“Just stay down until I tell you not to. This is going to get messy real quickly.”
Screams began to echo out from the bullpen along with the increasing staccato of gunfire. Caraway felt his stomach flip angrily; he had just finished cleaning the place. He looked to Woods and silently nodded. The Commissioner responded in kind. Caraway reached to open the door when glass exploded in, proving him true to his word.
• • •
Gary’s hands were shaking as he pulled back the shroud. He was drowning, each breath an effort against the crushing weight pushing down on his chest. The face before him wasn’t his mother’s. His mother was beautiful; only Evangl was more beautiful than her. The woman lying on the slab before him was little more than a skeleton, the flesh torn off, leaving an unwavering red and white grin. They—the people, the monsters who did this—had cruelly left her eyes, sharp green and gold staring at him, looking through him. This wasn’t his mother, he told himself. His mother was beautiful and she was alive. His mother was alive. His mother was—
“Oh God, Evangl, it’s her!” he moaned, feeling his knees buckle beneath him.
Evangl ran up beside him, caught him in her arms, and helped lower him to the ground. He pressed his face into the crook of her neck as the tears began to pour. She laced her left hand with his, their rings clinking together.
“I did this to her!” he sobbed. “I gave her the ticket. It was my idea. I did it. I killed her.”
Evangl ran her fingers through his hair. “Shhh… Shh… No you didn’t, baby. That wasn’t you. You couldn’t have known.”
Gary fervently shook his head. “I could’ve— should’ve saved her. That’s what we do, right? We save people.”
“We can’t save everyone. You know that.”
“But we should have saved her,” he said hoarsely.
“I know, baby,” she whispered. “I know.”
“Who… Who would do this?”
Evangl glanced at the blood beneath her mother-in-law’s fingernails and frowned. “I don’t know…”
“I’m gonna find who did this,” Gary promised, pounding his fist against the floor. “You’ll see. No matter what, I’m gonna… I’m gonna…”
“Breathe, love. Just breathe.”
The clock ticked out the seconds, one at a time, until they turned into minutes. Their skin grew cold in the refrigerated space, but they paid it no mind. They had been kidnapped, beaten, and shot during their time with the Green Lama, but this was the first time death had stepped through their door. They were no longer safe, Evangl realized; their armor had been stripped away. But that wasn’t really true, was it? They had never been safe, only lucky, living on borrowed time while the clock ticked down to zero.
Her thoughts became manifest as a rapid succession of pops and screams echoed down the stairwell.
Gary wiped his eyes with the back of his hand and looked up at the ceiling. “Gunfire.” He climbed to his feet and carefully pulled the sheet back over his mother. He kissed the tip of his fingers and touched her forehead.
“You sure?” Evangl asked.
“I’ll never forget the sound,” he replied, his voice hollow. He held out his hand and helped her up.
“Should we?”
He met her gaze. “As if we wouldn’t?”
She nodded and pulled a gun from her purse.
Gary raised his eyebrows. “You’re carrying?”
Evangl looked at him in loving disbelief. “I always carry a gun.”
A ghost of a smile touched his lips. “I feel like I should say some clever witticism to comment on your hypocrisy.”
“Hypocrisy?” She wiped a tear from his cheek with her thumb. “Sweetheart, you weren’t paying attention.”
He allowed himself a quiet, melancholy laugh. “This isn’t as much fun as I remember.”
Evangl stepped up on her toes and kissed him softly on the lips. “That’s because it never was.”
• • •
Desdemona burst into the office, landing cat-like on all fours. Shards of glass hung off her pale, bare skin as blood oozed from several bullet wounds, soaking her nightgown. Her face was sliced open, exposed red muscles twitching madly. Her eyes were a vicious, glistening black. Outside the soft, pained moans of injured or dying policemen could be heard, like a battlefield in the aftermath of a war.
She shrieked in a warbling cry, a thousands voices screaming together. Jethro clutched his head at the sound, feeling suddenly unseated from reality as a hot, white flash of pain exploded behind his eyes. For a brief moment he was once again aboard the Bartlett, surrounded by the pungent scent of death, the thunderstorm of evil. She wanted him; they wanted him. He could feel them inside his mind, whispering to him, telling him they would kill everyone that stood in their way.
