Broken Dragon (The Chronicles of Mara Lantern, Book 3) (23 page)

As they approached, the dragon swerved to the left, and Mara could see the silhouettes of two men in the cabin of the helicopter. Both wore headsets and were looking down at the street, not at the approaching menace from above. Mara fell to her knees and wedged her fingers beneath the scales of the creature’s back. Closing her eyes, she said under her breath, “Sorry, Ping.”

Arcs of blue lightning shot out from her hands, wrapped around the torso of the dragon and spidered across its wings, sending spasms throughout its body. A scream of agony tore through the night, as the dragon convulsed in midair, its course now flying wide of the helicopter but still heading toward the ground. Its body tumbled into a sideways roll with its wings flopping uselessly with each turn. The spinning flung Mara into the air and a passing wing smacked her back toward the dragon’s body. She tumbled freely along its flanks as it fell from the sky. At some point, she grabbed a bony protuberance and held on, not really having a sense of what was happening, apart from falling.

Buffeted by a wind whipping past her body, Mara could feel her heart pounding in her head and a heavy pressure built up in her chest. She gasped for air, feeling consciousness slip away. For a second she felt weightless, and then the tumbling stopped. She lifted her head from the dragon and found herself staring into lines of headlights. Horns honked. Cars crashed. They flew just feet above the roofs of the cars backed up on what she presumed was McLoughlin, though it could have been another street. Somewhere a woman screamed, but that sound faded as they gained altitude.

They disappeared into the clouds.

Sam jogged out from under the overpass, and watched the dragon run down the road and leap into the air. He turned on his heel and called back to the pile of rubble, “Mara! Are you out here?”

Bohannon walked up, carrying a flashlight. He swept the roadway and the shoulder, making a point of looking behind mounds of debris scattered everywhere. No sign of Mara.

Sam pointed to the intact portion of the overpass on the right side of the road and said, “I think at some point she was up there. The lightning that hit the dragon was coming from above, and it wasn’t coming from the clouds.”

Bohannon pointed the light at the collapsed section of the overpass and ran it up toward the balustrade of the intact portion. “I’m not following you. What does Mara have to do with the lightning?”

“You saw her earlier. She was zapping it, you know, with bolts of electricity.”

“About that …”

“The dragon was perched up there, then it was down here. She must have swapped places with it at some point, after it became unfrozen.”

“Swapped places?” Bohannon repeated.

“She can move things, swap the locations of things. Like she moved all of us under the overpass before the dragon came crashing down.”

“She swapped us?” Bohannon asked. “With what?”

“I don’t know. Maybe she got panicked and just moved us. She really doesn’t know what she’s doing half the time. She can do more than she’s willing to believe.”

Bohannon continued sweeping the overpass. “I don’t understand how all this comes together—the lightning, moving things, freezing things.”

“Mara’s a progenitor. She has the ability to alter reality, but she doesn’t really have a firm grasp on the whole thing, so she has this weird mix of stuff she does, mostly when she gets freaked-out. It makes sense when Ping explains it. You’ll need to ask him.”

“So I should ask the dragon.”

“Probably best to wait until he’s not a dragon,” Sam said, turning in a circle scanning the area. “Maybe Mara flickered away, or maybe she was on the dragon when it flew away.”

Bohannon shook his head. “I’m not even going to ask what
flickering
is, but why on God’s green Earth would she get on a dragon and fly away?”

Sam shrugged. “Don’t know, but she’s not here. I’m betting she’s with the dragon.”

“Sam?” Diana called from beneath the overpass. “Is Mara out there? Is she okay?”

He jogged toward the shadows and waved for Bohannon to follow. As the detective turned, his eye caught a line of flashing blue lights making their way along the shoulders of McLoughlin Boulevard. Several police cruisers navigated their way around the abandoned cars blocking the road, heading toward them.

He turned and ran over to the patrol car Diana had stolen earlier.

“Mrs. Lantern, I would recommend that you and Hannah take this patrol car and head home. In a few minutes this place will be crawling with cops,” Bohannon said. “No, better yet, stay on McLaughlin and go to a restaurant or shopping center and call a cab or a friend to come pick you up. You don’t want to get caught with the car at your house.”

