The Green Lama: Unbound (The Green Lama Legacy Book 3) (23 page)

“
Om! Ma-ni Pad-me Hum!
” Jethro choked. He clenched his right fist and swung through the haze of asphyxiation. His fist hit the phantom as if it had been made of solid matter, the shock of impact echoing down Jethro’s arm. The phantom flew back; it’s snakelike arm dissipating from Jethro’s neck. Jethro gasped as air rushed into his lungs. Pulling himself up, he saw Gan struggling to regain control of the vehicle from Johann’s bloody corpse.

“What in
Hashem
’s name is that?!” Gan screeched.

“I don’t—” Jethro gasped. He glanced at his right hand where the Jade Tablet glowed and crackled with electricity, and he understood. “
Om! Vajrapani Hum!
”

Jethro swung at the phantom again, the Jade Tablet exploding with power as it met the creature’s spectral frame. The phantom fell back, its body losing shape as it hit against the opposite door. Jethro could see the contours of a face appear in the shadows of the mist—something that was at once human and not. It was
smiling
at him. The phantom’s arm formed into a blade once again and moved to strike. Jethro readied himself to dodge to blow when he realized its target wasn’t him.

It was Gan.

• • •

“
Necronomicon
?” Ken asked again.

“
Lo! Lo!
” the man exclaimed as he shook his head furiously, unleashing a torrent of unintelligible protests.

“Calm down!” Ken said, trying unsuccessfully to placate him. “You— you have to trust us! We need it for the right reasons!”

Petros drew his blades. “My turn.”

Ken caught the man feverishly glancing away. “No, wait,” he breathed, jumping to his feet. Following the man’s gaze, Ken walked over to a recently emptied bookcase in the corner of the room. He ran his hands over the wooden shelves, while the man continued his increasingly thunderous protestations. Ken’s fingers fell over a small symbol—a single line with five shorter lines branching off—on a slightly raised wooden panel at the back of the bookcase. Tracing its edge, his nails clicking into the carvings, he could feel the soft yet distinguishable flow of air. Wordlessly pushing the panel, Ken heard the sound of gears and mechanisms echo out from the walls. He jumped back as the bookshelf broke away, revealing a small chamber. A pedestal sat in the center, a large leather bound book placed atop. The cover appeared to be made out of the flesh of a human face, stretched and twisted until it was nearly unrecognizable.

“Well, shit,” Caraway swore under his breath.

Vasili nodded his approval. “Not bad, kid.”

Caraway stepped toward the hidden room. “How did you know that would work with him?” he quietly asked Ken.

Ken shook his head slowly, his gaze never leaving the book. “I didn’t.”

“You are one lucky asshole,” Caraway said, patting Ken on the shoulder.

“Tell me about it,” Ken sighed.

“So, all that trouble just for this, eh?” Petros voiced as he paced around the pedestal. “Ugly little book, isn’t it?” He reached for the book
.

“Wait!” Vasili exclaimed, stepping between Petros and the
Necronomicon
, producing the small piece of paper from his pocket. “ Alexei told me to repeat this before we removed the book.”

Petros looked at Vasili incredulously. “He told you to repeat something?”

Vasili shrugged as he read over Alexei’s message again. “A prayer…”

“Why didn’t you say that before when we were tossing all the other books around?” Caraway asked angrily.

“I forgot, all right?” Vasili shot back. “This has not exactly been the most normal day for me either.”

“What sort of prayer is it?” Ken asked.

“I do not know. I think I have heard it before…” Vasili trailed off as he firmed his lips. He looked over to Petros. “I think it sounds like something the Twins would say.”

“This has to do with those fishy bastards?” Petros shouted. “ Alexei told us it would be a simple smash and grab, and instead we got this idiocy. To hell with him and the Twins and their goddamn prayers,” he grumbled as he lifted the book off its perch.

Suddenly, the room was filled with intangible screams, inhuman voices from the shadows. A howling wind came down upon them as if they were suddenly sucked into the vortex of a hurricane filled with air that smelled like sulfur and rot. Ken fell back against the wall, ducking his head beneath his arms. Caraway screamed, unconsciously clutching his chest, the memories of the
Bartlett
raging through his mind. Vasili silently stumbled a step back, his stomach twisting into knots, tightly gripping onto Alexei’s note like a talisman.

Petros’s eyes rolled back into his head. The color leached out of his skin and hair, like water flowing down a drain. Foam bubbled from his mouth. “
Iä! Iä! Cthulhu fhtagn!
” he sputtered as his knees buckled and he dropped to the floor, unconscious.

• • •

The world fell into slow motion as Jethro leapt forward to intercept the creature. He felt the incorporeal blade’s edge slip across his palm, drawing blood. But it wouldn’t be enough, a hollow gesture in the face of death. The blade came within millimeters from Gan’s skull when the phantom let out a violent disembodied scream. “
THE BOOK!
” it shouted as it instantly dissipated like a pall of cigarette smoke out the window. The black cloud blanketing the car suddenly lifted, turning the world into a blur of motion. Ahead the road came to an abrupt, sharp end, the Mediterranean extending beyond.

“Stop the car, Gan!!!” Jethro shouted as they barreled toward the cliff, bracing himself against the back of the seat.

“
Scheiße!
I cannot!” Gan cried. “Johann’s foot is stuck!”

Gan tried to steer the car away but it was too late. The car’s wheels spun out, launching the vehicle over the cliff, toward the frigid waters below. As certain death rushed toward them, all of Jethro’s thoughts were of Jean Farrell.

