The Green Lama: Unbound (The Green Lama Legacy Book 3) (26 page)

Sotiria cleared her throat, turning back to the helm. “You did not startle me, John,” she lied. “I am just worried about Petros. Do you think he will be all right?”

Caraway took a drag. “Do you want me to lie to you?”

“No. I suppose not,” she said softly.

“He’s dead,” Caraway stated.

“I thought as much,” Sotiria said without emotion, her eyes on the dark waters ahead.

“You know,” Caraway said after several minutes of silence,” ou didn’t answer my question.”

She frowned. “What do you mean?”

“I might not be from around here, but I can tell when two people got a history.”

Sotiria glanced back at Caraway. “Are you going to proposition me, John?”

Caraway looked her in the eyes while he took another drag of his cigarette but didn’t reply.

“Vasili, he…” she hesitated. “He is my husband. I am sorry. I mean to say he is my former husband.”

Caraway let out a chuckle. “Ah, figured as much.”

“Are you married, John?”

He cleared his throat and shifted uncomfortably. “I suppose you could say I am, though honestly it really depends on the day. And after all this, who knows? Might have found the straw that broke the camel’s back, and if she’s not there when I get home it will hurt like hell but, well, I guess I won’t be surprised.”

Sotiria nodded, though Caraway wasn’t sure she was really listening. “I never thought anything of all the other men, the things I did behind his back. Life is too short, too brief to let these things weigh you down. That is what I thought at least,” she said, as a tear appeared in the corner of her eye. “The problem was not that I did not love Vasili, it is just that… I suppose I did not realize it until it was too late, after I had made too many mistakes. And now, even after we have been separated for so long, it feels like I have been unfaithful to him everyday.”

Caraway eyed the growing ash at the end of his cigarette. “Me and the missus, we were nothing but kids when we got hitched. Right before I went into the service, before the Krauts decided to get all frisky with the rest of the Continent and mustard gas the hell out of everyone. We both had a past, but who doesn’t? I just guess we both thought that they would never catch up with us, never weigh us down. But kids like to dream, until the day they learn that dreams don’t come true. Love. They like to spread it across billboards to sell tickets, two people looking each other in the eye as if they were made for each other. As if it were ever that simple.”

He looked up to find Sotiria standing in front of him, her bloodshot eyes staring into him. She placed a hand on his cheek and leaned forward, her lips centimeters from his, waiting for their embrace.

“I’m sorry,” he said, swallowing the lump in his throat, feeling her breath against his skin. “I can’t.”

Sotiria pressed her eyes closed, tears pouring down her cheeks. “Yes,” she whispered. “I know. I just wanted to pretend for a moment.”

“He loves you, still does. Saw it in his—saw it in the way he looked at you.”

Sotiria nodded and then moved back to the helm. “That is why it hurts so much.”

There was a soft knock on the window. They looked over and saw Ken beckoning Caraway outside. Caraway took a long drag of his cigarette and walked toward the exit. Stopping at the door, he looked back to Sotiria. “I just want you to know, if things were different—”

“Go, John,” she cut him off.

Caraway followed Ken out onto the deck, the cool wind a shock to his skin. In the pale blue moonlight, Caraway could see that Ken’s eyes were red raw; dried rivulets glistened on the other man’s cheeks. “Jesus, is there a reason everyone is crying on this boat?” he grumbled.

Ken sniffed audibly and self-consciously wiped his face with his sleeve. “You should take a look at this,” he said in lieu of a response. He led Caraway into the galley, where they found Vasili huddled, shivering in the corner. A harsh whisper echoed from the shadows, as if the book were screaming.

“Something wrong with the Big Guy?” Caraway asked.

“Vasili,” Ken called, deadpan, still looking at Caraway. “Show John what you showed me.”

Caraway raised an eyebrow at Ken’s accent. “I take it he knows you’re not British.”

Ken let out a sardonic laugh. “Buddy, you don’t know the half of it.”

