“And what’s yours?” she asked, aiming her gun at his chest. There was a glint of light and she caught a glimpse of the golden Ω on his silver ring on his right hand. There was a twist in her gut as the truth hit her. Omega. This was the man who had taken Gary, who had probably killed Theodor.
The man shrugged, his face obscured. “Which one do you want?”
“Pick your favorite.”
“Hugh Gilmore. Dr. Charles Pali. Jethro Dumont.” He paused for effect. “The Green Lama. Those are my favorites, even if they’re not mine. What are yours?”
Jean cocked her gun. “Omega.”
“Ah,” the man sounded. He glanced down at his ring and smiled, before placing his hands behind his back. “Very perceptive, Miss Farrell; much more so than your compatriots. I suppose that says something about you… But we’ve gone on a bit of a tangent, haven’t we? Here let me ask again.”
The house lights came on and Jean’s eyes were drawn upwards. Her knees felt weak, and her grip on her gun slackened ever so slightly. She stumbled back a step, her eyes stinging and threatening tears. Jean had ran headfirst into mob dens, seen the destruction of an alternate future, defeated supernatural monsters, but for all the nightmares she had seen, this one rocked her to the core.
There were dozens of them, all hanging upside down from the rafters, bound and gagged, their throats slashed open, their faces covered with blood; her cast mates, the understudies, the director and crew, all of them, dead.
“What did you do to them?” she asked illogically, little more than a whisper.
Omega smiled, his eyes obscured. He looked up at his work with pride. “I asked them questions. Simple ones really, but they were… less than helpful.”
“You killed them,” she choked.
“Not at first. But then they started to scream, and that would have drawn some unwanted attention. We couldn’t have that now, could we? Besides, this makes my point very clear, does it not?”
Tears began to stream down her cheeks. It was her fault, she realized. They had died because of her. Her face hardened and she tightened her grip on her pistol. She aimed at the man’s head. She had already killed one monster this week, what was two?
“That won’t be necessary, Miss Farrell,” Omega said with a dismissive wave. “I’ve only come to talk.”
“Like I’d listen to anything you’d have to say?” Jean hissed through gritted teeth.
Omega gave her a thin smile and held out his hands apologetically. “I’m not giving you a choice, Miss Farrell.”
“I’m not asking for one,” Jean growled, firing two quick shots.
But Omega anticipated her and quickly sidestepped and twisted left, the bullets cutting nothing but air. Jean swore under her breath. Spinning on her heel, she blindly fired two more shots and raced backstage. She had to get out of here and get to Jethro. She couldn’t face this monster alone.
“Come now, Miss Farrell, that was awfully rude,” Omega said calmly, his voice echoing after her. “You didn’t even ask me what I want!”
Jean ran down the steps into the hallway, where her feet slipped on the bloody floor. She fell forward, busting open her chin against the wood. Her gun went off, the bullet striking the lone bulb, plunging the hallway into darkness. She tried to get back to her feet when a hand thrust out from the shadows behind her and grabbed her by the neck. He pressed his knee on his spine and pushed down. The air rushed out of her lungs as he shoved her face into the blood soaked floor.
“This isn’t where you fight back, Miss Farrell,” Omega snarled. “This isn’t your grand escape. That isn’t the game we’re playing, not anymore.”
“Yeah, it is,” said Jean defiantly, as she blindly aimed her gun back over her head and fired, the gun blast ringing in her right ear. There was the muffled sound of the bullet hitting home and Omega grunted in pain. His grip on Jean’s neck slackened and he fell back, lifting his knee off her. Jean scrambled to her feet and raced toward the exit, doing her best to ignore the pain in her chin, the deadened sound in her ear, and the blood that now covered her face and body.
Jean winced as the broken glass sliced into her feet. She slammed against the door, but it wouldn’t budge, the knob removed. She screamed, angrily slapping the door. In the corner of her eye she saw a small, decade-old phone nailed to the wall. She reached over and lifted up the receiver and dialed Jethro’s unlisted number—MOrningside 7-2363—when she realized the line was dead. “Shit!” she cursed softly, dropping the receiver.
