The Green Lama: Unbound (The Green Lama Legacy Book 3) (14 page)

“When we return to the Temple, I think its about time you start explaining what exactly this is,” he said, holding up his right hand, the rainbow ring glowing in jade.

• • •

The sun had arched past it apex and was making its way beneath the horizon when Jean and Aïas finally made camp beneath a small overhang roughly a quarter of the way up the mountain. They had been climbing for most of the day, and while hunger and exhaustion never found them, Jean couldn’t shake the sense that something was wrong. His gaze kept falling to her leg, though she never knew why. It didn’t hurt, it wasn’t even sore, but a part of her, a buzzing in the back of her mind knew it should be. She pinched her eyes shut and leaned her head back against the rocky wall.

“You all right, Jean?” Aïas asked as he kindled the campfire.

Jean rubbed her eyes. “Just this damn headache. I dunno, maybe its ’cause the air’s thin, but it’s getting worse.”

“What’s it feel like?”

Jean closed her eyes. “Like a jar full of bees and someone decided to shake it.”

“Probably just the altitude,” he said after a moment.

“Mm,” she sounded, furrowing her brow in a vain effort to fight back the sensation. “You ever hear of the Green Lama?” she asked after a moment.

Aïas nodded. “I have, and some of the others. Men and women dressing up in costumes…” He chuckled. “You Americans certainly have flair.”

Jean smiled weakly. “I once guessed his secret identity.”

“Did you, now?” Aïas said with a subtle arch of his eyebrow. “How did he take it?”

“Oddly nonplussed,” she admitted with a frown. “I thought he was Jethro Dumont. You ever hear of him?”

“Everyone has heard of Jethro Dumont, Jean.” He poked at the fire. “Why did you think they were the same person?”

She shrugged. “I always had my suspicions, it just made too much sense to be otherwise. Most people seem to think the Lama’s alter ego is Dr. Pali, but Pali’s clearly just theatrical greasepaint and a halfway decent accent. Not many people notice that. But I did. Maybe because I work in movies and the theater or maybe I’m just that impressive,” she said with mock arrogance. “It wasn’t until I saw Dumont stand up against these… demons a few months ago that I was certain. So, one night after one of our adventures—I can never remember which, they all blur together—I followed the Lama to one of his hideouts and Dumont walked out shortly after. I never said anything. Why would I? It was too much fun to have a secret, to simply know something no one else did. At least until that Nazi von Kultz came to town and I had a chance to rub it in his face. I was so damn proud of myself, too. He just shrugged it off, like I was telling him the weather, because… I was wrong. The next day both the Green Lama and Jethro Dumont showed up at my apartment together. I was sure it was a trick, just another way to keep me on my toes, but then I saw them both fighting atop the Brooklyn Bridge. And… that was that. The thing is Dumont’s as much a hero as the Lama. Heck, more so, really.”

“How? Because he has slept with every woman in Hollywood?”

“No.” Jean shifted uncomfortably. “No. I mean… I know that’s what everyone thinks of him—I’ve seen the newsreels—but there’s something more to him. Deeper. There’s a spark to him; this caring for everyone he comes in contact with, and me—Maybe it’s his Buddhism, maybe he’s just a decent man, but for all the gossip they like to sling around, Dumont is the most grounded man I have ever met. And when he talks to you, it’s almost like you’re the first person he’s spoken to in years.” She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “Not that long ago we were kidnapped by these demons—or something like that—and Dumont, the man the tabloids treat like a mindless Casanova, risked his life to save mine… Perhaps I just wanted Dumont to be the Green Lama. There was always just something about him—Dumont, I mean—something that made me feel—” She caught herself.

“Made you feel?”

She shook her head and ignored the question. “It’s just that when I learned Dumont and the Green Lama were different people, it felt like someone had cut something out of my memory, as if everything I thought I knew was wrong.” She curled her legs to her chest and wrapped her arms around her knees. There was something on the edge of her memory, something she had said, a word she could almost remember. Something so simple and powerful… “I feel like that again, only worse.”