“I have not been sleeping,” Vasili confessed as he opened the book, delicately turning the pages. Like Ken, his eyes were bloodshot, tearstains covering his cheeks. “My nights are filled with nightmares. Horrors I would have never thought possible…” His voice trailed off as he leafed through the book’s illuminated manuscript. “It seems,” he said as he showed the book to Caraway,” hat these were more than just dreams.”

“Aw, hell,” Caraway grumbled as he looked over the illustration, goose bumps running down his neck. “That is what I think it is, isn’t it?”

“Yup. That one’s Vasili, that one looks like the Green Lama and that’s
definitely
Jean,” Ken said, indicating three screaming figures wrapped in the creature’s tentacles. He then pointed at the bottom of the page. “And those two corpses—”

“You and me,” Caraway sighed.

Ken nodded. “And that girl strung up like a pig at the county fair…”

“Sotiria,” Vasili said, his voice shaking. He then tapped his finger against a horrific creature with a head like a black tongue. “This is Nyarlathotep. People whisper his name in awe of his horrors and wonders, the crawling chaos, the swarthy man. He is both and neither. The Old One who walks. I have seen him before.”

“When?” Caraway asked.

Tears began to stream down Vasili’s face. He closed the book and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. “If I knew, American, I would tell you.”

Caraway could feel beads of sweat forming on his brow. “And I’m guessing that big monster with the tentacles and the wings that was tearing us all apart is—”

“Cthulhu,” Vasili said, the name hitting Caraway hard in the stomach.

“Goddammit,” Caraway growled. “We’re dead.”

“Yup,” Ken nodded. He looked to Caraway. “What do we do?”

“We’ll see what our good Sheriff of Kamariotissa can tell us.”

• • •

“Karl Heydrich,” Jethro breathed in disbelief when Jean concluded her story. “You are
certain
what happened to you was real?”

“Buddy, it doesn’t get any more real than that,” Jean replied as she took another drink of water, finding herself impossibly famished once they had returned to the hotel. “I take it you know Heydrich.”

“I killed him,” he said numbly. “Five years ago in Tibet.”

“Killed?” Jean asked, genuinely taken aback. “That doesn’t sound like you.”

“I was very young,” he replied with a sad smile as he began pacing the room. “He and a small contingent of Nazi storm troopers invaded the Temple of the Clouds hunting for the Jade Tablet. He murdered a young boy, a student of mine. Brutally. In my rage, I stole Heydrich’s life and gave it to the boy… I suppose as someone so familiar with the supernatural I shouldn’t view your story with any skepticism, but… The creatures you encountered, what did you call them?”

“Deep Ones.”

Jethro nodded thoughtfully. “I may have encountered one myself. I barely survived. It took all my remaining radioactive salts to fight off the creature’s venom…” he drifted off, and shook his head. “
Heydrich
. It’s not possible. Even if you
did
skip forward in time, Heydrich is dead. There’s no way he could have lived.”

“Oh, it’s possible. I can still feel his rotted hand against my neck,” she said unconsciously rubbing her throat.

Jethro shook his head. “No, Jean, you don’t understand. When I drained the life out of Heydrich and gave it to Ravi, there was nothing left. He was
beyond
death. He couldn’t have lived, not now or twenty years from now. Whatever—whoever—you saw was not—”

“Jethro, I know what I saw!” she shouted, slamming her fist on the table. “That thing called himself Karl Heydrich, told me he had been undead for over twenty years and according to Ken—the other Ken—he’s the guy behind everything. Cthulhu, the Tablets, everything is tied to him. Like it or not, Dumont, Karl Heydrich is our big bad.”

Jethro collapsed into his seat, covering his face in despair. “
Thiru neela kantam! Om! Tare Tuttare Ture Soha!
This is all my fault.”

“Don’t flatter yourself, Dumont. We’re just a bunch of cogs in a big, millennium-sized wheel, and the motor’s been running long before you and I came onto the scene.”

“Just a rich boy playing the games of gods,” Jethro said under his breath. He looked to Jean. “What can we do?” he asked aloud.

