The Green Lama: Horror in Clay (The Green Lama Legacy Book 2) (5 page)

“Not yet, Ne-tso-hbum.”

Jean nodded and firmed her lips. She told herself she wasn’t terrified, and a small part of her believed it.

“All right, buddy, we’re stumbling around in the dark here,” she said once they reached the bottom of the stairs, the darkness almost absolute. “You mind tellin’ me what we’re looking for?”

“At this point, Ne-tso-hbum… Anything.” Pali lit a match, revealing a wall covered in engravings similar to the ones written on the parchments.

Jean ran her fingers over the etchings, her nails clicking against the cut stone. “Jesus Christmas, these were carved into the wall.” Her eyes followed the carvings all the way up to the ceiling—two stories above.

Pali touched his forehead, swaying ever so slightly, looking as though he had just stepped off the Twirl-a-Whirl. “Something is off balance…,” he whispered. “Draining my powers…”

They looked into the darkness around them. They both could
feel
something watching them, like a phantom in the shadows. Pali turned to
Jean and pressed his finger to his lips. She nodded in understanding and
raised her gun.
Suddenly, there was a high-pitched squeal of metal being ripped apart. For
a moment Jean thought it was coming from above, that the building was
about to buckle in on them, until Pali grabbed her and
threw her to the ground.

“STAY DOWN!” he shouted as a massive hunk of machinery flew by overhead. There was a tremendous roar of metal against brick as the machinery broke through the far wall, leaving a gaping hole. Sunlight poured into the factory in blades.

“Aw crap,” Jean said as she sat up, struggling not to squeeze down on the trigger of her gun. “What in holy hell was
that
?”

“Don’t move!” Pali commanded in a harsh whisper as he moved into a low crouch, ready to pounce at a moment’s notice.

Silence.

Earth shattering silence.

Jean could feel her blood pulsing in her throat. She squeezed her left hand into a fist to try and stop it from shaking. This was a like a horror film, a very scary, very
real
horror film. She tried to remember the few she had seen, back in that hole-in-the-wall theatre in Butte, where they had the projectors in the room so you could hear the rattle of the reels while scenes came to life in front of you. There had always been a monster, some big lurching thing that came out of the shadows reaching for a nubile woman, who was more apt to scream than run. She steeled herself; she was braver than that. She had faced down mobsters and maniacs. What was a mere monster?

Then she heard the footsteps.
Thump
THUMP! Thump THUMP THUMP!
The ground rattled beneath her. She ignored Pali’s commands and pushed her way to her feet, putting both hands on her pistol, preparing herself for whatever was coming their way.

“I’m gonna shoot it. Whatever it is, Doc, I’m gonna shoot it. I’m gonna—”

Then she heard something whisper out from the shadows—a dark voice, like sandpaper: “
Go away!
”

The blood drained from Jean’s face. The walls began to shake. The hole in the wall had torn out whatever remained of the building’s structural integrity. Her eyes met Pali’s and she could tell he was thinking the same thing.

“Run,” Pali said quickly.

Pieces of the building began raining down on them. Squeals of metal, shouts of brick, shrieks of glass, and the continuing
thump THUMP
racing up behind them. Sprinting up the stairs, Jean held back screams of terror, but failed to hold back from shouting several choice profanities. The roof had begun to collapse, letting the late afternoon sun flood into the vacant space. Jean peeked back down into the darkness in hopes of getting a glimpse of their impossibly strong attacker, and what she saw would remain with her for years to come. Standing in the faded light of the stairway—at least seven feet tall, with barrel-like shoulders—was the flawed version of a man. Horror grabbed at her throat as Jean looked the man straight in the eyes—and realized he had none, just darkness glowing with jade. Without a word, Jean stopped at the top of the steps and began firing round after round at the creature below, kept firing even after she exhausted her supply of bullets.

“Ne-tso-hbum!” Pali called from behind. “JEAN!”