C
HAPTER 12

REUNIONS

Tsarong knocked tentatively at Dumont’s door. It had been nearly a fortnight since the
Bodhisattva
abruptly locked himself in his quarters, refusing all visitors, and often neglecting the small meals left outside his chamber. Whispers and the frequent sound of feet pacing against the stone floor were often reported by those curious enough to press their ears against the door. A growing concern for Dumont’s wellbeing had spread across the Temple of the Clouds, with many secretly believing the Jade Tablet had driven the American insane—a concern Tsarong was ashamed to admit he shared. “Come in, Tsarong,” Dumont called from within.

Tsarong pushed open the door hesitantly. Dumont was kneeling in the center of the room, his back toward the door, a large rainbow-colored rug laid out on the floor before him. He looked back at Tsarong and smiled. His skin was pale, his face haggard from what Tsarong guessed was blood loss and lack of food, but his grey eyes remained vibrant, almost glowing. “There’s something I want to show you.”

Tsarong sat down carefully beside Dumont. He furrowed his brow as he looked over the rug. “What is this
,
Tulku?”

Dumont smiled. “It is the Jade Tablet.”

Tsarong’s eyes went wide, his heart racing as his stomach fluttered. His skin prickled and the thinning hair on his head began to stand on end. It was a sensation almost like arousal, yet deeper and somehow more divine. “
Om! Ma-ni Pad-me Hum!
Tulku… How is this possible? How did you remove it?”

“I don’t know.” Dumont’s smile faded and he somberly shook his head before continuing. “There are
words
etched into the Tablet, Tsarong. Not just Tibetan, but from every language on Earth, everything from cuneiform to English and some I don’t…” He trailed off, his mouth moving silently before he could once again find his voice. “And that only scratches the surface… There is a
code
hidden in the strand. It took me days to figure out the pattern, several more to piece together the letters and phrases.”

“A code? A code for what?”

Jethro frowned in thought, unable to wrench his gaze off the Tablet. “I can’t be certain—it’s been so long since I ended my studies at the university—but I
think
it’s the chemical ingredients for a new kind of
salt.”

• • •

Jean blinked back tears and shivered despite the warmth. Smoke wafted off her shoulders. She was lying in a fetal position on a marble floor, the stone cold against her cheek. Looking up, she found herself once again in the center of the temple. White columns pierced the darkness, bordering small enclaves with statues lit by shallow firelight. The buzzing in the back of her head drifted into silence and the cloud that had settled over her mind slowly began to clear. Cupped in her hands was the Third and Final Jade Tablet, gripped so tightly she had impressed hundreds of ancient runes into her palms. Turning it over, she realized it was identical to the large cracked crystal egg she had seen in Astrapios’s bedroom.

“Welcome back, Jean,” Prometheus said, standing over her. Twelve figures were hidden in the shadows behind him, their faces hidden. Jean knew who they were without asking—the gods of Olympus. “We’re very proud of you.”

“You son of a bitch,” she hissed. “Everything I just went through. All that destruction and death… Ken…All of it!” she screamed, shaking with rage. She had been played, like a pawn in a game of chess, moved around the board by a sadistic god. “That was all some kind of goddamn test, wasn’t it? Wasn’t it?!”

“Yes and no. Where you went, everything you saw and did, was
real
, as it has, will, and
could
have happened, if you had failed.”

“Failed at what? Getting this?” she asked holding up the Third Jade Tablet. “You sent me to the apocalypse to get a
broken crystal egg
?”

“This is the
Fire from Olympus
, Jean,” Prometheus said. “What I gave man at the dawn of existence. It is the—”

“I don’t care!” She shook the Tablet angrily. “If this was so goddamn important, then why was it sitting in Astrapios’s bedroom, collecting dust?”

Prometheus shook his head. “That was a fake, meant to mislead our adversaries. With R’lyeh rising so soon, we couldn’t take the chance. So, we
moved
it into another time, another
reality
.”

“Another reality?” she huffed incredulously. “There was nothing real about that world, it couldn’t be!”

“You think of time as a single thread; it isn’t. There are thousands, millions of different worlds, mirrors and refractions of one another overlapping and coexisting. The one you visited was a possibility, a counterfactual. The damage there had already been done, so we hid the Tablet there for safekeeping.”

“Safekeeping,” she reiterated. “Buddy, you have no idea what that means. You’re a
god
, why not just hold on to it?”

“Jean, if only it were as simple as that. Had I not moved the Tablet when I did, it would have already been in the hands of the Cult of Cthulhu. The forces at play are more powerful than you can even begin to comprehend. They have spent years, decades, even millennia planning for this day. Even framing you for the murder of Astrapios was part of their plan.”

Jean rolled the Tablet back and forth between her hands, trying to make sense of it all. Alternate worlds, ancient cults, sleeping gods; it all seemed like the stuff out of those pulp magazines the kids were reading. But after everything she had seen, everything she had done, what was not possible? The candlelight refracted through the crystal, turning her hands an unearthly green. Runes lined the lower two thirds of the egg, while the top third depicted three robed figures standing before a massive creature, each holding an item defiantly above its head; a ring, a stone, and an egg. The creature was a twisted chimera, a tentacled head atop a grotesque dragon’s body, enormous batwings extending out.

“Heydrich mentioned three scions,” she said quietly, more to herself than the others. “Me, someone named Vasili, and Dumont… But, Ken said Dumont had gone missing—” A smile creased her lips as she connected the dots. She had been right all along. “You tricky bastard.”

“The three bearers of the Jade Tablets,” Prometheus said, ignoring her revelation. “Only you three can prevent the rise of Cthulhu.”

“You’re the reason I decided to come to Samothrace,” Jean said. “How long have you been playing me, the Green Lama, all of us, like this?”

“We’ve had our influence over you and the Green Lama for some time now,” one of the male figures said, his voice like thunder.