“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.”
“Modesty, huh. Not used to that. I’ve read about you in the tabloids. Did you really date what’s-her-face, the woman from that film Trouble in Morocco, or whatever the hell it’s called?”
He shrugged nonchalantly. “Yeah, but she’s not that pretty in person. But you’re Jean Farrell, right? I saw you in Our Town. You’re good.”
Jean firmed her lips and hoped she wasn’t blushing. “Thanks.”
“Can I lower my arms now?” Dumont asked tentatively.
“Yeah, you can put ’em down,” she said, lowering her pistol as well. “So, did Pali tell you anything?”
“Just that he wanted me to see if I could get a friend of mine to translate this.” He reached in his pocket and brought out the piece of parchment Pali had secreted earlier.
“Oh, great,” Jean sighed. “The Dracula writing.”
Dumont raised a quizzical eyebrow.
“Nothing,” she said, rubbing her eyes, hoping that it might help push back the memories from earlier that day. “You know someone who could read that?”
“Probably. I have a friend who’s a professor of linguistics. I was about to go see him when I thought I heard you scream.”
“Yeah, sorry about that. Guess I was having a bad dream.”
“It’s all right. Except for the whole, you know, pulling a gun on me part.”
“No offense, but for future reference, it’s probably not the best idea to leave a girl with an itchy trigger finger alone with a gun in a strange place.”
“Duly noted. I should get going, though. Don’t want to make Charles wait for an answer. You’re welcome to stay as long as you’d like. If you need anything, just ask my assistant, Tsarong; he’ll be more than happy to help.”
Jean quickly slipped into her shoes and grabbed her coat and hat off the chair.
“You should probably rest,” Dumont said, clearly concerned. “Charles did say you had an awful scare.”
“Heh. If you—or Pali—think that I’m gonna just lay around while you boys have all the fun, you’ve got another thing coming. And besides, after what I saw today, closing my eyes is the last thing I want to do.” She threw on her coat and cloche hat, and stormed out of the bedroom. “Well, you coming?” she said as she stepped into the hallway. She looked back at Jethro, who was watching her with an oddly familiar smirk. “Where are we going, by the way?”
• • •
Columbia University’s linguistic department was buried deep in the catacombs of the school’s library. Piled under the miles of books, tons of masonry, and behind a worn and splintered door sat the offices of the department head, Dr. Craig Allen. Jethro lightly knocked against the frosted glass of the door. He hadn’t expected Jean to awaken so soon after their ordeal in the factory—which was now nothing more than a smoking pile of rubble on the West Side—or he would have never dispensed with the Pali disguise. He had been able to explain away the fact that he and Pali lived in the same building, telling Jean that Pali rented one of the apartments from him; the difficult part was trying to cover up the Green Lama connection.
“So, you’ve never actually met the Green Lama?” she had asked on the drive over.
Jethro cocked his head to the side, giving the appearance of someone trying to retrieve a long forgotten memory. “Not in the most literal of senses, no. I’ve helped him on a case or two, but solely through correspondence. Have you ever met him?”
Jean raised an eyebrow at him. “Several times.”
“I hear he’s kind of… intimidating,” he said with a nervous grimace.
“Insomuch that a guy walking around in a green night robe can be.” Jethro shot her a look, indignant. “But, he can crush solid metal with his bare hands, so what do I know?” Jean said before Jethro could interject. “Maybe green is terrifying.”
They rode the rest of the way in silence. There was definitely something off about Jean, but he couldn’t pinpoint what had changed. She wasn’t as sharp and seemed a bit dazed, but that might have just been the blow on the head. He hadn’t noticed any significant bruises or bleeding, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t significantly injured internally. No, it was more than that; it was almost as if she were giving off some sort of dull electrical charge, not unlike the way he did after consuming the radioactive salts.
But that would be impossible.
Jethro shrugged off the thought. What concerned him now was the identity of their attacker at the factory. He was almost certain that it was the same person who attacked the German consulate, but in the madness of the building collapse he hadn’t been able to catch a glimpse of the man. He wanted to believe that their attacker perished beneath the collapse of the building, but the malevolent sensation that had pervaded his mind since the attack on the embassy persisted. Whoever—or whatever—he was had shaken Jean down to her very core—so much so that she hadn’t spoken for almost an hour.
Jethro had begun to knock again when Dr. Allen swung the door open with an audible creak. A thin, bespectacled, and heavily bearded man persistently clad in a tweed jacket with the elbows rubbed through, he had the look that befit a college professor. Dr. Allen had been a good friend of Jethro’s father, and Jethro had always considered the linguist something of an uncle.
“Jethro!” he exclaimed, embracing him without hesitation. “What a pleasure it is to see you! Has it really been nearly a half-year since we’ve spoken?”
“Far too long, Craig,” Jethro said, patting the professor lightly on the shoulder. “This is my friend, Miss Jean Farrell.”
“Miss Farrell, a pleasure!” Dr. Allen grasped Jean’s hand, shaking it vigorously. “It’s so nice to see someone was able to nail down our young Jethro, what with the wanderlust and all!” he said with a wink.
“What? Oh!” Jean exclaimed, belatedly catching Dr. Allen’s insinuation. “Oh no. No, no. I just met him today.” She and Jethro shared a look of mutual d
iscomfort and interest.
“Ah, well, like my wife always says, ‘Get ’em while they’re hot,’ eh?” Dr. Allen winked once again, elbowing Jean in the ribs.
“Yeah… right,” Jean said, massaging the sore spot on her side.
“Ah, but we digress! Come sit, sit! Jethro, you mentioned over the phone that you needed something translated.” Dr. Allen plopped down into the small leather chair behind his desk, effectively burying himself up to his neck in leatherbound books. Jethro and Jean took their seats across from him, but still needed to crane their necks to look directly at the jovial doctor.
“Yes, our mutual friend Dr. Pali gave me this,” Jethro said, revealing the small scrap of parchment, “in hopes I could translate it, based upon my travels, but I confess that I am unable to decipher the symbols and hoped you might be able to shed some light as to their meaning.”
Jethro handed the parchment over to Dr. Allen, who skimmed it quickly. He took off his glasses and gave Jethro a look of paternal reprimand. “Jethro, my boy, I am disappointed in you. All your travels and you can’t even recognize Hebrew!”
“Hebrew, of course!” Jethro slapped his forehead. “Well, is my face red. You’d think that’s something I’d have picked up somewhere along the way.”
“Don’t beat yourself up, son. Outside of the synagogues and the more conservative groups of Judaism, ancient Hebrew is practically a dead language these days. A shame, if you ask me—such a fascinating tongue to study. A Semitic language of the Afro-Asiatic family first formed around the second millennium BC. Ah, but once again I fear I have moved us from the matter at hand. You asked me to translate this for you, not lecture you…” He tipped his glasses to the edge of his nose and brought up the scrap of paper. “Hm…”
“What is it?” Jean inquired, craning her neck to get a better look at the parchment.
“Well, at first I thought this was from the Torah—the Old Testament, as it were. But I’ve never seen this phrase before…” Dr. Allen shrugged. “I can tell you what it says, but I’m not sure I can tell you what it means. You’d probably have to ask a rabbi for that. Luckily, I know one, Brickman is his name if you need—”
The Green Lama: Horror in Clay (The Green Lama Legacy Book 2) Page 4