Desdemona crabbed her body over, shifting and twisting so she could keep her obsidian eyes trained on Jethro. He could feel her looking through him like blades stabbing into his heart when he heard the muted crack of gunfire. A gaping wound appeared in Desdemona’s chest, a thick droplet of blood racing down her body. Her head cocked unnaturally to the side as she considered the smoking gun in Woods’s hand. She bared her teeth—black ooze lining her gums—as she jammed a finger into the wound and pulled out the metal slug. She held the bullet up and turned it over between her forefinger and thumb before she lapped the blood off it with her split tongue. She then took the bullet and drove it deep into the palm of her right hand, hissing while she did.
“Holy God,” Woods breathed, falling against the wall. A dark stain grew out from the crotch of his pants.
Desdemona turned her bloody face to the commissioner. Her black eyes blinked once, twice, staring at him like a spider regards a fly Her cracked lips extended into a hideous smile. Her back arched and her legs muscles riveted as she launched herself at Woods. The commissioner hollered and Jethro leapt in her path, grabbed Woods, threw him aside and raced into the bullpen. Desdemona let out a maddening howl, followed by the sound of glass scratching beneath her feet as she quickly made chase.
“Jethro! Get back, you idiot!” He heard Caraway shout after him.
He looked scared, adopting the panicked gait of a foolish playboy, a simple ruse to draw her away, get her isolated, before more people died. Bullets whizzed by as he raced though the destroyed bullpen, the surviving officers futilely trying to stop her. Jethro rushed over to the stairwell when Desdemona jumped him, wrapping her arms and legs around him. Jethro’s legs crumpled beneath the sudden added weight and they tumbled down the stairs in tandem. The shards of glass hanging off her body cut through Jethro’s suit and sliced into his flesh.
As they hit the landing, Jethro reached around and unleashed a torrent of energy. Desdemona’s grip shot open allowing Jethro to scramble to his feet. Desdemona back flipped into a crouch, her hands curled like claws. A despondent wave fell over Jethro as he looked into her black eyes; the woman he had saved wasn’t there.
“Freeze!”
Two uniformed officers stood at the base of the stairs, their sidearms aimed at Desdemona. Jethro moved to warn them when Desdemona leapt down stairs—mindless of the bullets slicing through her body—and tore out their throats in a single, terrifying motion. Twin scarlet fountains erupted as Desdemona dropped a pair of tracheas and tongues to the floor.
She turned back to Jethro and slowly curled a bloody, beckoning finger. She smiled sweetly despite her ruined face. Anger suddenly roiled inside him, at once foreign and familiar. His fingers curled into a fist, radioactive energy flowing through veins. “Om! Ma-ni Pad-me Hum!” he whispered before diving at her.
But Desdemona had anticipated the attack, quickly sidestepping as Jethro flew past, catching him by the throat singlehanded. Using his momentum, she spun him around and slammed him into the marble floor, cracking the stone. Jethro gasped at the impact as Desdemona tightened her grip around his throat and began to squeeze.
Chapter 5
INNER DEMONS
THE POLICE STATION was in disarray, buried in bits of wood, glass, and blood. Caraway limped through the center of the bedlam that had once been the squad room, pressing a scarlet soaked rag against his face while policemen ran around tending to the injured. This was the third time in almost as many months that the station had been ravaged. No wonder the department was always in the middle of a budget crisis, they practically had to keep a construction crew on retainer just to make sure the building stayed standing.
“One woman did this?” Gary asked in amazement, his gaze darting like a dog ready to be hit. He and Evangl had arrived just after the storm had passed, though Evangl insisted on keeping her gun close. Not that Caraway could blame them, after what he had just been through he was ready to keep a machine gun at his side.
“Wouldn’t exactly call her a woman,” Caraway grumbled, wincing as the claw wound on his cheek reopened. “More like a force of nature.”
