The Green Lama: Unbound (The Green Lama Legacy Book 3) (21 page)

Jethro’s stomach turned and his head buzzed as he stole a glance at the Doctor’s blade, the ornate hilt covered in a strange, alien script that Jethro recognized. Then there was the man himself: He was tall, possibly half a head taller than Jethro, his eyes black like pits of tar. Jethro guessed his age to be forty-five, but the taut, leather-like skin around his eyes and forehead told of a more advanced age. There was something so
familiar
about him, but Jethro couldn’t quite place it.

“I’m sorry,” Jethro said with a sheepish smile. “Have—have we met before, Herr Doktor?”

There was a sinister twinkle in the doctor’s tar eyes that Jethro
knew
he had seen before. “Perhaps in another life, Herr Dumont,” Hammond said with a broad smile. He glanced down at the ring of rainbow-colored hair on Jethro’s middle finger. “That is a
very
interesting ring you have there.”

“This?” he said, pulling his hand out of the doctor’s viselike grip, holding it up as if the Jade Tablet were nothing but a trinket.

“It is very…” Hammond said, carefully choosing his next word, “
unique
.”

“Oh, it’s just a silly token from my time in Tibet. A gift from the locals. You know how they can be.” Jethro fought to not let his smile waver, struggling to ignore the growing sense of vertigo. He recognized that voice, that smile, but from
where
? “You can find hundreds just like it at any bazaar.”

“Oh, I very much doubt that,” the doctor said softly.

“Are you certain we haven’t met before?”

“I suppose I just have one of those faces, as you say,” the doctor said, his smile never faltering as his hand traced the hilt of his blade. “Tell me, Herr Dumont, I always wanted to know. Do Buddhists believe in God?”

C
HAPTER 11

EYES OF THE STORM

“"Om! Ma-ni Pad-me Hum!”
Jethro grimaced, not so much from the pain—which was considerable—as from the anticipation. Sitting alone in the center of his room, he hooked his thumbnail beneath the loose end of the Tablet’s string, pulling it up and away, unwinding it from his middle finger. It had been nine years since the Tablet had woven itself into his flesh, and nearly eight since he had given up hope of ever removing it; as to why it had begun to unweave now was a mystery. He had chosen not to tell Tsarong—though he wasn’t sure why he hadn’t. He simply knew he needed to do this alone.

Blood trickled down his hand, flowing in long red streams over to his wrist and arm before dripping into the bowl Jethro had placed on his lap. He could feel the fiber move beneath his skin as he continued to pull the ring free, the color shifting from the deepest reds to brilliant violets as he worked his way down the strand.

It took him nearly an hour before the Tablet was completely freed from his hand. Laid out on the ground before him, Jethro estimated the string was nearly the length of Ebbets Field, end-to-end. Impossibly, there were infinitesimally small symbols lining the fiber, ranging from Sanskrit and Latin to ancient Mayan and Arabic, even English, as well as some Jethro didn’t recognize. There seemed to be portions of words, but there was no pattern, no sense to their organization; if there was a hidden message to this string of symbols, it was lost to Jethro. But that was impossible… If the Tablet was as old as Tsarong said, then how could there be letters, let alone
words
, for languages that had barely existed for a millennia?

But there had to be
something
. The Jade Tablet had been worn by some of humanity’s greatest individuals and had powers Jethro was still decades away from understanding. There had to be a code or a hidden message.

Inching over, he found that a large section of the string had overlapped and crisscrossed itself, causing three symbols in the Devanagari script to align and form a single word that Jethro recognized:
soma
.

A rueful smile crossed Jethro’s lips. He had his work cut out for him.

• • •

Petros kicked down the door, sending wooden shards flying into the air. “I do always love a good smash and grab,” he said with a wicked smile as he unsheathed his blades, twirling them over his fingers with panache.

“Come on, boys,” Vasili said to Ken and Caraway as he followed Petros in, a gun in each hand. “Quick and clean.”

