant before the bullet tore through his skull she would see his face. She hoped there would be fear in those eyes. She would make him be afraid. “Nothing. I’m fine,” she said mechanically.

Farrell searched her face skeptically. “Are you sure?”

Evangl nodded. She rotated the gun over in her hands, watching the light reflect off the brushed metal. “Thank you for this.”

“It takes forty-fives. I left you a box,” she said, indicating a small cardboard box on top the counter. “Jethro doesn’t exactly keep spare bullets around.”

A hollow laugh escaped Evangl’s lips. “Yeah, he just has a bunch of salt shakers stashed inside his massive sleeves.”

“Don’t forget the little gold Buddhas and butter candles,” Farrell added pleasantly. “He’s got those by the barrel full.”

Evangl forced herself to smile. “I heard about last night,” she said after a moment, her gaze staying on the pistol. She couldn’t make herself look Farrell in the eye. Not yet, anyway.

“Did you?” Farrell asked quietly.

“I was awake when you both came home,” Evangl said with a nod. She didn’t say that Tsarong had later explained to her what little he knew. She had come to trust Tsarong during her time at Dumont’s and didn’t want to betray that trust now. Unlike the others, he treated her less like a grieving woman and more as an equal. And he made Marie laugh, and that meant the world.

“Hm,” Farrell sounded, glancing over at Marie, sleeping soundly in her crib. “It wasn’t fun, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

Evangl shook her head. “I doubt it would be.” She placed the gun down on the counter beside the bullets, her hand hovering over the gun handle.

“Could’ve been worse, I suppose. Caraway was able to talk the Commissioner out of dragging me to Central Booking, but I think that was because the Green Lama was there,” she said with a hollow smile, trying to make light of the situation.

“So, what does the Green—” Evangl paused to correct herself. “What does
Dumont
think it is? The black fluid?”

“Dunno,” Farrell admitted, stealing a sidelong glance toward the doorway, as if she could peer through the walls into Dumont’s laboratory. There was something expectant about that expression, as if she was waiting for him to suddenly appear, with all the answers in hand. “Think he’s about to find out soon.”

“Jean, could I ask you something?” Evangl asked. Her fingers brushed up against the gun’s cooling metal, sending gooseflesh up her arm and hitting her neck.

“Anything,” Farrell replied, turning back to Evangl.

“I’ve been wondering…” Evangl clasped her hands in front of her nervously. How should she phrase this? “If you and Dumont ever… Well, what I mean to say is. Gary and I, we were a part of this, we met because of
this
, but… We were never at the center of it, and we thought that we could step away, and it’s taken us here,” she said, flapping her arms in defeat. “But you two… What will it be like?”

Farrell thought for a moment and shrugged. “Probably a lot like this, I suppose,” she replied with a smirk, though Evangl could hear a tinge of sadness in her voice.

“Is it worth it?”

The smirk melted from Farrell’s lips and her gaze fell away. “I hope so,” she whispered.

They stood in silence for a while after that. There was nothing else to say.

• • •

TSARONG WALKED up to the naked female corpse on the impromptu dissection table and felt an unaccustomed sadness wash over him. The Dharma taught that the body was just a collection of parts that dissolve at death back into the primary elements, while the mind, with all its good or bad karma, went on to rebirth in one of the six realms of illusion—unless one was fortunate to attain liberation from the round of births and deaths. In Tibet, the body would have been given a forty-nine day ceremony, until it was eventually stripped naked, placed out on the mountains for the vultures for what Westerners termed a “sky burial.” For those who did not follow the Buddhist doctrine, the tradition would seem brutal and inhuman, but was a structural principle to the transient nature of life. The body was nothing. The mind was all.

And yet, Tsarong could not shake the feeling that there was something wrong about the remains before him, as if the mind had been tainted and trapped within, never to be reborn. Even so, he touched the top of the woman’s head and whispered: “
Hri!
I pray with strong devotion to master Guru Rinpoche. I pray to the glorious Buddha of Infinite Light. Please lead the consciousnesses of the dead to liberation.”