“And this was the Bartlett survivor?” Evangl asked.
“Desdemona,” Caraway affirmed as they walked into his wrecked office. “It was like watching a caged tiger break loose. Killed six officers and scarred two dozen others.”
He pulled open his bottom desk drawer with the toe of his boot, grabbed the bottle of whiskey, and opened it with his teeth.
“And Dumont?”
“Snatched him up like she was playing jacks,” he replied before taking a swig. He poured some onto the rag and pressed it against his face, grimacing at the sting.
“So she survives a floating ship of death, then raises Cain in a police station so she can kidnap a millionaire?” Evangl asked. “That doesn’t make a bit of sense.”
“Since when did anything we ever do make sense?” Caraway retorted, brushing a bit of plaster off his chair before sitting down. “You should see how the boys downtown react when they read my reports. They keep telling me I’m the next Richard Foster.”
“He does have a point,” Gary said wryly to Evangl, though his eyes were glassy. “The sort of crap we deal with is straight out of a bad serial, cliffnangers and all. We even have a hero who likes to dress up in a showy outfit.”
Evangl looked down at the shattered glass covering the floor. “But how could she have done all this? She would have to be built like a train.”
Caraway shook his head. “More like a succubus. Like my ex-wife. It was her eyes, though…” Caraway said distantly. “They weren’t… right.”
“How so?” Evangl asked.
“They were… black. Not just the pupils, but her… They looked like holes where the eyes should be. Black enough you could fall into them and never stop falling.”
“Well, that’s one of the creepiest things I’ve heard today,” Gary commented, clearing his throat. He blinked, tears welling up. “Wonder if that’s what—what, um, happened on the…?”
“No way of knowing,” Caraway said as calmly as he could. He and Gary had their issues in the past, but no one deserved to lose someone—let alone their mother—aboard the Bartlett. Gary was putting on a brave show, but it could only go on so much longer before the cracks opened up. “All that matters now is that we find her.”
“And save Dumont, right?” Gary asked, his voice hollow. “Because that’s what we do.”
Caraway smiled wanly. “Unless the Lama saves him first.”
“Is there a plan?” Evangl asked, lacing her fingers with Gary’s.
“There’s always a plan,” Caraway said, boldly placing his sidearm on the desk.
Evangl eyed the gun skeptically for a moment. “But you haven’t figured it out yet.”
Caraway’s shoulders slumped, deflated. “I haven’t figured it out yet.”
“Fantastic.”
• • •
Pain raged through Wilfred’s body. Enveloped in darkness, he blindly touched his fingers to his face, hissing at the sharp sting. His eyes began to pierce through the darkness; brick and piping ran overhead, while a constant drip and flow of water echoed unendingly. He shivered, the chill in the air unrelenting. He wrapped his arms around himself, finding his shirt soaked with blood, a bullet wound oozing black and scarlet from his side.
“Oh God…” he moaned. “Oh Jesus.”
“You’re awake,” a woman’s voice came from the shadows. He could just see her crouched in the far corner, dressed in a blood soaked nightgown.
“Who’s there?”
“Nothing. No one. Not anymore.”
“He—help me. I think I’ve—I think I’ve been shot.”
She let out a short, bitter laugh. “So? It won’t let us die. Not yet. Not until it’s ready.”
Wilfred looked at the pipes surrounding them. “Where are we?”
The woman gave him an exhausted shrug. “Under. Over. Does it matter? Everywhere is Hell now.”
“I don’t understand. What happened to me? How did we get here?”
“They took us here. The Others. The ones inside. This is how it began, begins,” the woman replied. “It accelerates, grows until we’ll lose all we are, replaced by…” She trailed off and started scratching violently at her face until blood began to pour down her neck.
“Replaced?” Wilfred whispered. “Replaced by what?”
The woman leaned forward into the dim bit of light and Wilfred let out a small scream. Her arms were riddled with long bloody trails, her face a horror of lacerations revealing the muscles beneath and, most terrifying of all, her eyes were black as coal. “Monsters.”