“No one gets killed, you got that?” Caraway whispered to Ken once Vasili went inside.

“Yup. No one,” Ken said with an earnest nod. “Especially me.”

Caraway sighed. “Yeah. That’s exactly what I was thinking.”

There was a sudden blast of gunfire as he stepped through the doorway, followed by a rain of splintered wood. Caraway dropped to the floor, clutching his pistol. It had certainly gone belly up real quick. “Aw, crap.”

“Dammit!” Ken cursed as he tumbled down beside Caraway. “Why do people
always
end up shooting at us?”

• • •

“Doctor!” Gottschalk shrilled. “My apologies, Herr Dumont, I do not believe Herr Doktor Hammond intended to be so rude.”

Dumont waved this away. “Nonsense, Herr Obergruppenführer, it’s nothing I haven’t dealt with back in the States,” he said before turning back to Heydrich. “It’s a complex question to answer, Herr Doktor Hammond. The invocation of deities—even demons—
is
an important part of the tantric practices of Tibet, yet the Buddha taught that there is no Creator deity like the one we Westerners call God.”

“Ah,” Heydrich sighed, forcing back a smile. The fool had no idea who he was! Here, standing before him, was Jethro Dumont—
the Green Lama!
—the very same man who had
killed
him five years ago, and who had no clue to the true identity of “Herr Doktor Hammond.” He could slice Dumont open with the Shard and spread his innards across the ground before the fool even suspected the truth. “But, what do
you
believe, Herr Dumont?”

Dumont pressed his lips together as he considered his answer. “Well, while I was raised Christian, I…” He cleared his throat before continuing. “I believe in the inherent good—the Buddha nature—in all beings. But in my travels I have seen some amazing and terrible things done in the name of a God—or gods—
but
I have yet to meet one myself. However, when I do, you will be the first to know, Herr Doktor.”

Heydrich raised an eyebrow and bit back a smile. “I have no doubt you will.” He turned to Gottschalk. “Herr Obergruppenführer—Herr Dumont— though I would
love
to continue this conversation, you must excuse me. I am late for a meeting with our local associates.”

Gottschalk nodded. “Then we shall not delay you any further.”

“Thank you, Herr Obergruppenführer.
Auf Wiedersehen
, Herr Dumont,” Heydrich said with a slight nod, hoping his face did not betray him. “I hope to see you again, soon.”

“Likewise, Herr Doktor,” Dumont quietly replied as Heydrich spun on his heels and marched out of the camp

Heydrich could feel his insides twisting as he tried to stem the tide of his rage. He could have killed Dumont right there, stabbed him through the heart and watched him bleed until his boots were covered in blood. If only Alexei would let him…

Heydrich stopped himself. His temperature was rising quickly; if he didn’t calm down soon he ran the deadly risk of overheating and destroying his reformed body. The life of the undead was not without its caveats.

“Alexei!!!” he shouted once he was a good distance from the camp, unbuttoning his uniform in an effort to cool his body. “ Alexei, I know you can hear me, you inhuman bastard! Show yourself!” He heard the muffled sound of air being displaced behind him.

“Karl, my dear boy, you sound upset,” Alexei whispered in mock concern as he paced around to face Heydrich. “A little hot under the collar today?” he commented once he saw Heydrich’s beet red visage. “You know how bad that is for your heart.”

“Dumont is there with the Jade Tablet!” Heydrich shouted, pointing an angry finger back to the base camp.

“What?” the creature masquerading as man hissed as thin black lines began to form on his face like cracks on a frozen lake.

Heydrich took a bold step forward. “He is meeting with the others as we speak. He is right there, surrounded. The
key
to raising Cthulhu could be mine for the taking!”

“That’s…” Alexei shook his head, his eyes shifting wildly. “No, that’s not possible.”