Jean didn’t—couldn’t—reply as she continued to pull down on the trigger at the now silent thing at the base of the staircase. She didn’t feel the small pieces of brick and glass trickle onto her shoulder, didn’t hear the walls crumbling around her, snapping in two.

And then, everything went black.

Chapter 4

THE SACRED TEXTS

Officer Heidelberger flew through the bar window, bursting glass out onto the sidewalk. Landing hard against the cement, the young officer groaned as he rolled to a stop at Caraway’s feet.

“Goddammit all,” Caraway growled, throwing his cigarette to the ground.

“Looks like your men are less than effective, Herr Leutnant,” Gan said with a crooked grin.

“Yeah, but ain’t none of them been ripped in half yet.”

Gan crossed his arms and gave Caraway a withering look. They had been “partners” for less than twenty four hours and their opinions of each other had failed to improve, which Caraway said was just fine by him.

A cloud of smoke and sweat hit Caraway as he pushed his way into the bar. Littered with broken tables, shattered glasses, and unconscious police officers, the pub looked more like a war zone than a drinking establishment, though Caraway reflected, that was only half true. Several patrons continued to sip at their drinks as if the commotion were commonplace. At the center of this bedlam was a throng of policemen surrounding Johnny “Wits” Pomatto, a gangster known more for his six-foot-ten height than his brains. Pomatto swung around, trying to shake loose the two officers that hung off each arm and a third hanging off his neck. The rest circled the struggle with nervous trepidation, brandishing their guns but failing to raise them.

“You ain’t taking me in! You ain’t! You ain’t!” Pomatto shouted, his voice like a broken horn.

“All right,” Caraway grumbled, pulling his pistol from its holster. “Enough of this crap.” He charged forward into the fray, pushing aside his lackluster patrolmen. “John Pomatto!” he shouted. “Put the officers down and put your hands over your head. You are wanted for questioning in the—!” Caraway ducked as Pomatto launched one of the officers in his direction. The young policemen warbled as he flew through the air, ultimately smashing against a wooden table at the front of the bar.

“You talking to me, little man?” Pomatto rumbled, the two remaining officers still holding on to him like koalas clutching a eucalyptus. In a single motion the other officers surrounding him shuffled out of Pomatto’s reach, but Caraway stood his ground.

“Yeah, I’m talking to you, Ugly,” Caraway said through gritted teeth. “Harming a police officer is an arrestable offense, and by the looks of it, you’ve got enough to put you away for a good dozen years or so. How ’bout you play nice for a minute and see if we can—” Caraway ducked as Pomatto threw another officer at him. The officer smashed into the bar, the smell of whiskey and glass filling the air. “Fine,” Caraway growled. “You want to play it that way, Ugly? Let’s play it that way,” he said right before he shot Pomatto in the foot.

“AAAH!” the behemoth wailed as he fell to the ground, clutching his bleeding foot in his hands while he moaned like a giant infant.

“Like he’s never been shot before,” Caraway murmured. He tossed a pair of handcuffs to one of his men. “Book him for assaulting an officer and resisting arrest and making my night difficult.”

“Uh… yes, sir.” The officer’s voice shook, his eyes latched onto the sight of the bellowing oaf.

Caraway replaced his pistol and walked toward the entrance of the bar where Gan was leaning against the doorway, arms crossed.

“Is that how you typically arrest suspects in this country?” Gan said derisively.

“Right, ’cause in Germany you guys do it so much more politely?” he retorted as he pushed past Gan.

“In Germany, we do not have mobsters.”

“Yeah, you do. They’re called Nazis,” Caraway said as he walked over to his squad car.

Gan sucked his teeth. “You better than anyone know the international implications of this case, Herr Leutnant. Perhaps you should approach this with a bit more diplomacy?”

“I’ve plenty of diplomacy right here, Colonel,” Caraway said as he opened the door to the driver’s seat. He patted his sidearm. “It’s got five rounds left.”