Diana glanced at Sam. “Where’s Mara?”

“We don’t know,” he said. “We’ll stay here and look for her. I would really feel better if you and Hannah were safe at home.”

“How do we know the dragon won’t just keep following me?” she said.

“I think Mara is keeping him busy,” Sam said. “We’ll find Mara and bring her home.”

“You don’t even have a car.”

Bohannon interjected, “It really will complicate things if you are picked up with a stolen patrol car. We’ll all end up at a police station, and no one will be out here looking for Mara. So it is best you go, and go now.”

“All right, but take my phone. I’ll call you from home when I get there.” She pulled her phone from her pocket and handed it to Sam.

Hannah, standing next to her grandmother, said, “Dad?”

He bent down and said, “Yes, bean?”

“Can I carry the head while we drive home?” she asked.

Diana rolled her eyes and said, “Sweetie, you’ll have to ask the head that. He’s a person after all.”

Sam smiled at his mother, turned to Hannah and said, “The head’s name is Cam. Be nice to him and remember to treat him kindly. He’s had a long day.”

“We’ve all had a long day,” Diana said, as she guided Hannah to the patrol car.

Sam followed Diana to the driver’s side of the car and held the door open for her. “Don’t worry. We’ll find Mara and come home as soon as possible. Oh, and turn off the flashers, so you don’t attract attention.”

Diana pecked him on the cheek, got into the car and slowly drove away, swerving to dodge a couple chunks of debris in the street.

Bohannon walked up to him and said, “When the cops or emergency crews show up, we don’t know what happened here. It was like this when we got here. We don’t talk about dragons or missing sisters or any of that. As a matter of fact, just let me do the talking.”

“How are you going to explain how you got here? Your car is a pile of wet ashes,” Sam said, pointing to the debris north of the overpass.

The detective waved a hand dismissively. “I stopped to help a motorist in distress and someone stole the vehicle. No biggie.”

“And what about me? What am I doing here?”

“Like I said, let me do the talking. Cops are a lot less suspicious of their own. They won’t ask a lot of questions as long as we don’t start acting hinky,” Bohannon said, walking out from under the overpass. He held up a hand and felt no rain falling. “Maybe this storm front is getting ready to move on.”

Sam followed him toward the jumble of abandoned cars a few hundred feet away. The blue and red flashing lights were now parking along the shoulder nearby. He said, “I hope it doesn’t clear up too quickly. I think the clouds are providing the only cover Ping has.”

Bohannon nodded ahead and said, “That looks like it might be a tactical unit van parked along the median. That’s not good news.”

“Why’s that?” Sam asked.

“That means they’ve got reason to be afraid of something down here, and they are preparing to engage it with some real firepower. I wonder if that helicopter was broadcasting footage of the dragon earlier.”

Sam pointed up to the sky and said, “You mean that helicopter?”

A spotlight swept over them.

Bohannon shook his head. “Idiots. They are going to get themselves killed.”

Sam scanned the dark skies and could see nothing other than the layer of clouds reflecting the glow of the lights on the ground. He slowly turned, trying to sense movement above but detected nothing. “I don’t see him,” he said.

“You think there’s a chance that the dragon would come back here?”

Sam shrugged. “For all we know, he never really left. He might be up in the clouds, waiting for a chance to strike, or he could be miles away by now.”

“All right, let’s jog up the road a piece and talk to the cops and let them know nothing’s going on down here. For all they heard, an earthquake damaged the overpass, or there was an industrial accident with a truck. If there’s no crime scene and no one under immediate threat, their priority will be to clear the abandoned cars and get traffic moving again.”

Sam leaned against one of the abandoned cars. “It might be a good idea if I stayed here, just in case.”

Bohannon gave him a suspicious look. “You’re not gonna do anything, right?”

Sam raised his hands defensively. “No, just keeping watch. I won’t do anything or go anywhere, unless the dragon drops in.”

The detective handed him the flashlight and turned to walk up the road.