“Who were you trying to call, Miss Farrell?” Omega asked, his soulless voice hoarse. Jean forced herself to turn and face him. He was leaning heavily against the far wall. A crimson stream flowed from the corner of his mouth, a hand over his chest. “Do you think he would have gotten here in time? And even if he had, what makes you think he could have saved you?” He coughed, blood flecking his chin. “Don’t you understand, Miss Farrell? I’ve already caught you.”
“‘Caught’ is a big word, especially considering how messed up you’re looking right now,” she retorted.
“I admit it’s been a long time since someone made me bleed, but it is not the first time someone has tried to shoot me—or at close range, for that matter. Suffice to say based on what I know about you, Miss Farrell, I knew it was prudent to take precautions. Armored vest,” he said rapping his knuckles against his chest, eliciting a soft clang! clang! “Quite useful, even at point blank.”
“Thanks, now I know where not to aim.” Jean raised her gun but Omega gave her a confident slanted grin.
“How many bullets do you think you fired, Miss Farrell? Four? Five? Because I’m sure I counted six.”
She squeezed the trigger and was greeted with an empty click!
“Had to try,” Jean said with a shrug. She lowered her gun, holding on to it just in case. “It’s like my mom said, better safe than sorry.”
“Did she?” Omega frowned in surprise as he began limping toward her. “I thought she died in childbirth. Giving birth to you, if I’m not mistaken. Sad isn’t it, when life takes life?” he pondered as he tossed aside a fallen chair. “An only child too; you must have been hell for your father to raise. Is his arthritis doing any better?” Glass crunched beneath his shoes. “Must be difficult to work when your own body rejects you. Speaking of which, does he still have the farm or did the bank foreclose on it? No. Of course not. You paid off the last of his loans, didn’t you?” He paused to consider this, as if it were a sudden revelation. “Well, that was awfully sweet of you. Was it money you made working on stage? Hm? No… Of course not… Actor’s salaries aren’t that substantial.”
“You’re forgetting how talented I am,” Jean replied, pressing her body against the wall. She placed the sole of her left foot up against the wall, ignoring the sharp stab of pain from the glass imbedded in the skin. “I’m kind of in demand.”
Omega gave her a broad smile, his teeth red with blood. “Yes, you are, Miss Farrell. Yes, you are. Now, shall we finish this dance?”
“Let’s.”
He launched at her, but Jean was ready for him. Kicking off the wall, she swung her gun, striking Omega hard in the face. There was a stomach-wrenching crack as his nose twisted to the right and blood spurted out of his nostrils. Omega grunted in pain, but was undeterred, maroon cascading down his shadowed face. In a lightning move, he grabbed her by the arm and twisted it hard in the wrong direction. Jean screamed as the arm was pulled from of its socket with a loud pop! Omega then snatched her by the throat, his nails digging into her skin as he lifted her off the ground and slammed her against the wall. Stars exploded behind Jean’s eyes, air choking in her throat as he pressed down on her windpipe. She clawed at his wrist but his grip only tightened. He slammed her head against the wall again and then everything went numb.
Chapter 10: Absence
JETHRO LEANED back from the microscope, massaging his eyes, less from exhaustion and more from disbelief. He had spent the better part of the day further exami
ning the body before moving on to the black liquid, working straight through the morning and into the afternoon. It seemed to defy all scientific law, almost as if it existed outside the physical realm. Jethro was by no means a stranger to the fantastic—he skirted the line between reality and the impossible on a daily basis—but that still didn’t make his discoveries any more comforting. He got out of his chair and began pacing his study.
Despite having no molecular structure, the liquid seemed to move on its own accord, at times appearing to defy gravity. More troubling was its interaction with the radioactive salts. He had recreated Jean and Ken’s experiment under a much more controlled environment. Even a single grain of salt and a drop of liquid produced an explosion equivalent to a stick of dynamite, a reaction not unlike the exothermic interaction between sodium and water. Somehow, impossibly, the salts and the liquid were chemically linked.