“What do you mean, that’s not possible?” Heydrich shouted, foaming at the mouth. “I saw him with my own eyes! I felt the Sacred Colors against my skin. All I needed was to draw my blade and it would’ve been mine!”

“If Dumont is alive…” Alexei growled before letting loose a string of incomprehensible curses, the cracks on his face widening, splitting open his face enough for Heydrich to glimpse the horror within. “I should have known it would have taken more than a Deep One’s bite to destroy the Green Lama. Fools! I will
kill
Ke’ta for this.”

Were he a lesser man and had he not already stared into the face of Death, Heydrich would have succumbed to madness at the sight of Alexei’s true visage; instead he grabbed Alexei’s collar. “You sent one of your idiot fish men after him and didn’t tell me?”

Alexei shot his gaze to Heydrich. In an instant, Heydrich flew back through the air as though he had been blasted out of a cannon, landing hard several feet away. Before he could push himself up, Alexei was pressing his boot against Heydrich’s windpipe.

“You forget your place, Karl,” Alexei snarled, his voice echoing through Heydrich’s skull. “I brought you back to this world and I can just as easily remove you from it!” He reached down and unsheathed the Shard from Heydrich’s scabbard, the crystalline blade glowing despite the sun.

“I am sorry, Master,” Heydrich struggled to say.

Alexei took his foot off Heydrich’s throat, wordlessly accepting the mystic’s panicked apology. Heydrich could feel his heart thump against his chest as he watched the cracks on Alexei’s face continue to grow and connect, revealing the putrid black flesh beneath. Alexei thrust the glowing blade above his head and chanted an ancient invocation as the sky above them darkened with ink black clouds.

“
We see you, Jethro Dumont
,” Alexei said, his voice shifting octaves with every word, a thousand voices at once. “
We see you, Green Lama…
”

• • •

“An intense fellow,” Gan said to Jethro after Hammond was out of earshot. “You need not concern yourself with him.”

Jethro nodded, understanding Gan’s insinuation. “Well, he seemed pleasant enough,” he said politely, quietly relieved that the strange buzzing that had rattled his mind had dissipated.

“He is quite brilliant, but then again, with brilliance comes eccentricity… But, we digress. Herr Dumont—” Gottschalk began. He wrapped an arm around Jethro’s shoulders and led him into the command tent.

“Please, call me Jethro, Herr Obergruppenführer,” he said with a smile.

“Jethro,” Gottschalk corrected himself with a smile. “I understand you are good friends with Herr Lindbergh.”

Jethro nodded slowly. “Charles, well, we used to run in similar circles, but I—” he cleared his throat. “We lost touch when he moved to Europe.”

Gottschalk shook his head in feigned regret. “Yes, it is a pity what happened to his boy, but what I wish to discuss are his
political
leanings.”

“Ah, yes…” Jethro said as he peered over at Gan, who responded with a raised eyebrow.

“Now, I don’t want you to misunderstand me, Jethro. I am not asking you to support National Socialism, but with all these whispers of war on both sides of the Atlantic, the world needs someone like you to help diffuse the situation. As a Buddhist you can act as a… Voice for Peace.”

“Well, to be honest, Herr Obergruppenführer,” he began, but stopped when he heard thunder echo in the distance, and then something else, almost like a whisper, a voice he had heard before. No, it was a thousand voices speaking in tandem. “Did you hear that?” he asked Gan, barely hiding his panic.

Hirsch shrugged. “It is rain, perhaps?” he said in broken English.

Gan looked out to the camp. “There is a storm, but it does not look—
Was zum Teufel…?
”

“What?” Gottschalk asked. “What is it, Gan?”

The whispers echoed again.
We see…
Jethro twisted himself free of Gottschalk’s grasp and hurried over to the tent’s entrance.
We see you…
He pulled aside the flapping canvas, and his stomach dropped at the sight of an enormous obsidian column thundering toward them. He could feel the air around him electrify, the hairs on his arms standing on end.
We see you, Green Lama!