“Tulku, I am surprised you did not get Dr. Valco to help you with this. He would be better suited for this procedure,” he said aloud to Jethro, who was slipping on a white lab coat. During his decade at the Temple of the Clouds, in addition to his Buddhist studies, Jethro had spent time learning a number of sciences, including human anatomy. And while he had performed several autopsies, there were limits to his knowledge.

Jethro shook his head. “I called his office, but he wasn’t available—Don’t worry, he’s fine,” he added off Tsarong’s worried expression. “His assistant said he went to work on some kind of a special project upstate. I’m sure we can manage without him.”

Jethro turned on an overheard bulb, blanketing the body in a cold blue light, throwing into stark relief the damage done to the woman’s body. Her skin, perhaps once a pale pink, was white, bordering on grey; thick black veins visible beneath the skin. Tsarong frowned and stole a glance at the large veins protruding from Jethro’s neck. They were getting worse, he noted, but chose to say nothing. Now was not the time.

“Are you ready?” Jethro asked him as he reached for a scalpel.

Tsarong nodded solemnly. “Yes, Tulku.”

Jethro leaned over the body. “Female, age late twenties. Apparent cause of death, a gunshot wound to the side of the head,” he described as Tsarong took notes. “Deceased’s skin is unnaturally pale, veins are distended and discolored. There is a puncture wound within overlapping triangular and circular scars on the deceased’s forehead…”

“What is it?”

Jethro frowned. “No, I just… When Caraway was possessed he drew this exact symbol on his forehead. He doesn’t remember much from then, ‘flashes and fog’ is what he describes, nor did he recognize the symbol at the scene. Besides Betty Dale, I was the only one who saw him do it.”

“You’re not suggesting the demons from the
Bartlett
are behind this?”

“I dearly hope not, but there’s only one way to find out…” Jethro returned to the body. “The puncture wound was created some time prior to death. I will make the first incision in the chest to examine the deceased’s organs.” He pressed the scalpel between the woman’s breasts and sliced down to the abdomen, eliciting a flow of black ooze. Jethro described the occurrence before cracking the ribs and splitting them open.

Tsarong drew in a sharp breath as the woman’s organs came into view. He was no stranger to a human being’s inner workings, but it was clear that this was no longer a human body. The stomach and intestines were enlarged while the heart, kidneys, and liver were shriveled, the lungs deflated. Everything was covered in a black webbing, stringy and pulsating. The smell was putrid, hitting Tsarong like a hammer. He gagged as he instinctively covered his mouth and nose.

Jethro fell back a step and coughed into his gloved hand, his eyes blinking and tearing as if he were cutting onions. “Body is filled with—pungent—black fluid,” he said between coughs. “Possibly organic—in nature. Tsarong—get the gas masks,” he instructed, pointing to the three masks hanging on the wall.

Tsarong quickly complied and once their masks were in place, they returned to their investigation. Jethro took out each organ one by one, placing them in glass jars for further analysis, careful never to touch the ooze with his bare skin. Once that was completed, he moved up to the woman’s shattered skull. Tsarong had carefully shaved her scalp bald earlier, allowing Jethro to saw away a section, careful not to damage to wound on the forehead. He carefully pulled off the piece of the skull and began to examine the brain.

“Brain is heavily damaged from the bullet,” Jethro observed, his voice muffled through the mask. “Whereas internal organs were simply coated with obsidian liquid, the brain appears to be saturated with the organic black substance.” He pulled a light over and peered closely at the dark grey matter. To Tsarong’s eyes, what was left undamaged by the bullet told little to nothing, but Jethro saw it all.

“This was the injection point,” he said excitedly, indicating the small hole in the center of the forehead. “The needle was drilled through the skull, where the fluid was injected here.” He moved his finger and indicated the narrow space between the two frontal lobes. “Whatever this fluid is, it saturated the brain before entering her nervous system. From there, the fluid somehow worked its way into the woman’s heart where it then entered the blood stream and began infecting her whole body, until it eventually altered the configuration of her internal organs and—” Jethro cut himself short. Despite the stench, he pulled off his mask and took two long steps back and fell into a nearby chair, his eyes locked on the cadaver.