“It’s too bad he isn’t the man we’re looking for,” Gan said as Caraway began to climb into the car.

Caraway stopped short and looked back over at Gan. “What the hell you getting at?”

“If our witness is to be believed, the perpetrator was shot multiple times, but did not shed a single drop of blood. Unlike this man,” Gan said, indicating Pomatto as he was dragged out of the bar, “who seems to be losing a large amount of that vital fluid quite rapidly.”

Caraway looked down at the trail of blood following Pomatto, and begrudgingly admitted that Gan was right.

• • •

She saw a man in the darkness, silhouetted yet glowing in jade. He was holy, she knew that for certain, but he had done something terrible, a benevolent offense against the natural order. She turned to look at the man and he whispered: “…From the empty void He made the solid earth, and from the nonexistent He brought forth Life.”

• • •

Jean awoke to the smell of burning.

Incense
, she thought as her eyes fluttered open, the dream fading out of memory. Colored light streamed in through the stained glass windows above, projecting a pattern over the whole room.
Like Sunday morning at church
, Jean reflected, watching the glowing dust particles dance in the air. Falling down, but never touching the ground.

Falling down…

Something had been falling down, but she couldn’t remember…

Glass. There had been glass… And pieces of stone… Clay…

“OH GOD!!!” Jean screamed as she shot up in bed, the memory of the man—the thing with the vacant eyes stabbing out from the back of her mind. She whipped her head around, trying to make sense of everything. She was in a bed with velvet sheets and there were curtains around the bed. Her red trench coat and black cloche hat hung off the back of an ornate chair, her shoes carefully placed beside it. She moved over to the edge of the bed and let her feet hang off the side as she looked over the room. There was a wooden door at other side of the room, left partially ajar, so that Jean could just see the hallway beyond. Books were crammed into every open space, climbing up to the ceiling, where she saw the large stained glass window. It may not be a church, she decided, but there was something definitely holy about this place. She almost felt at peace.

She heard someone moving toward the room. Refusing to be caught off guard, she dove for her trench coat, searching through her pockets to find her pistol, reloading it as fast as she could. After what she’d seen today, she wasn’t going to take any chances. Ducking behind the bed, she waited until she heard the person enter the room.

“Uh… hello…?”

Jean jumped up, aiming her pistol at the lone man standing in the doorway.

“Ah!” the man yelled, throwing up his hands. “Don’t shoot!”

“Where the hell am I?! Who the hell are you?! How the hell did I get here?!” Jean shouted rapidly.

The man hesitated for a moment. “Which one do you want me to answer first?” he meekly asked.

“Pick one!”

“Well, uh, I’m Jethro Dumont and you’re in my penthouse on Park Avenue,” the man said nervously, his eyes never leaving Jean’s gun. “My friend Charles dropped you off here a few hours ago. Said you got hit in the head. I am, um, glad to see you’re awake.”

“Hit in the head…? Charles…?” Jean repeated, rubbing the knot on her head. “You mean Dr. Pali?”

Dumont nodded.

Jean let the pistol drift down to her side, but kept the business end toward her visitor. “Where is he? Is he okay?”

Dumont shrugged, his arms still raised. “Save for a few bruises, he seemed okay to me. He wanted me to tell you that he would’ve stayed but that he had to go take care of some business uptown. He wouldn’t say what, though.”

“I guess he didn’t tell you what happened.”

Dumont shook his head. “Charles is a mysterious one, but I suppose you already know that.”

“There’s the understatement of the century,” Jean conceded. She let her eyes move around the bedroom once again, taking in the immensity and ornateness of everything. There was something familiar about this place—and her guest. Then it hit her. “Wait. Did you say you’re Jethro Dumont—
the
Jethro Dumont?”

“Well, I am ‘a’ Jethro Dumont. There are at least three in the phone book.”