“We got ourselves one big advantage. Me.”

Jethro bit back an amused smile. “Don’t flatter yourself, either, Farrell.”

Jean ignored Jethro’s retort. “I know all their decisions, all our mistakes. No matter what Heydrich and his friends know, I’m twenty years ahead of them. As long as we’re not stupid, we can probably stop this thing.”

Jethro raised an eyebrow. “Probably?”

“Well,” she said with a shrug, ‘“gotta hedge my bets.”

• • •

Alexei was waiting for them. Standing at the edge of the dock, he watched the shadows shift beneath the waves, thinking back to the time when darkness consumed the world. So many centuries, walking while the Others slept, toying with the apes, so convinced of their importance, ignorant to their insignificance. How he relished it; how little he would miss it. The city was rising, breaking through the waves. He could feel the stars aligning, singing in the void, pulling toward each other in their millennial dance. The great priest was waiting, sleeping, dreaming. All that was missing, all that they needed, was a Jade Tablet. Just one. One to rise, three to sleep.

It had all seemed so simple when he took this shell; how had it grown so complicated? He, more than any creature, living or otherwise, knew that all prophecy was open to interpretation, but in the millennia he had traveled this rock he was more certain than ever the time of awakening was at hand. He had been so meticulous, and now, one by one, everything had begun to fall apart. With only hours left until the stars’ alignment, he was forced to find answers in the
Necronomicon
. But he was not without his tricks.

Tonight’s sacrifice would at least assure the city’s ascension and from there he would draw them in.

“Ευ ρόσδεκτη λάτη,” he said to the one called Caraway as Sotiria’s boat pulled up to the dock.

The American raised a suspicious eyebrow and nodded a greeting.

“Πούείναι Vasiliκαιο έτρος?” Alexei asked in Greek, knowing how it unnerved the American. In truth, Alexei was fluent in every human language, but for the sake of appearances, and more for his enjoyment, he would continue the charade.

Caraway glanced pleadingly over to Sotiria as she tied the boat to the dock. “He wants to know where Vasili and Petros are,” she told him before responding to Alexei’s question. “Είναι στην α οθήκη. Οδηγίες αναγκ ν του έτρος.”

Alexei nodded, knowing full well what had happened. He had felt it echo through reality. He stepped onto the boat and walked toward the galley, watching the shadows in the water begin to converge. Stepping inside, he found Petros covered with a small blanket, his body frozen, skin white.

“Tsk, tsk, Petros… You just
had
to pick it up…” Alexei sighed. He looked in to the shadows. “How are you feeling, Vasili?”

Vasili stepped out of the darkness, clutching the book close to his body, looking more like a boy than a man. “There’s something bad coming, sir,” he stuttered. “Something really, really bad.”

Alexei furrowed his brow in faux concern. “Is that so?”

Vasili nodded. “We have to stop it. Somehow, we have to stop it.”

“It’ll be all right, Vasili,” he said, extending a hand. “Give me the book and it will be all right.”

Vasili glanced at Alexei’s hand and began shaking his head. “No, I—I don’t think I should, sir.”

Alexei smiled warmly as he stepped closer. “ Vasili. Shh!” He pressed a forefinger to his lips and then touched Vasili’s forehead. Vasili’s eyes rolled back and his head lopped to the side, unconscious but still standing. “There’s a good boy,” Alexei said as he pulled the book free.

Click!
The sweet sensation of cold metal pressed against the back of Alexei’s head.

“Okay, buddy,” Caraway barked. “I don’t know what you just did but you’re gonna have to put the book down and your hands in the air.”

Sotiria appeared at the other end of the galley, visibly shocked. “John, what are you doing?” she whispered.

“Ain’t gonna repeat myself, bucko,” Caraway said, ignoring her as he tore off his eye patch.

“John, your eye!” she exclaimed.

Caraway grimaced but kept his eyes on Alexei. “I’ll explain later; after our good
sheriff
starts explaining the book.”