Aïas looked up from the fire. “How so?”

“It feels like missing time, as if the world around me was changed without my knowing. At least with the Green Lama and Dumont, I
saw
them together. It was real and right in front of me. But now… I keep trying to remember something, but all I can see is a big white blank.”

Aïas regarded her for several moments before he tentatively asked, “And how long have you been feeling like this?”

Jean shrugged. “Day? Day and half?” She ran her hands up and down her legs in an effort to warm her limbs when her finger caught a small hole in her right boot. She glanced and saw the bullet hole torn through the leather. When had that happened? Shifting her body, she glanced at the inside of her leg, finding another hole directly across from the first. The buzzing in her head suddenly worsened. She pressed the heels of her hands against her temples, trying to fight back the pain. She screamed in agony as images flashed past her eyelids and she began to remember.

“I was shot,” she mumbled, then saying it louder. “I was shot! Wasn’t I?”

Aïas stiffened, his eyes wide.

“My leg. They shot me in the leg.” More memories burst to life in terrifying, painful clarity. “And then—Oh, God.”

Aïas stood up and looked directly at Jean, his black irises once again a blazing jade. His voice shook the world around them. “You can’t remember that.”

Jean gritted her teeth. “What did you do to me?”

“Jean, calm down,” Aïas commanded, the ground cracking beneath him. Jean’s heart skipped a beat when she realized he wasn’t casting a shadow.

Jean jumped to her feet and drew her gun. Tears streamed down her face, but she kept the pistol level, her sights on Aïas’s glowing eyes. “What did you do to me?” she screamed.

“You don’t understand the role you have yet to play,” he said as he stepped through the fire, his voice resonating from the mountain.

Jean pulled down on the trigger, firing every last bullet at his chest. The shots echoed out into the night as the bullets passed harmlessly through him. Aïas glanced down at his unwounded chest and then back at Jean, his eyes ablaze.

Suddenly, the world was enveloped in light. A howling wind came down upon them and beneath it Jean could hear voices, ancient, inhuman but somehow familiar.

Then, all was silent.

• • •

Caraway adjusted the slab of frozen meat over his black eye, grimacing as the pain radiated into his skull. Lying down across the bar, left arm wrapped behind his head, he glanced at the deserted war zone that was once a pub, a no-man’s land of spilt liquor, broken glass, smashed wood, and a fair share of blood.

Sotiria appeared from behind the bar, a half broken bottle of whiskey in one hand and a shot glass in the other.

“Pretty brave, huh?” Caraway said proudly, a small grin curling the corner of his lips.

“Stupid is another word for brave, no?” Sotiria asked as she poured herself whiskey, picking out the glass shards with her fingers.

“Yeah… Stupid is another word for brave,” Ken interjected from a table nearby, heavily resting his head on his hands.

Sotiria threw back her shot and quickly poured herself another. “You did not think,” she said between drinks, “that maybe I might have been able to handle him on my own?”

Caraway removed the slab of meat and shifted up onto his elbows so he could face the raven-haired woman. “Sweetheart, the look you gave me didn’t exactly say ‘Step back while I take care of this guy.’”

Sotiria raised an eyebrow. “Nicholaos Adrian is a hothead, a drunk, and a very, very
brave
man,” she said pointedly to Caraway, eliciting a chuckle from Ken. “Had you given me a moment, I would have distracted him with a simple math equation.”

Caraway rolled his eyes and smirked, at once enchanted and exasperated. “Listen, dame, if you—”

“No!” Sotiria exclaimed as she slapped him hard, intentionally hitting a massive welt on the back of his head. Caraway grunted in pain. “You do
not
call me ‘dame.’ My name is Sotiria, and if you call me ‘dame’ again I will shove this bottle into a place you would not enjoy,” she said, raising the broken bottle to pontificate her statement.

