Read Online The Green Lama: Scions (The Green Lama Legacy Book 1) by Adam Lance Garcia - Free Book Online

through the unending bustle, “so technically, for me, this has all been one long, wild night.”
    Ken raised an eyebrow. “Aren’t they all?”
    She looked back at him and smiled. “Only when you’re around, Blondie.”
    Something caught the corner of his eye, a shadow shifting besides a pyramid of crates. “You know some of us actually like sleep,” he said absently as he looked closer. He could just make it out, a man hunched over, watching them like a savage in a Tarzan film. Ken felt his hair stand on end.
    “What’s the hold up, movie star?” Jean asked when she realized Ken had fallen behind.
    He waved her over and pointed his cigarette at the man.
    “You think we’re being followed?” Jean whispered with more excitement than Ken cared for.
    “That or I’m just jumpy.”
    “God, I hope so. Means we’re on to something, whatever it is we’re on to.” She hooked her arm with his and pulled him along, careful not to look back over her shoulder. She slipped her free hand into her jacket and unhooked the clasp on her holster. “Come on, let’s see if he stays on us.”
    Ken’s eyebrows pinched together. “Who talks like that?”
    Jean scoffed. “Redheads who save the world, obviously.”
    “You’ve never saved the world,” he retorted.
    “Saved your ass more than a few times.”
    Ken rolled his eyes. “You just like to keep pouring salt on the wound, don’t you?
    “It’s why I always carry a salt shaker,” she said with a nod.
    “You frighten me, Farrell.”
    “At least I’m consistent. He still on us?”
    Ken glanced over his shoulder as they turned a corner. He could just make the man’s face out. Besides a long branched scar in his neck, he looked nondescript, though there was something unsettling about his eyes. “Like a mosquito.”
    “Good. This way,” she said, pulling him into an alleyway.
    Ken tossed his cigarette and grabbed his sidearm. Such an odd thing, a gun, he reflected, that something so small could decide the course of events with a single bit of metal. He had grown so accustomed to them since joining up with the Lama, he sometimes forgot there had been a time when the only weapons he handled shot blanks. The question he kept coming back to was whether he was playacting the hero or the actor. But now was not the time for woolgathering. He pressed himself up against the wall while Jean moved against the opposite side, the hammer of her gun already cocked. Through the shadows he could see the slight curl of a smile on her lips. She enjoyed this too much for it to be healthy.
    “You’re sure he was following us, Clayton?” she whispered.
    Ken ignored her and kept his eyes on the street when he heard something move behind them. He turned around to find the hunched silhouette of their stalker watching them from the other end of the alleyway.
    “What the hell? How did he—?” Ken breathed. He looked to Jean, her face steeled over. He held up a hand for her to stay back, which Jean pointedly ignored.
    “Hey! Hey, buddy!” Jean shouted, stepping forward, her gun raised. “It ain’t polite to follow a guy and his gal, especially when they’re armed.”
    The man’s head cocked unnaturally to the side, a puppet whose string had been cut. Ken could hear him breathing; short rattling, phlegm filled gasps of a drowned man. Unconsciously raising his own gun, Ken moved closer, his muscles twitching.
    “You didn’t answer my question, pal. Don’t make me ask—” Jean let out a gasp as the man turned to face her.
    A low-pitched growl rolled from the man’s throat as a manic smile stretched across his tattered visage. Bloody bits of flesh hung off his face in long strips, his eyes pitch black. Large chunks of skin hung from beneath his nails while the branched scar on his neck throbbed violently.
    “Keystone…” he hissed, his breath misting in the air. He let out an undulating scream and rushed at her. Jean tried to jump aside, but the man was faster and was on her