Jethro looked at his hand—the veins distended and noticeably green—recalling the electric shock he had felt touching the liquid. But, he hadn’t taken a single grain of radioactive salts in months, not since R’lyeh.
He walked over to the large bank of windows overlooking the city and watched the sun set behind the mountains of brick and steel. Some time later, the penthouse elevator doors slid open and Jethro heard the familiar sound of soft footsteps walking down the hallway.
“Everything go well with the morgue, my friend?” Jethro asked as Tsarong entered the study.
Tsarong nodded. “As well as one could expect. Though they were quite taken aback by the stench. A young Mr. Rohn sends his regards; he seemed genuinely terrified when he did. Is Mrs. Stewart-Brown here?”
“She is out with Marie.”
“And Miss Farrell left for tonight’s show?” Tsarong asked, glancing over toward the master bedroom.
Jethro nodded. “She thought it best, though I felt she needed the rest. The shooting was weighing upon her, a feeling I know all too well.”
Tsarong crossed his arms, placing his hands into his sleeves. “The child?”
Jethro sighed and began pacing the study. “You were there with me in London as you were the day we arrived in New York. In nearly everyway, protecting children… They are why we do what we do and Jean understands that better than anyone.” Jethro closed his eyes and sighed. “Where is the line, Tsarong? Every single day I know I am skirting it, testing to see how far I can go without crossing it. But it isn’t enough to save those closest to me. Do I breach the border and betray everything I believe to protect them, to protect the innocent? I know the price I must pay, but what do I do when those I love are forced to cross that line?”
“We are, by our very nature, flawed creatures, Tulku. It is partially why we have dedicated ourselves to the teachings of the Lord Buddha, Dispeller of Darkness, so that we can move beyond these imperfections. Let us not forget, you yourself are not innocent of murder,” Tsarong replied. “Or for that matter the pursuit of earthly pleasures. How many women did you date before Miss Farrell?” He held up a hand as Jethro tried to protest. “But then again my karma isn’t unblemished either. Of my many crimes—and there are many—I deceived you, the closest I will ever have to a son. But I did so because we both do not see ourselves as single beings, rather we are part of the collective mind of this realm. In that way, perhaps the sacrifice must be ours to make so that others may find the path to enlightenment.”
Jethro considered this. “We must stray so that others may find the path?”
“I’m saying I don’t know,” Tsarong admitted with a sad smile. “I once told you that ‘to fight evil is to serve good,’ but the further we travel down this path I have come to realize the answers we seek will never be so simple. Whether or not our choices will help us move to the higher realms or push us down into the depths, it is not ours to know.”
“To know your destiny is to void it,” Jethro added in somber understanding.
Tsarong looked at him with a wan smile and nodded.
Their ears pricked up at the sound of a phone ringing. Jethro instinctually glanced over at the small rotary dial when he realized the sound was coming from the hidden compartment in the wall. He walked over to the massive bookshelf and pulled back a leather-bound volume. The wall drew back, revealing a hidden phone. Only a select few had the unlisted number that appropriately spelled out “Om Pad-me,” and of that group, one was dead, another missing. There had been a time when the call would have went directly to a speaker in the study, though that had proven to be an ill-conceived design.
“Om! Ma-ni Pad-me Hum!” the Green Lama answered.
“Jethro,” Caraway said without introduction. “There’s been an incident.”
“Another cannibal killing?”
Caraway hesitated. “No… It’s—It’s Jean.”
Jethro could hear the anxiety in Caraway’s voice and something inside Jethro’s body shut down. “What about her?” he whispered, suddenly feeling very cold.
“She…” Caraway paused to clear his throat. “We’re at the theatre…”
Jethro stumbled and grabbed onto Tsarong. “John, is Jean okay?”
“I… They don’t—”
“John,” Jethro repeated, his tone commanding despite the apprehension wracking his mind. His fingers dug into the wall, cracking the wooden paneling. “Where is Jean?”
There was silence on the line.
“John?”