“Jeez, woman,” Caraway grumbled as he rubbed the wound. “I just fought a whole friggin’ bar of really big, really violent men for you and you’re hittin’ me.”

“Hey, I fought them, too,” Ken added meekly.

Sotiria leaned her face inches away from Caraway’s. “And you were both very
brave
. And what did you get out of it?”

Ken showed off a large wound on his right arm. “I think someone shot me.”

“I am not impressed,” Sotiria said to Caraway.

“I think someone shot me with a
gun
,” Ken added.

“Well, you boys impressed me,” Petros said from within a cloud of smoke at the other side of the establishment, nursing a bottle of ouzo. “Once the boss gets back, he will be hearing how well you two fight.”

“It’s only a graze, but it still hurts.”

Petros raised his glass. “Welcome to the club, limey.”

Caraway swung his legs over the bar and sat upright. “Fantastic, does that mean we got ourselves a job?” he asked, no longer satisfied with being monosyllabic.

Petros shrugged noncommittally.

The front door burst open as a tower of a man walked in, all muscle and height; followed shortly by an older, slender man. Call it policeman’s intuition, but Caraway knew instantly the old man was in charge, probably the local Al Capone; the tower was a bruiser, probably the old man’s second-in-command or at the very least his bodyguard. These were the guys they needed to meet, and from the way the old man was eyeing him, Caraway oddly felt as if this audience had been expected.

The bruiser’s jaw fell open at the sight of the destroyed tavern while the old man seemed unfazed—or possibly, too preoccupied to care. The bruiser looked over at Petros and asked him a single question in Greek, which Caraway rightfully assumed was, “What the hell happened?”

Petros pointed a thumb over at Caraway and Ken.

The bruiser turned to them and repeated the question in Greek. Caraway and Ken shared a mystified look, but before they could respond Sotiria spoke up, arguing their case—or at least Caraway
hoped
she was. The bruiser listened for a moment before glancing over to the old man who simply nodded. Looking back at the Americans, the bruiser began to speak before Petros quickly interrupted him.

“English,” he said, tapping his ear.

The bruiser grimaced while he translated in his head. “Who are you?” he eventually asked with a significant accent.

“William Shakespeare,” Ken said in his own strained British accent.

“John Caraway,” he said with a slight wave. “And as to what happened, I figured Sotiria already covered that. Not that I understood any of it, but it sounded like an explanation.”

The bruiser glanced over at Sotiria. Caraway caught a familiar glint in the other man’s eyes—it was the same way he looked at Francesca. “She only said you were very
brave
.”

A soft smirk curled the corner of Sotiria’s lips.

“Oh, Lord,” Ken groaned, burying his face in his hands.

“We were just defending the dame’s honor,” Caraway replied, a soft smirk curling the corner of his lips as Sotiria’s expression quickly soured.

“Took on a good thirty or more on their own,” Petros said in English for Ken and Caraway’s benefit. “I have not seen fighting like that since the War.”

The bruiser’s eyes shot between Ken and Caraway. “And you two just came to my town looking for fights?”

“Work,” Caraway said, and then gestured to Petros. “He said you could probably give us some.”

“I can’t give you anything,” the bruiser replied.

Caraway nodded to the old man. “What about Al Capone over there? Can he give us anything? He looks like the type of guy who can.”

The old man measured the two foreigners and licked his dry lips. He leaned over and whispered something to the bruiser in Greek.

The bruiser shrugged and began walking toward the other end of the tavern. “All right, come with us,” he said with a beckoning wave. He opened the door at the back, letting the old man step through with Petros following after.

Caraway jumped off the bar, wincing slightly as his various bruises all throbbed at once. “You comin’ with?” he asked Sotiria, tossing a thumb toward the door.

She shook her head. “No, you enjoy your boys’ club. I’ll work on finishing this,” she said, jingling her glass.

“What do you think he’ll have us do?” Ken whispered to Caraway as they walked toward the other room.