Darkness and clouds conspired to keep Mara disoriented, as the wind pounded her relentlessly. Once again she had attached herself to a bony outcrop protruding from the dragon’s spine; however, this time she stood at the base of its neck, her feet planted firmly on its shoulder blades near the joint from which its wing erupted from its body. Her foothold rose and fell with the stroke of its wings, like an oar in water. She looked down at her feet and watched her knees slowly bend and straighten, trying to keep balance, as the dragon propelled itself through the murky skies.

She wondered if it knew she was here, that she had not fallen off. Her own skin was numb from the icy-wet air whipping across her body, but she was sure the dragon’s thick hide provided more protection. And though she felt small next to the massive creature, her full weight must be enough to provide some resistance to the flexing joint. She stopped wondering when the dragon’s head craned back on its neck, suspended a few feet above her.

Its red eyes narrowed, as its glare locked on her. It pulled back its lips and hissed at her, exposing teeth half Mara’s height. She made a point of pulling her body closer to the dragon’s, wanting to make sure any sudden fireworks would do as much damage to it as to her. The dragon rolled its shoulders, and its entire body yawed, causing Mara’s feet to slip off its shoulder, but she held on to its neck long enough to scramble and get her feet below her again. Gritting her teeth, she snarled back, “I’m not going to be that easy to get rid of.”

The dragon’s eyelid slid down slowly, a bored expression, as it turned away and stretched its head to the right, dipping it below its torso while raising its left wing—the one next to Mara—and swooped into a corkscrew dive. The plunge pressed Mara into the dragon’s side, but, as they spun around, she found herself pulled away. She wrapped her arms around the bony spine in a bear hug, pressing her cheek against the rough surface. Pressure built up in her chest, preventing her from breathing. Suddenly the clouds were gone.

Mara glanced around and tried to get her bearings—difficult to do considering they were spinning toward the ground. As best she could tell, they were south of downtown near the river, which meant they were still in the general vicinity of the overpass where this ride started. With a jolt that slammed her ribs into something spiking from the dragon’s hide, they came out of the spin but still descended, gaining speed. Mara lifted her head and looked straight ahead. There, in front of them again, was the helicopter, hovering over the roadway, its spotlight on a lone figure, looking up, hooding his eyes with his hands.

They flew over a cluster of emergency vehicles sporting spinning red and blue lights parked in the median several yards behind the knot of abandoned cars near the crumpled overpass. A line of people with flashlights appeared to be making their way forward along the shoulder of the road. The dragon barreled past the stalled cars directly for the helicopter.

Mara tensed, getting ready to strike out at the dragon, when it rolled onto its side. Mara’s feet slipped out from under her, and she dangled in the night sky, nothing between her and the pavement a few hundred feet below. Slowly she felt her grasp slip. Grabbing at the dragon’s hide with her fingernails, she could not gain purchase. Her stomach clenched.

The dragon jerked its head upward, sending a wave through its body that rippled all the way to its tail, a whip snapping at the wind. Mara’s left hand fell away, and her right cramped and trembled as it slipped to the end of the bony spine.

The dragon rolled over onto its back.

And Mara fell.

She watched the dragon fly on without her, as she slowly dropped toward the ground, her mind frozen in the moment, not comprehending her situation. The sound of the helicopter’s blades brought her back to reality, and her eyes flicked in that direction. The dragon plunged toward it, letting out a roar and a column of fire that grazed its fuselage. The tiny craft jogged to the right like a hummingbird, trying to get out of the monster’s path, but it did no good. The dragon corrected its course with the flick of its tail and zeroed in. When it was just a few feet away, the dragon flung open its wings, catching a cushion of air that allowed it to hover before the helicopter. The spotlight at the bottom of the helicopter rotated from the ground and pointed toward the dragon, illuminating the creature splayed in all its monstrous glory.

As Mara plunged, she slowly raised a hand toward the nightmare unfolding above her. She winced and closed her eyes.

The leathery wings of the dragon shimmered in the spotlight, blurred for a moment and melted away in a shower of glittering cubes that caught the wind like confetti. The remains of the creature plummeted below the edge of the spotlight where Mara could no longer see him.

Mara closed her eyes and waited for the inevitable.