A sharp pain wrapped around Wilfred’s spine as the thing, the Other, crawled up inside him. His mind glimmered weakly as the monster took over, pushing Wilfred into a cage, bound and chained, left alone to watch the world play out like shadows on the wall. He could feel the creature drive his fingers into his skin. There was pain, of course, but it was like the itch from a lost limb, ever present but untenable. He had become little more than a suit worn by something unaccustomed to the concept of flesh and blood, tearing at meat and bone with the care and curiosity of a child pulling the wings off a fly curious to see what would happen next. It would never stop, never fade, it would drive and dig into him until it left nothing behind but a large gaping wound. Death would be a release.
That was the nightmare, and there was no way to wake.
He heard gunfire echo in recesses of his mind, memories flooding back with the staccato fury of a New York alleyway in the midst of a mob war. He began to recall who he was, what he used to be. Even then he was more monster than man. He used to love the sound when he busted heads for Pete Barry, the thrill of twisting the knife in a man’s gut and watching him bleed out. But that was yesterday, another life where violence and blood were business, occupational hazards recouped in dollars and smokes. That was when he was alive. The truth was he died the night of the Bartlett crash along with Josh Reynolds. He remembered the steel of the ship shattering his ribs, turning his limbs into putty. But something black and malignant had taken hold of him and brought him back as a vessel driven forward by little more than hate.
Ichor dripped down his face, as the creature used his own hands to dig into his flesh, screaming and howling like a wolf in the night. Deep inside, Wilfred sobbed and begged, but no one would hear, not the creature wearing his body, nor the woman laughing nearby. This was his personal little perdition, but there would be no redemption here.
• • •
The inside of Ken’s skull was a raging storm, spinning violently; he had a concussion, a goddamn concussion. He blinked heavily, while his head tried to force its way to the ground. He tried to push through it and find his way to Jean, he owed her that much and more.
A thin pattern of blood speckled the manhole cover, the end of a violent crumb trail worthy of Hansel and Gretel. More than a few times, Ken had to double back to retrace his steps but the trail had led him here which meant the only direction left was down.
Ken looked up at the sharp blue fall sky as the sun began to arch past the skyscrapers. It was too beautiful a day for this, he decide
d, as if crime and danger should only wait for alternately foggy or dark and stormy nights. But nothing was ever so neat and tidy like the movies. That was the big secret, the thing they never told you when you were getting into the vigilante business; it wasn’t always alleyways and dark shadows. More than anything, it was dirty and didn’t always end happily. The Bartlett was proof of that.
He knelt down, holstered his gun and began to pry his fingers beneath the manhole cover, expecting the worst.
• • •
“Morning, Dumont.”
Jethro gasped as his eyes opened to darkness. “Jean?” he breathed as he pushed himself off the cold cement floor, his head throbbing. His eyes adjusted to see the beautiful redhead seated against the opposite wall. “Jean Farrell?”
“Last I checked,” she said with a serene smile.
Jethro caught himself wishing, not for the first time, he could tell her who he really was, knowing he never would. “Where are we?” he asked nervously, once again playing the role of the vacuous millionaire playboy. The ever-present sound of water echoed off the slime covered brick walls towering around them. A complex array of piping was just visible in the shadows above.
“Sewers, judging by the pipes, the water, and the smell.”
“What are you doing here?”
“I was about to ask you the same question, but I have a feeling I already know the answer.”
“I was at the police station with John when we were attacked. There was… a woman. She tore through the station like it was cardboard. I saw her rip out the throats of two officers… I’ve never seen such… fury. And her face…”
Jean shivered despite herself. “Ken and I were down by the docks investigating that whole Liberty Island thing when this guy attacked us. Looked like something out of a Universal monster film. Face ripped to shreds. Dragged me here about… three hours ago? Four? Damn if I can tell down in this pit. The woman tossed you in shortly after. How’s it feel to get beat up by a woman, by the way? Must feel emasculating.” She let the last word hang between them.
The Green Lama: Scions (The Green Lama Legacy Book 1) Page 7