“You’d better get down here…”
• • •
LIGHTS AND SIGNS reflected off the taxicab window, a kaleidoscope of flashing advertisements for everything from peanuts to cigarettes to Broadway shows. Men and women, dressed to the nines, walked arm-in-arm along the sidewalks while trolleys rattled along their tracks down the street. Save for the small army of police officers around the Palace Theatre, it looked like a normal evening in Times Square.
A pit had formed in the center of Jethro’s stomach and he was overtaken by a sense of unreality, a waking dream. The cab pulled up in front of the Palace Theatre and Jethro absentmindedly handed the driver a twenty. He climbed out of the car and stumbled toward the entrance, suddenly feeling lightheaded. There was a collective chatter bubbling around him; the cacophony of camera flashes and people shouting his name. Somewhere in the haze he heard someone tell him the theatre was a crime scene. Holding back the mass of reporters, photographers, and onlookers were uniformed police officers in their double-breasted blues, faces he was sure he would recognize if he rose above the numbness enveloping his consciousness. His gaze trained on the theatre entrance, the periphery of his vision suddenly blurred and tunneled. His feet seemed to turn to liquid and he tumbled forward, catching himself on a stanchion. Someone placed a hand on his shoulder and he heard Caraway’s gravelly voice saying his name.
“Where is she?” Jethro asked absently as he kept moving forward.
“She’s not—She’s not here. At least they haven’t found her yet,” Caraway admitted under his breath.
“‘They haven’t found her.’” Jethro repeated, with a growing sense of despair. He stopped short and swallowed the lump in his throat. He turned his head to Caraway, but kept his eyes trained on the theatre entrance. “What happened?”
Caraway shook his head. “They’re not exactly sure yet, but it isn’t pretty. The entire cast and crew—”
“How many people?”
“Fifteen at last count; but they keep finding more.”
Jethro’s eyes steeled over. More than fifteen innocent people dead. “Take me inside.”
“Are you sure?” Caraway asked but Jethro’s expression spoke volumes. Caraway put his hand on Jethro’s shoulder. “Okay, let me just clear it with the boys.”
“It’s my theatre, John,” Jethro whispered.
“Excuse me?”
Jethro ran a hand over his face. “The theatre. It’s mine. Wouldn’t they want to speak to me?”
“Okay. Let me take care of it.”
Jethro reached over and gripped Caraway’s hand. �
�Thank you, John.”
Caraway gave him a ghost of a smile. Jethro nodded, and waited for the nightmare to end.
• • •
DETECTIVE CREVIER paced the stage, looking over the dozen or more bodies laid out before him while unconsciously running his thumb over the scar on his right cheek. His head felt like it had been left to soak in a pickle jar. He had barely slept a full night’s sleep in weeks, having been wracked with recurring nightmares of people getting split open and eaten alive in front of him. The dreams left him sitting up in bed, drenched in sweat. Fulton had noticed Crevier’s exhaustion, though whenever he asked, Crevier would just shrug and say his bed was “a-rattlin’.” Let his partner think he was knocking boots with some dame, even if that was the farthest thing from the truth. Fulton was descended from the Puritans, so anything remotely related to sex turned him redder than an Indian.
A young woman’s body—still unidentified—lay at his feet, a deep knife wound stretched across her throat, sliced through to the spine; her auburn hair knotted with dried blood. He scribbled down her description in his notebook. It was his and Fulton’s job to catalogue the bodies, note their injuries and see if they had an identification of them in hopes of figuring out a motive. Not that Crevier was holding out any hope. Whoever was behind this—and Crevier was guessing at least six, if not a dozen men—they were very good at their job. Aside from the knife wounds, there were no clues to go on. It was almost as if they had all been killed by the invisible man.
He glanced up to the back of the theatre and saw Caraway enter alongside a familiar handsome man. Crevier recognized the face immediately, having seen it plastered on hundreds of tabloids and in dozens of newsreels. “Hey, Jeff, is that Jethro Dumont Caraway’s talking to?”
The Green Lama: Crimson Circle Page 20